As I write this, the final episode of Fear the Walking Dead's first season is about 11 hours off.
While the level of anticipation for this spin-off was sky-high before its debut, most of the reactions I've seen over the course of this short season have been disappointed to some degree or another, and I suspect I'm not the only fan who's considerably less excited for this episode than I was for the debut in August.
I've seen a litany of complaints, mostly dealing with the slow pace of the show (which never bothered me) and the characterization (which did).
But my biggest complaint is simple, and much more damaging to the show as a whole: the show has completely failed in its raison d'etre.
Parent show The Walking Dead, like the George Romero movies that inspired it, barely alludes to the early days of the zombie crisis. There are
a couple of mentions of a failed government plan to move everyone into
the big cities, but the crisis is in full swing by the time Rick Grimes comes out of his coma and it's just taken as given.
So when Fear the Walking Dead was announced, it was exciting not because we would have the opportunity to see a different group of humans fighting zombies in a different geographical location (a.k.a. TWD:LA), but because we were promised a peek at the portion of the story that had remained untold. The big "hook" was supposed to be the opportunity to see how the crisis developed, and how civilization collapsed.
Unfortunately, in the first five episodes, this show has failed in that task completely.
Yes, we have, literally, seen a progression of events that occur during the beginning of the zombie epidemic. And yes, civilization appears to have collapsed by the end of Episode Five. But as viewers, we have literally no idea how we got from point A to point B. It's just been a bunch of stuff that (as Jeb Bush might say) happened. The show never gives us the any idea of what the main characters, or the public at large, think is going on, largely because the main characters never discuss it or speculate on it.
In Episode One, Tobias tells Madison that he's been following the
stories of the disease on the internet and she scoffs. Next thing we know, her school is closed, presumably due to the same disease, but we
never get any indication of what the official explanation is, or what
the characters think is happening.
At the end of that episode, Travis and Madison are confronted by, and kill, their first zombie (Nick's drug dealer) and in Episode Two, Madison kills her school's zombified principal in self-defense. But we never understand what they think is happening. At no point prior to this has anyone stated "There are zombies" or "Dead
people are coming back to life" or anything of the sort. Yet, as soon as a zombie acts aggressively, they kill it, even though, for all they know, they're killing a sick or wounded human. And once the characters have seemingly run down one human in cold blood,
and smashed in another's head with a fire extinguisher, they never talk
about what's just happened. As a result, we don't have a clue what they think or believe as the series progresses.
(Sidebar: yes, the drug dealer was shot and presumed dead, but people survive gunshot wounds and auto accidents all the time. Yes, Madison's principal was attacking her and Tobias, but it's hard to imagine that these characters -- who don't know they're in The Walking Dead universe, who don't even know that zombies exist -- would be so quick to use lethal force without even trying to talk to their "friends". Alternatively, if they do know that these are undead zombies, the show hasn't given us any idea how they figured that out.)
In Episode Three, Madison and Alicia watch their zombified neighbor stalk their other neighbors, without attempting to help. Are they scared? Do they know he's a zombie? Why was Madison willing to attack a zombie to save a student, but unwilling to lift a finger to help her neighbors?
Who knows? They don't say, or give any indication of why they're behaving the way they do. It advances the plot, and that's apparently enough. As in many TV dramas, the writers create "suspense" by the simple device of never having the characters engage in the most blindingly obvious conversations. Even after Travis and his family break into Daniel's barber shop
and request shelter, they don't even bother to sit down and compare
notes (that might interfere with the smoldering resentment that the plot requires the two characters feel for each other).
The writers never give us any idea of what's going on
inside the characters' heads, and, indeed, don't even seem conscious of
the distinction between what the viewers know and what the characters
know. We know that a zombie apocalypse has begun, because we've already seen five seasons of The Walking Dead. But the characters haven't! It's a prequel, remember?
At the end of the third episode, the National Guard shows
up to turn their neighborhood into an armed compound, but we still don't
know if anyone in the main cast realizes what is actually happening. We
haven't been given any inkling of the official explanation, any more than we were when Madison's school closed. By Episode Five, the Guardsmen's dialog indicates that they know that the dead are getting up and walking around, but the viewers don't have the slightest idea of how they figured that out, or whether the general public even knows. By the end of Episode Five, it's implied that this subdivision is the last surviving civilian settlement in the LA area, but if that were really the case, I would expect the characters to be freaking out just a little bit.
So, what does this leave us with? The characters in The Walking Dead were always considered among the series' strong points. What does its spin-off give us? A bunch of caricatures.
Travis and Madison are both divorcees, and she and his ex-wife resent each other. His son resents him for spending more time with Madison and her family. Madison blames his ex-wife when the National Guard hauls her junkie son away to the hospital. I guess this is supposed to make the characters more human and easier to relate to, but these cliches are so obvious, trite and shopworn that they're more likely to inspire groans than empathy.
And, speaking of the National Guard, the government and the military in FTWD are shown to act in bad faith in every single case. They lie. They kidnap. They murder civilians in cold blood. They sneer at the people they're supposed to be protecting.
With a lighter touch, and some sense of balance, this sort of thing might work. The Walking Dead (especially the comic series) raises a lot of questions about the intersection of liberty and safety and the nature of governmental authority. With this group of writers, though, Fear the Walking Dead's take on the government seems aimed at those who find Alex Jones and Infowars to be too subtle and nuanced.
In the end, we're left with a mess. Civilization has collapsed, the National Guard has abandoned ship, and it's hard to see how the next season won't just be West Coast Walking Dead. The show has been mindlessly entertaining, with some good moments of suspense, but it seems unlikely to generate any characters that we care about as much as the characters in its parent show (Travis and Daniel are becoming more unlikable with every episode), and completely incapable of delivering a coherent picture of the onset of the zombie apocalypse. Instead of showing us realistic characters reacting to an unbelievably horrifying scenario, we've been given a bunch of half-drawn caricatures running around at the whims of the show's creators to satisfy the demands of the plot.
I'll still be watching tonight, and I'll tune in again next summer to see where they go from here, but it's looking less and less likely that this show will capture lightning in a bottle for a second time.
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Thursday, July 9, 2015
MUSIC: Thoughts on the Grateful Dead's "Fare Thee Well" shows in Chicago
Twenty-five years ago today -- half my lifetime -- I was driving from
Pittsburgh to Raleigh to see the second of four Dead shows I would catch
that summer. Ironically, this would be my first visit to Raleigh, where I
now live.
Prior to the first night, I had met a college buddy, Josh, at a West Virginia state park for camping, then proceeded to Three Rivers Stadium the next day to meet some more friends who had driven out from Chicago. In those primitive, pre-cell-phone days, our plan for meeting up involved them calling my job on a 1-800 number, asking for my extension, and leaving a message on my voice mail. I could then dial in toll-free and pick up my messages. High-tech, baby. Somehow this worked, and we managed to meet up with our friends literally as they were leaving the meeting spot to head into the stadium.
The next day, Josh drove back to Washington to go to work, our other friends drove back to Chicago, and I drove on to Raleigh with a kid named Paul I had met at our campground, who needed a ride (his friends were skipping the Raleigh show).
In Raleigh, I met up with some other friends, saw the show, drove with Paul to Washington see another show at RFK Stadium, then headed back to Boston on my own to catch the Foxboro show (7-14-90) with another bunch of friends.
Flash forward to 2015, four nights ago. It's setbreak at the last Fare Thee Well show and I'm hanging out outside the "United Club" inside Soldier Field, waiting to meet up with one of my best friends from college, whom I haven't seen in person in 30 years. While I'm waiting, I strike up a conversation with a random head who sat down next to me.
Everybody's been having a blast. Everybody I've talked to has agreed that the shows have far exceeded expectations. At one point I said "You know what this means, right? This means we're officially nostalgic for the stadium summer tours of the 90s".
And like Royal Tenenbaum, immediately after making this statement, I realized that it was true.
I always used to complain about stadium shows, and, indeed, after that epic summer tour of 1990, I only ever went to see the Dead one more time in a stadium (prior to this summer). But thinking about it now, I realize that I saw a lot more stadium shows than I realized (eight total in six years) and that I enjoyed most of them immensely. One of them was my first transcendent Grateful Dead experience (7-4-86 in Buffalo, on the strength of the first half of the second set, and, boy, I spent years tracking down a good tape of that show) and one of them was the best GD show I ever saw (7-12-90 in Washington).
But even aside from the music, there was something amazing about the experience of seeing the Dead outdoors with 50,000+ other fans on a summer afternoon and evening. Of course, it was better to do so in a venue less oppressive than a football stadium (e.g. Oxford Plains Speedway), but living in the northeast, in the late 80s/early 90s, outdoor summer shows generally meant stadiums. And even standing on a spongy plastic mat covering the turf at Foxboro Stadium, when the band launched into "Uncle John's Band" or "Eyes of the World", your physical location no longer mattered, and it was possible to feel a connection to such epochal shows from the past as Elizabethtown '77 or Veneta '72.
That said, there were plenty of good reasons for skipping the stadium tours of the 90s as well. I think all of us remember how the scene started to go south in the 90s, as the Dead's reputation grew, and the number of people who showed up to each show multiplied. There had always been people who showed up without tickets, but in the past, I think, a lot of them would wind up getting into the shows if they wanted to, and even if they didn't, their total numbers were relatively small. By the 90s, the lot scene was starting to overwhelm the concert scene, and to overwhelm the cities who played host to the Dead. The band became personae non grata in a lot of the cities they had played for years (Providence, Worcester, Hartford, etc.) and the size of the unruly crowds made it hard for the authorities in the cities where they still played to turn a blind eye to the parking lot shenanigans.
By 94 and 95, the scene had gotten pretty awful, with gate-crashers and hangers-on galore, and to make things worse (much worse) Jerry was using heroin again to a degree that hadn't been seen since the mid-80s. He looked physically decrepit, and musically, he was often unable to remember the words or chords to his own compositions that he'd been performing for close to twenty years.
In the vernacular, it was a serious buzzkill.
Which is not to say that it still wasn't fun to be there, in the crowd, hanging out with all the groovy heads again. But musically, it just wasn't happening.
And that's part of what made these Fare Thee Well shows so amazing, and so satisfying. As I sat outside the United Club on Sunday, chatting with my newest friend, we both agreed that these shows were providing that overused concept of "closure". But it wasn't just closure on the whole "Grateful Dead scene", it was musical closure as well.
Because anybody who saw the Dead in their last couple years of Garcia's life saw a band that had already fallen off significantly (IMO) from their late-period peak of only a few years earlier (ca. 1989-1991). I always said that the most effective anti-drug program in schools would be to show a video of Jerry from 1990, followed by one from 1995. Scare those fucking kids straight.
When Jerry died in 1995, I was sad, but quite frankly, I wasn't particularly surprised, given his physical state. I didn't feel like I had lost a huge part of my life because for me, the magic had already died.
In Chicago, the boys brought the magic back. Far more than at any time since. For all the great shows I've seen in the last twenty years, by The Other Ones, The Dead, Phil & Friends and Ratdog, this was the first time I felt truly transported by something larger than life since the fall of 1991 (when my mother, at the Boston Garden for the final show of that epic run, described the Dead's music as Wagnerian).
In addition to the scene, in addition to the communal feeling of 70,000 heads grooving at once, the Fare Thee Well shows delivered the best Grateful Dead music I've heard since Jerry died. That was the true closure that they delivered. Because unfortunately, Jerry didn't go out with a bang, but with a whimper, a mere shadow of the cosmic heights he had been scaling just a few years earlier (heights that had seemed inconceivable just a few years before *that*). Last weekend, what's left of the Grateful Dead finally closed the parenthesis, finished the "Playing in the Band" (metaphorically speaking, since they actually left us hanging on that one), and delivered one more intense dose (or three, depending on how you count it) of Grateful Dead musical magic that we'd been missing for a long time.
And I have to give 100% of the credit for that to Trey Anastasio, and honestly, I can't think of a single musician alive today who could have filled that role better than he did. I'm not even much of a Phish fan -- I used to listen to their "A Live One" album a lot, but I only ever saw them three or four times in the 90s -- but that man has talent and creativity to burn, and more importantly (since the members of the Dead have played with dozens of talented and creative musicians over the last 20 years), he knows how to improvise in an open-ended rock context, and he knows how to lead a group improvisation.
Phish is conceptually (not musically) a carbon-copy of the Grateful Dead. Their whole approach is based on the approach that the Dead pioneered (but using their own formative musical influences and their own musical voices). And for all their talent, guys like Jimmy Herring or Warren Haynes or even John Scofield (who may be the greatest electric guitarist alive) don't have the instinctive ability to lead a rock ensemble like this that comes from 30+ years of experience.
They got the right guys for the job (got to give credit to Hornsby and Chimenti as well), and they didn't try to do anything more than they needed to. Which is to say, no special guests (who would have just killed the momentum -- these guys obviously had enough trouble just getting their act together among the seven of them), no opening bands, no sax players (sorry, Dave Ellis), no gimmicks, just two great sets of Grateful Dead music every night, with one brilliant guitarist leading the way.
We may wish that they were doing more shows, but leaving aside the question of whether Phil, Trey and Bruce would have even been willing to do so, I have to think that the results would not have been so magic if they had tried to spread this out over ten or twenty shows instead of five.
For one thing, it made the scene more magical, because there was only one "event" (plus the warmup shows). Instead of being spread out across the country, everyone who wanted to see the Dead came to either Santa Clara or Chicago. There was no temptation to wait until "next tour" (as I foolishly did when declining to see the Jerry Garcia Band in 1993).
And musically, having it all over and done with over the course of nine days and five shows meant that the band left nothing on the shelf. They gave everything they had in Chicago without worrying about saving anything for the next city.
The highlights of the shows were too numerous to list, but I do feel obliged to point out that "Standing on the Moon" and "Stella Blue" were absolutely devastating the second night. For the former, the number of wars that our nation has fought since Jerry last sang that song gave it a whole new depth, and Trey's delivery was perfect. For the latter, well, it's "Stella Blue". One of the most emotional songs Hunter ever wrote, given a heartfelt performance by Weir and another stunning musical performance by Trey.
Weir's vocals were surprisingly strong all weekend. Phil didn't insist on singing too many songs and did a decent job on most of them. Trey delivered the goods on guitar and vocals, again and again, and Bruce did a great job as well, once they gave him a little space.
In terms of setlists, while there are certainly nits to be picked (Built to Last? Really?), the selection was excellent overall, with many songs that seemed to reference the end of their career, even though they had been written 40-50 years earlier. Other than the obvious ones like Music Never Stopped and Box of Rain, I found a lot of lyrical resonance in Crazy Fingers, Mason's Children, Bird Song, Cassidy and many more.
For a band that seemed to make a habit out of shooting themselves in the foot, the Grateful Dead really got it together and delivered an amazingly satisfying coda to a legendary career. These shows were better than anyone could have expected (a refrain I heard over and over again over the course of the weekend), and even more spectacular for the fact that nine months ago, nobody could have even imagined them happening at all.
While it might be nice, in an ideal world, to imagine this band going on tour in the fall, it's hard to imagine them capturing the same lightning in a bottle night after night like they did in Chicago. In the real world, I can't imagine a better way to cap off the Grateful Dead's career, and I'm glad that I got the chance to go. I met old college friends that I hadn't seen in decades, old internet friends that I'd never met in real life, and new friends that I'd never met before. And for one more glorious summer weekend, everything was Just Exactly Perfect.
Prior to the first night, I had met a college buddy, Josh, at a West Virginia state park for camping, then proceeded to Three Rivers Stadium the next day to meet some more friends who had driven out from Chicago. In those primitive, pre-cell-phone days, our plan for meeting up involved them calling my job on a 1-800 number, asking for my extension, and leaving a message on my voice mail. I could then dial in toll-free and pick up my messages. High-tech, baby. Somehow this worked, and we managed to meet up with our friends literally as they were leaving the meeting spot to head into the stadium.
The next day, Josh drove back to Washington to go to work, our other friends drove back to Chicago, and I drove on to Raleigh with a kid named Paul I had met at our campground, who needed a ride (his friends were skipping the Raleigh show).
In Raleigh, I met up with some other friends, saw the show, drove with Paul to Washington see another show at RFK Stadium, then headed back to Boston on my own to catch the Foxboro show (7-14-90) with another bunch of friends.
Flash forward to 2015, four nights ago. It's setbreak at the last Fare Thee Well show and I'm hanging out outside the "United Club" inside Soldier Field, waiting to meet up with one of my best friends from college, whom I haven't seen in person in 30 years. While I'm waiting, I strike up a conversation with a random head who sat down next to me.
Everybody's been having a blast. Everybody I've talked to has agreed that the shows have far exceeded expectations. At one point I said "You know what this means, right? This means we're officially nostalgic for the stadium summer tours of the 90s".
And like Royal Tenenbaum, immediately after making this statement, I realized that it was true.
I always used to complain about stadium shows, and, indeed, after that epic summer tour of 1990, I only ever went to see the Dead one more time in a stadium (prior to this summer). But thinking about it now, I realize that I saw a lot more stadium shows than I realized (eight total in six years) and that I enjoyed most of them immensely. One of them was my first transcendent Grateful Dead experience (7-4-86 in Buffalo, on the strength of the first half of the second set, and, boy, I spent years tracking down a good tape of that show) and one of them was the best GD show I ever saw (7-12-90 in Washington).
But even aside from the music, there was something amazing about the experience of seeing the Dead outdoors with 50,000+ other fans on a summer afternoon and evening. Of course, it was better to do so in a venue less oppressive than a football stadium (e.g. Oxford Plains Speedway), but living in the northeast, in the late 80s/early 90s, outdoor summer shows generally meant stadiums. And even standing on a spongy plastic mat covering the turf at Foxboro Stadium, when the band launched into "Uncle John's Band" or "Eyes of the World", your physical location no longer mattered, and it was possible to feel a connection to such epochal shows from the past as Elizabethtown '77 or Veneta '72.
That said, there were plenty of good reasons for skipping the stadium tours of the 90s as well. I think all of us remember how the scene started to go south in the 90s, as the Dead's reputation grew, and the number of people who showed up to each show multiplied. There had always been people who showed up without tickets, but in the past, I think, a lot of them would wind up getting into the shows if they wanted to, and even if they didn't, their total numbers were relatively small. By the 90s, the lot scene was starting to overwhelm the concert scene, and to overwhelm the cities who played host to the Dead. The band became personae non grata in a lot of the cities they had played for years (Providence, Worcester, Hartford, etc.) and the size of the unruly crowds made it hard for the authorities in the cities where they still played to turn a blind eye to the parking lot shenanigans.
By 94 and 95, the scene had gotten pretty awful, with gate-crashers and hangers-on galore, and to make things worse (much worse) Jerry was using heroin again to a degree that hadn't been seen since the mid-80s. He looked physically decrepit, and musically, he was often unable to remember the words or chords to his own compositions that he'd been performing for close to twenty years.
In the vernacular, it was a serious buzzkill.
Which is not to say that it still wasn't fun to be there, in the crowd, hanging out with all the groovy heads again. But musically, it just wasn't happening.
And that's part of what made these Fare Thee Well shows so amazing, and so satisfying. As I sat outside the United Club on Sunday, chatting with my newest friend, we both agreed that these shows were providing that overused concept of "closure". But it wasn't just closure on the whole "Grateful Dead scene", it was musical closure as well.
Because anybody who saw the Dead in their last couple years of Garcia's life saw a band that had already fallen off significantly (IMO) from their late-period peak of only a few years earlier (ca. 1989-1991). I always said that the most effective anti-drug program in schools would be to show a video of Jerry from 1990, followed by one from 1995. Scare those fucking kids straight.
When Jerry died in 1995, I was sad, but quite frankly, I wasn't particularly surprised, given his physical state. I didn't feel like I had lost a huge part of my life because for me, the magic had already died.
In Chicago, the boys brought the magic back. Far more than at any time since. For all the great shows I've seen in the last twenty years, by The Other Ones, The Dead, Phil & Friends and Ratdog, this was the first time I felt truly transported by something larger than life since the fall of 1991 (when my mother, at the Boston Garden for the final show of that epic run, described the Dead's music as Wagnerian).
In addition to the scene, in addition to the communal feeling of 70,000 heads grooving at once, the Fare Thee Well shows delivered the best Grateful Dead music I've heard since Jerry died. That was the true closure that they delivered. Because unfortunately, Jerry didn't go out with a bang, but with a whimper, a mere shadow of the cosmic heights he had been scaling just a few years earlier (heights that had seemed inconceivable just a few years before *that*). Last weekend, what's left of the Grateful Dead finally closed the parenthesis, finished the "Playing in the Band" (metaphorically speaking, since they actually left us hanging on that one), and delivered one more intense dose (or three, depending on how you count it) of Grateful Dead musical magic that we'd been missing for a long time.
And I have to give 100% of the credit for that to Trey Anastasio, and honestly, I can't think of a single musician alive today who could have filled that role better than he did. I'm not even much of a Phish fan -- I used to listen to their "A Live One" album a lot, but I only ever saw them three or four times in the 90s -- but that man has talent and creativity to burn, and more importantly (since the members of the Dead have played with dozens of talented and creative musicians over the last 20 years), he knows how to improvise in an open-ended rock context, and he knows how to lead a group improvisation.
Phish is conceptually (not musically) a carbon-copy of the Grateful Dead. Their whole approach is based on the approach that the Dead pioneered (but using their own formative musical influences and their own musical voices). And for all their talent, guys like Jimmy Herring or Warren Haynes or even John Scofield (who may be the greatest electric guitarist alive) don't have the instinctive ability to lead a rock ensemble like this that comes from 30+ years of experience.
They got the right guys for the job (got to give credit to Hornsby and Chimenti as well), and they didn't try to do anything more than they needed to. Which is to say, no special guests (who would have just killed the momentum -- these guys obviously had enough trouble just getting their act together among the seven of them), no opening bands, no sax players (sorry, Dave Ellis), no gimmicks, just two great sets of Grateful Dead music every night, with one brilliant guitarist leading the way.
We may wish that they were doing more shows, but leaving aside the question of whether Phil, Trey and Bruce would have even been willing to do so, I have to think that the results would not have been so magic if they had tried to spread this out over ten or twenty shows instead of five.
For one thing, it made the scene more magical, because there was only one "event" (plus the warmup shows). Instead of being spread out across the country, everyone who wanted to see the Dead came to either Santa Clara or Chicago. There was no temptation to wait until "next tour" (as I foolishly did when declining to see the Jerry Garcia Band in 1993).
And musically, having it all over and done with over the course of nine days and five shows meant that the band left nothing on the shelf. They gave everything they had in Chicago without worrying about saving anything for the next city.
The highlights of the shows were too numerous to list, but I do feel obliged to point out that "Standing on the Moon" and "Stella Blue" were absolutely devastating the second night. For the former, the number of wars that our nation has fought since Jerry last sang that song gave it a whole new depth, and Trey's delivery was perfect. For the latter, well, it's "Stella Blue". One of the most emotional songs Hunter ever wrote, given a heartfelt performance by Weir and another stunning musical performance by Trey.
Weir's vocals were surprisingly strong all weekend. Phil didn't insist on singing too many songs and did a decent job on most of them. Trey delivered the goods on guitar and vocals, again and again, and Bruce did a great job as well, once they gave him a little space.
In terms of setlists, while there are certainly nits to be picked (Built to Last? Really?), the selection was excellent overall, with many songs that seemed to reference the end of their career, even though they had been written 40-50 years earlier. Other than the obvious ones like Music Never Stopped and Box of Rain, I found a lot of lyrical resonance in Crazy Fingers, Mason's Children, Bird Song, Cassidy and many more.
For a band that seemed to make a habit out of shooting themselves in the foot, the Grateful Dead really got it together and delivered an amazingly satisfying coda to a legendary career. These shows were better than anyone could have expected (a refrain I heard over and over again over the course of the weekend), and even more spectacular for the fact that nine months ago, nobody could have even imagined them happening at all.
While it might be nice, in an ideal world, to imagine this band going on tour in the fall, it's hard to imagine them capturing the same lightning in a bottle night after night like they did in Chicago. In the real world, I can't imagine a better way to cap off the Grateful Dead's career, and I'm glad that I got the chance to go. I met old college friends that I hadn't seen in decades, old internet friends that I'd never met in real life, and new friends that I'd never met before. And for one more glorious summer weekend, everything was Just Exactly Perfect.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
My Review of RadioShack® Travel Alarm Clock
Originally submitted at RadioShack
Stay on time when you travel with this handy travel alarm from RadioShack.
Horrible interface - hard to use
By Scratchie from Boston on 11/10/2011
Pros: Small, Clear Display
Cons: Hard to Set Time, Confusing alarm controls
Best Uses: Prop up a table leg
Describe Yourself: Midrange Shopper
Primary use: Personal
Why is it so hard to find a well-made, easy-to-use travel alarm clock? I thought this looked like just the ticket, but as soon as I took it out of the box, I realized that it was poorly-designed and made. I should return it but I need a travel clock so I'll keep it until I find something better.
First problem: Setting the time and alarm is very difficult. How hard is it to get this right? I've used other RS clocks that have very easy-to-use controls but this isn't one of them.
You have to hold down one button (for time/alarm/date) while simultaneously pressing a different button multiple times to set the time/alarm/date.
You cannot hold down the second button and have it advance. You have to click it multiple times.
You have to mainain a firm pressure on the first button, which is right next to the second button, while you are pressing the second button multiple times. It's very easy for your finger to slip off the first button while you're doing so.
Once you've gotten the alarm and time set, be prepared not to get up the next morning.
This clock features a control I have never seen before in my life. Instead of an "Alarm: On/Off" switch, they have an "Alarm: On/Off/Snooze" switch.
What this means, is that if you turn the alarm "On", like any sane person, and, in the morning, you hit the giant "Snooze" button once, like any sane person, the alarm will not go off a second time.
In order to actually use the giant "Snooze" button, you have to set the Alarm to "Snooze" mode.
Why anyone would design an alarm clock with a giant "Snooze" button, and then program it so that when you turn the alarm "On", the "Snooze" button does not perform a "Snooze" function, is quite beyond me.
100% fail for Radio Shack. I'm glad I didn't buy one of their nightstand clocks to go with this one.
First problem: Setting the time and alarm is very difficult. How hard is it to get this right? I've used other RS clocks that have very easy-to-use controls but this isn't one of them.
You have to hold down one button (for time/alarm/date) while simultaneously pressing a different button multiple times to set the time/alarm/date.
You cannot hold down the second button and have it advance. You have to click it multiple times.
You have to mainain a firm pressure on the first button, which is right next to the second button, while you are pressing the second button multiple times. It's very easy for your finger to slip off the first button while you're doing so.
Once you've gotten the alarm and time set, be prepared not to get up the next morning.
This clock features a control I have never seen before in my life. Instead of an "Alarm: On/Off" switch, they have an "Alarm: On/Off/Snooze" switch.
What this means, is that if you turn the alarm "On", like any sane person, and, in the morning, you hit the giant "Snooze" button once, like any sane person, the alarm will not go off a second time.
In order to actually use the giant "Snooze" button, you have to set the Alarm to "Snooze" mode.
Why anyone would design an alarm clock with a giant "Snooze" button, and then program it so that when you turn the alarm "On", the "Snooze" button does not perform a "Snooze" function, is quite beyond me.
100% fail for Radio Shack. I'm glad I didn't buy one of their nightstand clocks to go with this one.
(legalese)
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
COMICS: Punks Not Dead!
Punk Rock and Trailer Parks
By Derf
Black & White, 144pp (Softcover)
Published by Slave Labor Graphics, $15.95
In this "graphic historical novel", cartoonist Derf (not the bassist from Fear) tells a fictionalized account of the punk rock scene in Akron, Ohio at the turn of the 80s, using a trio of high school kids from the local farm town of "Richford" as protagonists. As the book's characters helpfully explain, Akron turned into one of the country's "new wave" hotspots in the wake of Devo and Chrissie Hynde, and when the book's main character gets a job as a bouncer at the (real) punk rock nightclub called The Bank, he meets, hangs out with, and even bowls with legendary figures like The Clash, Lester Bangs, and Stiv Bators. The punk rock scenes are juxtaposed with the kids' hormone-driven escapades at high school and the titular trailer park. It's entertaining, but by the end, it seems like less than the sum of its parts.
The main character is Otto, a.k.a. "The Baron", a trailer park resident and unapologetic "band dork" who revels in his outsider status. As "The Baron", he speaks in a self-consciously grandiose manner, refers to himself in the third person and quotes Tolkien constantly (even to Wendy O. Williams on one occasion, much to her bafflement). At the beginning of the book, he is enlisted by two of his schoolmates to drive them to Akron, and is soon drawn into the punk rock scene, becoming first a bouncer at the club and later the lead singer of a band. He's a memorable persona who shows Derf's knack for characterization. In the pre-internet days it seemed like every school still managed to have at least one student who reveled in "geek culture" like Tolkien, Japanese sci-fi and Soldier of Fortune magazine, and Derf captures that spirit without lapsing into caricature. Even minor characters like the snide biology teacher and the middle-aged barmaid at The Bank ring true.
The book is episodic, and many of the individual scenes are quite funny, as when Otto offers his marching band spats to Klaus Nomi as a gift, or tells the Ramones about the epiphany he experienced watching Joey hawk a giant loogie. Back "home", we follow the boys as they stalk the girls they're horny for and watch as a pregnant bible-thumper attacks one of the school bullies with a fork. An extended sequence where Otto takes Joe Strummer and Lester Bangs to the local Coliseum to vandalize Journey's tour bus is probably the book's high point, and these comic bits, combined with sympathetic characterization, give the book most of its heart, soul, and entertainment value.
But when Derf turns his attention to "bigger issues", his reach exceeds his grasp. The book tries to be about the punk subculture as well as the individual characters, but unfortunately, the author doesn't seem to have any particular insight into the punk scene to offer beyond the stories he recounts, and as a result, the musicians themselves (as characters in the story) are completely uninteresting, and exist solely to advance the book's storyline (and, presumably, to give the book a little more "street cred"). Otto's interaction with these legendary artists reveals exactly nothing about them besides trivia (Nomi is a weirdo; Williams uses a particular brand of shaving cream to spray on her tits; The Ramones, um, eat hamburgers, etc.). It's particularly disappointing in the case of the Clash and Lester Bangs (who is traveling with them for the Village Voice); Bangs's real-life essay about traveling with the Clash in 1977 (from NME) is one of the most insightful and thought-provoking pieces available from the dawn of the punk era, but this fictionalized version doesn't delve any deeper than Joe Strummer's unlikely statement that he's been "almost Stalinist" lately and needs to lighten up.
When the main characters discuss music themselves, it gets even worse. Where their everyday conversations are witty and believable, their discussions about music never rise above the level of a Rolling Stone essay or (shudder) a VH1 documentary. Ignoring the "show, don't tell" rule, Derf simply has his characters state their "point" baldly, using awkward, banal sound bites like "This belly-up rustbelt town... a hotbed of punk rock! It makes no sense at all!" or "I can't believe The Saints and The Clash will be drowned out by Aerosmith!!" This approach reaches its nadir when The Baron states what seems to be his (and the author's?) main cultural thesis:
There's no question that American radio was a dismal wasteland to a punk rocker in 1980, but it's hard to imagine anyone listening to the then-current hits by Diana Ross, Kenny Rogers or Billy Joel and thinking "If only I could get some relief from this non-stop HIPPIE MUSIC!" The reality is that "new wave" was actually starting to cross over into the mainstream by then (by way of hits by The Cars, Blondie and Gary Numan), MTV was right around the corner, and the fetishism of the hippie era (epitomized by the summer of "twenty years ago today" nostalgia in 1987 and the canonization of "Classic Rock") was still several years off. Ironically, the only stations who were likely to spin an occasional hippie act like Cream or the Jefferson Airplane at that time were the same big-city "Progressive FM" stations who were also playing new wave artists like The Pretenders and Devo.
This may sound like nit-picking, and it probably is, but this book isn't simply set in 1980, it tries to be about the punk/new wave movement of that time, and Derf doesn't have anything profound (or even interesting) to say about it. This is apparently intended as the "big cultural statement" that sums up the era, but the characters simply wind up parrotting the conventional wisdom, circa 2008.
That sort of anachronism -- and other, smaller examples throughout the book -- can't help but take the reader out of the narrative if he's old enough to actually remember the original punk era (i.e. the book's primary potential market).
If Derf had simply concerned himself with the adolescent hijinks of his characters, this book would have been a lot more successful, even if it were still burdened with the "tell, don't show" exposition that pops up again at the end, as Otto delivers a spoken summation of the "message" of the book (spoiler: reality is better than fantasy) that literally concludes with him stating "That's what I've learned this year!" like the main character in an ABC Afterschool Special
The artwork also suffers (although not as badly) from the same sort of stiff awkwardness that afflicts the characters' musical discussions. In the same way that the dialogue tells you what the characters are thinking without sounding like a genuine conversation, the artwork shows you what is happening without invoking the spirit of real bodies in motion. Derf draws with a bold, confident line in a style that's reminiscent of Robert Crumb and Peter Bagge, but without the fluidity and expressiveness of their art. His panel layout and "storytelling" is flawless -- you can always tell exactly what is supposed to be happening -- but the end result tends to look static. When someone throws a punch, for instance, we see the fists clenched, the arm extended, the "motion lines", and the "impact burst", but the end result still looks posed, without any sense of action or energy.
Taken as slapstick, Punk Rock and Trailer Parks is entertaining and occasionally hilarious. It's an enjoyable read, but the misguided pop-cultural commentary and occasional anachronisms will probably take some readers "out of the story" periodically. Still, the characterization is strong and the jokes are usually funny, and that's more than you can say about most comic books.
By Derf
Black & White, 144pp (Softcover)
Published by Slave Labor Graphics, $15.95
In this "graphic historical novel", cartoonist Derf (not the bassist from Fear) tells a fictionalized account of the punk rock scene in Akron, Ohio at the turn of the 80s, using a trio of high school kids from the local farm town of "Richford" as protagonists. As the book's characters helpfully explain, Akron turned into one of the country's "new wave" hotspots in the wake of Devo and Chrissie Hynde, and when the book's main character gets a job as a bouncer at the (real) punk rock nightclub called The Bank, he meets, hangs out with, and even bowls with legendary figures like The Clash, Lester Bangs, and Stiv Bators. The punk rock scenes are juxtaposed with the kids' hormone-driven escapades at high school and the titular trailer park. It's entertaining, but by the end, it seems like less than the sum of its parts.
The main character is Otto, a.k.a. "The Baron", a trailer park resident and unapologetic "band dork" who revels in his outsider status. As "The Baron", he speaks in a self-consciously grandiose manner, refers to himself in the third person and quotes Tolkien constantly (even to Wendy O. Williams on one occasion, much to her bafflement). At the beginning of the book, he is enlisted by two of his schoolmates to drive them to Akron, and is soon drawn into the punk rock scene, becoming first a bouncer at the club and later the lead singer of a band. He's a memorable persona who shows Derf's knack for characterization. In the pre-internet days it seemed like every school still managed to have at least one student who reveled in "geek culture" like Tolkien, Japanese sci-fi and Soldier of Fortune magazine, and Derf captures that spirit without lapsing into caricature. Even minor characters like the snide biology teacher and the middle-aged barmaid at The Bank ring true.
The book is episodic, and many of the individual scenes are quite funny, as when Otto offers his marching band spats to Klaus Nomi as a gift, or tells the Ramones about the epiphany he experienced watching Joey hawk a giant loogie. Back "home", we follow the boys as they stalk the girls they're horny for and watch as a pregnant bible-thumper attacks one of the school bullies with a fork. An extended sequence where Otto takes Joe Strummer and Lester Bangs to the local Coliseum to vandalize Journey's tour bus is probably the book's high point, and these comic bits, combined with sympathetic characterization, give the book most of its heart, soul, and entertainment value.
But when Derf turns his attention to "bigger issues", his reach exceeds his grasp. The book tries to be about the punk subculture as well as the individual characters, but unfortunately, the author doesn't seem to have any particular insight into the punk scene to offer beyond the stories he recounts, and as a result, the musicians themselves (as characters in the story) are completely uninteresting, and exist solely to advance the book's storyline (and, presumably, to give the book a little more "street cred"). Otto's interaction with these legendary artists reveals exactly nothing about them besides trivia (Nomi is a weirdo; Williams uses a particular brand of shaving cream to spray on her tits; The Ramones, um, eat hamburgers, etc.). It's particularly disappointing in the case of the Clash and Lester Bangs (who is traveling with them for the Village Voice); Bangs's real-life essay about traveling with the Clash in 1977 (from NME) is one of the most insightful and thought-provoking pieces available from the dawn of the punk era, but this fictionalized version doesn't delve any deeper than Joe Strummer's unlikely statement that he's been "almost Stalinist" lately and needs to lighten up.
When the main characters discuss music themselves, it gets even worse. Where their everyday conversations are witty and believable, their discussions about music never rise above the level of a Rolling Stone essay or (shudder) a VH1 documentary. Ignoring the "show, don't tell" rule, Derf simply has his characters state their "point" baldly, using awkward, banal sound bites like "This belly-up rustbelt town... a hotbed of punk rock! It makes no sense at all!" or "I can't believe The Saints and The Clash will be drowned out by Aerosmith!!" This approach reaches its nadir when The Baron states what seems to be his (and the author's?) main cultural thesis:
It's the damn hippies! They are the first generation in human history that refuses to give way to the next generation! So it's their music that fills the airwaves. Because they own the fucking airwaves!
There's no question that American radio was a dismal wasteland to a punk rocker in 1980, but it's hard to imagine anyone listening to the then-current hits by Diana Ross, Kenny Rogers or Billy Joel and thinking "If only I could get some relief from this non-stop HIPPIE MUSIC!" The reality is that "new wave" was actually starting to cross over into the mainstream by then (by way of hits by The Cars, Blondie and Gary Numan), MTV was right around the corner, and the fetishism of the hippie era (epitomized by the summer of "twenty years ago today" nostalgia in 1987 and the canonization of "Classic Rock") was still several years off. Ironically, the only stations who were likely to spin an occasional hippie act like Cream or the Jefferson Airplane at that time were the same big-city "Progressive FM" stations who were also playing new wave artists like The Pretenders and Devo.
This may sound like nit-picking, and it probably is, but this book isn't simply set in 1980, it tries to be about the punk/new wave movement of that time, and Derf doesn't have anything profound (or even interesting) to say about it. This is apparently intended as the "big cultural statement" that sums up the era, but the characters simply wind up parrotting the conventional wisdom, circa 2008.
That sort of anachronism -- and other, smaller examples throughout the book -- can't help but take the reader out of the narrative if he's old enough to actually remember the original punk era (i.e. the book's primary potential market).
If Derf had simply concerned himself with the adolescent hijinks of his characters, this book would have been a lot more successful, even if it were still burdened with the "tell, don't show" exposition that pops up again at the end, as Otto delivers a spoken summation of the "message" of the book (spoiler: reality is better than fantasy) that literally concludes with him stating "That's what I've learned this year!" like the main character in an ABC Afterschool Special
The artwork also suffers (although not as badly) from the same sort of stiff awkwardness that afflicts the characters' musical discussions. In the same way that the dialogue tells you what the characters are thinking without sounding like a genuine conversation, the artwork shows you what is happening without invoking the spirit of real bodies in motion. Derf draws with a bold, confident line in a style that's reminiscent of Robert Crumb and Peter Bagge, but without the fluidity and expressiveness of their art. His panel layout and "storytelling" is flawless -- you can always tell exactly what is supposed to be happening -- but the end result tends to look static. When someone throws a punch, for instance, we see the fists clenched, the arm extended, the "motion lines", and the "impact burst", but the end result still looks posed, without any sense of action or energy.
Taken as slapstick, Punk Rock and Trailer Parks is entertaining and occasionally hilarious. It's an enjoyable read, but the misguided pop-cultural commentary and occasional anachronisms will probably take some readers "out of the story" periodically. Still, the characterization is strong and the jokes are usually funny, and that's more than you can say about most comic books.
Friday, August 15, 2008
MUSIC: Return of a Lost Reggae Classic
LIFE OF CONTRADICTION
Joe Higgs
Pressure Sounds PSCD 58
With the re-issue of this 1975 masterpiece, the Pressure Sounds label has given a new lease on life to an almost-forgotten reggae classic. The only previous CD release – on the notorious pirate label Lagoon – was noted by fans for its poor sound quality, re-ordered tracklist and the addition of several unrelated tracks (and their dubs) as filler. Prior to that, the album was only available as a long out-of-print LP on the obscure Micron (Jamaica) and Grounation (UK) labels.
The liner notes for this new release explain the circumstances behind its original release, and how it slipped through the cracks to languish in obscurity ever since. The album was originally commissioned by Chris Blackwell for Island Records, at around the time of Bob Marley & the Wailers’ first releases for that label. But Higgs –- a seminal figure in Jamaican music, who had taught singing to the youth of Trench Town (including a young Bob Marley) and had hits in the ska era -- lacked the exotic, dreadlocked, ganja-smoking image of the Wailers. Blackwell thought of him as a "Jamaican folksinger", and at a time when reggae, as a genre, hadn’t yet established itself among rock fans, Blackwell didn’t feel that he had a “hook” to market this thoughtful, subtle album. By the time Higgs got it released himself – three years later – the musical trends in reggae had changed to such a degree that Life of Contradiction sounded positively archaic, lacking any trace of the “rockers” or “flying cymbals” styles that were all the rage in 1975.
Today, ironically, the album has aged much better than most of its contemporaries. In a musical genre which has always valued trends over originality, Life of Contradiction stands out as one of the most distinctive and original reggae albums ever made. From the opening seconds of the album – a series of eerie, descending triplets that resolve into an obscure Horace Silver song (“Come on Home”) – it’s obvious that this is not your typical reggae release. By 1975, the practice of “versioning” popular rhythms –- i.e., recording multiple vocal numbers over each hot rhythm track -– had become widespread, but Higgs’ harmonically-sophisticated compositions and subtle arrangements are more reminiscent of the rocksteady era of the mid-60s, when most of the musicians in Jamaica still had a working knowledge of jazz and show tunes.
Higgs never allows himself to slide into the easy two- and three-chord vamps that most reggae artists favor. The songs are fully-composed, with distinct intros, verses and choruses, and meticulously arranged, with the embellishments of jazz guitarist Eric Gale as the final, distinctive touch. The most impressive songs are "Come on Home", "There's a Reward", "Song My Enemy Sings" and the title track, but the truth is, there isn't a weak song in the bunch. Like many reggae singers, Higgs sings of love and social justice, but like his music, his lyrics are subtle and complex in a way that's all too rare.
In short, this is an album that belongs in the collection of any reggae fan. For serious fans, this is a no-brainer, but even casual reggae fans should give this timeless wonder a spin.
Joe Higgs
Pressure Sounds PSCD 58
With the re-issue of this 1975 masterpiece, the Pressure Sounds label has given a new lease on life to an almost-forgotten reggae classic. The only previous CD release – on the notorious pirate label Lagoon – was noted by fans for its poor sound quality, re-ordered tracklist and the addition of several unrelated tracks (and their dubs) as filler. Prior to that, the album was only available as a long out-of-print LP on the obscure Micron (Jamaica) and Grounation (UK) labels.
The liner notes for this new release explain the circumstances behind its original release, and how it slipped through the cracks to languish in obscurity ever since. The album was originally commissioned by Chris Blackwell for Island Records, at around the time of Bob Marley & the Wailers’ first releases for that label. But Higgs –- a seminal figure in Jamaican music, who had taught singing to the youth of Trench Town (including a young Bob Marley) and had hits in the ska era -- lacked the exotic, dreadlocked, ganja-smoking image of the Wailers. Blackwell thought of him as a "Jamaican folksinger", and at a time when reggae, as a genre, hadn’t yet established itself among rock fans, Blackwell didn’t feel that he had a “hook” to market this thoughtful, subtle album. By the time Higgs got it released himself – three years later – the musical trends in reggae had changed to such a degree that Life of Contradiction sounded positively archaic, lacking any trace of the “rockers” or “flying cymbals” styles that were all the rage in 1975.
Today, ironically, the album has aged much better than most of its contemporaries. In a musical genre which has always valued trends over originality, Life of Contradiction stands out as one of the most distinctive and original reggae albums ever made. From the opening seconds of the album – a series of eerie, descending triplets that resolve into an obscure Horace Silver song (“Come on Home”) – it’s obvious that this is not your typical reggae release. By 1975, the practice of “versioning” popular rhythms –- i.e., recording multiple vocal numbers over each hot rhythm track -– had become widespread, but Higgs’ harmonically-sophisticated compositions and subtle arrangements are more reminiscent of the rocksteady era of the mid-60s, when most of the musicians in Jamaica still had a working knowledge of jazz and show tunes.
Higgs never allows himself to slide into the easy two- and three-chord vamps that most reggae artists favor. The songs are fully-composed, with distinct intros, verses and choruses, and meticulously arranged, with the embellishments of jazz guitarist Eric Gale as the final, distinctive touch. The most impressive songs are "Come on Home", "There's a Reward", "Song My Enemy Sings" and the title track, but the truth is, there isn't a weak song in the bunch. Like many reggae singers, Higgs sings of love and social justice, but like his music, his lyrics are subtle and complex in a way that's all too rare.
In short, this is an album that belongs in the collection of any reggae fan. For serious fans, this is a no-brainer, but even casual reggae fans should give this timeless wonder a spin.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
COMICS: Fables, Volume Ten
Fables: The Good Prince
By Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha, Aaron Alexovich & Andrew Pepoy
Color, 238pp (Softcover)
Published by Vertigo, $17.99
Simply put, this volume (the tenth in this ongoing series), demonstrates why Bill Willingham is one of the most consistently creative and entertaining writers working in comics today. No matter how many half-baked superhero crossovers DC ropes him into, he always brings his "A" game to Fables, and this volume is as good as any in the series. Following up a volume that consisted of a number of shorter stories (Sons of Empire), Willingham continues to tease the inevitable battle royal while creating a minor epic (nine issues plus a one-issue interlude) starring a formerly-obscure character. The story offers lots for long-time readers to chew on, and succeeds well enough on its own merits to serve as an entertaining standalone tale for new readers who don't mind having five years' worth of spoilers revealed.
THE COMIC
For the first several years of Fables' run, The character of Flycatcher seemed to exist mostly for comic relief. The former Frog Prince worked as a laid-back janitor and comfortably filled the role of Friendly Neighborhood Stoner. But the standalone volume 1000 Nights of Snowfall revealed his gruesome backstory, his memory of that tragedy was restored in Sons of Empire, and in this installment, Flycatcher – the titular Prince Ambrose – is bent on revenge, and launches an extremely unconventional invasion of the Homelands that brings back a number of gone-but-not-forgotten Fables and points the way to the future of the series.
It starts when he naïvely asks Boy Blue to give him the terrible Vorpal Blade to launch a one-man assault on the Homelands. This necessitates a quick but firm lecture on the realities of war (and magic) by Blue, and serves as an ironic introduction to the magical quest and battle that is to follow. Instead of turning Ambrose into a one-man killing machine, Willingham sends Ambrose on a different kind of invasion, one that is passionately non-violent but completely unstoppable. As the now-King Ambrose vanquishes army after army without shedding a drop of blood, Willingham keeps the magic consistent and believable, and the military tactics are, as always, realistically depicted. The story is complex and satisfying, right down to the wonderfully-drawn moment where Flycatcher momentarily imagines himself abandoning non-violence to become a new Emperor. Along the way, Willingham drops a few hints about how the actual war is going to play out, and uses a subtle visual trick to remind us that there is always more going on than is apparent on the surface. It’s a virtuoso piece of writing from a writer who’s already produced some of the best comic books of the decade.
The art, mostly by Mark Buckingham and Steve Leialoha, is up to the series’ typically high standards. Buckingham is not a self-consciously flashy artist, but he’s a flawless storyteller and his full- and double-page splashes have a genuine grandeur. Leialoha’s inks are, as always, exquisite. One sequence, involving a troll, took my breath away the first time I read it, even though it had already been spoiled on that issue’s front cover.
But, as always with Fables, the greatest joy comes from the writing. Willingham brings a wealth of ideas together with his characteristic blend of military knowledge, believable magic and recognizably human characterization to spin a tale that impresses not only for its sheer entertainment value but for the deceptive ease with which it all holds together. It’s a rarity in any medium to find a writer who consistently combines creatively original ideas with believable characterization and quality of execution, but comics, in particular, have almost always seemed to cut one corner or another. With this volume, Willingham sets himself apart from the crowd once again as the series hits another high point.
THE COLLECTION
The volume itself is in Vertigo’s standard reprint format. One thing I love about this series (and others from Vertigo) is that both the original issues and the reprints are published on matte-finish paper instead of the glossy paper used for the “higher-end” titles like Batman and Superman. The matte finish provides a much better reading experience by virtually eliminating glare, and it’s a mystery to me why it’s reserved for lower-selling titles instead of being an industry standard. This volume is typically excellent both in content and packaging and, like the rest of Fables, is worth a look by anyone who enjoys comics.
By Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha, Aaron Alexovich & Andrew Pepoy
Color, 238pp (Softcover)
Published by Vertigo, $17.99
Simply put, this volume (the tenth in this ongoing series), demonstrates why Bill Willingham is one of the most consistently creative and entertaining writers working in comics today. No matter how many half-baked superhero crossovers DC ropes him into, he always brings his "A" game to Fables, and this volume is as good as any in the series. Following up a volume that consisted of a number of shorter stories (Sons of Empire), Willingham continues to tease the inevitable battle royal while creating a minor epic (nine issues plus a one-issue interlude) starring a formerly-obscure character. The story offers lots for long-time readers to chew on, and succeeds well enough on its own merits to serve as an entertaining standalone tale for new readers who don't mind having five years' worth of spoilers revealed.
THE COMIC
For the first several years of Fables' run, The character of Flycatcher seemed to exist mostly for comic relief. The former Frog Prince worked as a laid-back janitor and comfortably filled the role of Friendly Neighborhood Stoner. But the standalone volume 1000 Nights of Snowfall revealed his gruesome backstory, his memory of that tragedy was restored in Sons of Empire, and in this installment, Flycatcher – the titular Prince Ambrose – is bent on revenge, and launches an extremely unconventional invasion of the Homelands that brings back a number of gone-but-not-forgotten Fables and points the way to the future of the series.
It starts when he naïvely asks Boy Blue to give him the terrible Vorpal Blade to launch a one-man assault on the Homelands. This necessitates a quick but firm lecture on the realities of war (and magic) by Blue, and serves as an ironic introduction to the magical quest and battle that is to follow. Instead of turning Ambrose into a one-man killing machine, Willingham sends Ambrose on a different kind of invasion, one that is passionately non-violent but completely unstoppable. As the now-King Ambrose vanquishes army after army without shedding a drop of blood, Willingham keeps the magic consistent and believable, and the military tactics are, as always, realistically depicted. The story is complex and satisfying, right down to the wonderfully-drawn moment where Flycatcher momentarily imagines himself abandoning non-violence to become a new Emperor. Along the way, Willingham drops a few hints about how the actual war is going to play out, and uses a subtle visual trick to remind us that there is always more going on than is apparent on the surface. It’s a virtuoso piece of writing from a writer who’s already produced some of the best comic books of the decade.
The art, mostly by Mark Buckingham and Steve Leialoha, is up to the series’ typically high standards. Buckingham is not a self-consciously flashy artist, but he’s a flawless storyteller and his full- and double-page splashes have a genuine grandeur. Leialoha’s inks are, as always, exquisite. One sequence, involving a troll, took my breath away the first time I read it, even though it had already been spoiled on that issue’s front cover.
But, as always with Fables, the greatest joy comes from the writing. Willingham brings a wealth of ideas together with his characteristic blend of military knowledge, believable magic and recognizably human characterization to spin a tale that impresses not only for its sheer entertainment value but for the deceptive ease with which it all holds together. It’s a rarity in any medium to find a writer who consistently combines creatively original ideas with believable characterization and quality of execution, but comics, in particular, have almost always seemed to cut one corner or another. With this volume, Willingham sets himself apart from the crowd once again as the series hits another high point.
THE COLLECTION
The volume itself is in Vertigo’s standard reprint format. One thing I love about this series (and others from Vertigo) is that both the original issues and the reprints are published on matte-finish paper instead of the glossy paper used for the “higher-end” titles like Batman and Superman. The matte finish provides a much better reading experience by virtually eliminating glare, and it’s a mystery to me why it’s reserved for lower-selling titles instead of being an industry standard. This volume is typically excellent both in content and packaging and, like the rest of Fables, is worth a look by anyone who enjoys comics.
COMICS: Original Speed Racer Manga
Speed Racer: Mach Go Go Go
The Complete Original Manga
By Tatsuo Yoshida
Black & white (with a few color pages)
Two volumes, 620 pp (Hardcover)
Published by DMP Platinum, $39.95
Digital Manga has released a handsome hardbound edition of Speed Racer’s original comic book adventures, just in time to catch any remaining interest generated by the recent live-action movie. Based on reviews, the movie will probably be relegated to the bargain bin by the end of the year, but fans of classic Japanese comic strips will be happy that, at the very least, it resulted in this collection’s release.
THE COMIC
The basics of Speed Racer will be familiar to anyone who watched the cartoon series as a kid. Speed Racer, the son of world-renowned mechanic Pops Racer, confronts gangsters, foreign agents and disgruntled rivals while driving his Mach 5 car in a series of increasingly-improbable road races (in one race, his brakes are intentionally disabled to make the contest even, because his opponent’s car has been similarly damaged!).
Although we see a few of the gizmos that characterized the Mach 5 in the cartoon (the bird robot, the sealed-off cockpit, the under-chassis jacks), the stories are more concerned with action than with showing off all the hardware available. In typical Japanese style, many of the stories are about resolving your differences through non-violent means, rather than just punching everyone in sight, but, that said, there’s still plenty of action, both hand-to-hand (Speed is an accomplished martial artist) and on the racetrack.
The stories are obviously written for kids, but as an adult, I still found them fast-moving and entertaining. In one particularly bizarre sequence that would never pass muster for an American “kids’ comic” today, the annoying young sidekick Spritle is actually strapped to an altar and threatened with a razor-sharp swinging blade, a la The Pit and the Pendulum!
The real prize, though, for adults, is the artwork. Yoshida draws in a clean, fine-line style that’s detailed and dynamic. These volumes are a treat for anyone who appreciates the graphic design elements in comic strips, and each panel is bursting with 60s pop-art style, from the legendary design of the Mach 5 itself down to Speed’s argyle socks (seen in close-up every time he steps on the gas).
In terms of the layout of individual panels, and the “pacing” from panel-to-panel, the artwork has a cinematic visual style that’s pretty far beyond most mainstream American comics of the time, and is reminiscent (to me) of the cutting-edge work that Jim Steranko was producing in America around the same time (1967).
Finally, to my untrained eye, it appears that the last story in the collection (“Race to Fire Island”) was drawn by a different artist, although no other artist is credited besides Yoshida (presumably it was drawn by one of his assistants).
THE COLLECTION
Digital Manga has put together a truly impressive package here. The books are well-made hardcovers with sewn bindings (a practice I wish DC and Marvel would adopt), printed from right-to-left (and “back” to “front”) in the traditional Japanese style. The two volumes (one featuring Speed on the cover, the other featuring Racer X) come packaged in a durable slipcover decorated with a gorgeous wrap-around illustration of the Mach 5. Underneath the dust jackets, the actual book covers have been printed in a beautiful minimalist style (again, with Speed on Volume 1 and Racer X on Volume 2) that perfectly complements the slipcover.
The strips are printed on high-quality matte-finish paper and the artwork is (as much as possible) crisply reproduced. The original artwork was, presumably, long-gone by the time they assembled this collection, and several of the early stories have a rougher look, as if mastered from a higher-generation copy, but the visual brilliance of the art is always apparent, and on the cleaner-looking stories (mostly in the second volume), the image quality is fantastic.
My only reservation about this release concerns a very peculiar decision that was made to print translations of each sound effect next to the original Japanese rendition wherever they appear. At best, this clutters up the panels by introducing two visual elements where the original strip had only one; at worst, it destroys the careful composition of some of the more dynamic panels, and in some cases, it even obscures a noticeable portion of the original art.
That seems like a rather large imposition to make on the author's original work, and it doesn't help that the English sound effects are added in a generic "krazy komics" typeface that doesn't fit in at all with the stylized, dynamic style used for the Japanese characters (which are often drawn in perspective to give them some "depth" within the image). It seems to me that most readers would consider it more valuable to see the original, unaltered artwork than to know whether each car's engine is going “VROOOM” or “VARRROOOM” at any particular moment.
Still, overall, I have to give this collection an enthusiastically positive rating. Digital Manga has done a great job of presenting the original strips that most American have probably never seen, but which inspired the whole Speed Racer pop culture phenomenon for the next 40 years. For collectors who like to “get back to the roots”, these volumes definitely deserve a place on your shelves, alongside the increasing number of other high-quality reprint series (e.g. Complete Peanuts, Complete Popeye, etc.) that have made the early 21st Century a real “Golden Age” for classic comic reprints.
The Complete Original Manga
By Tatsuo Yoshida
Black & white (with a few color pages)
Two volumes, 620 pp (Hardcover)
Published by DMP Platinum, $39.95
Digital Manga has released a handsome hardbound edition of Speed Racer’s original comic book adventures, just in time to catch any remaining interest generated by the recent live-action movie. Based on reviews, the movie will probably be relegated to the bargain bin by the end of the year, but fans of classic Japanese comic strips will be happy that, at the very least, it resulted in this collection’s release.
THE COMIC
The basics of Speed Racer will be familiar to anyone who watched the cartoon series as a kid. Speed Racer, the son of world-renowned mechanic Pops Racer, confronts gangsters, foreign agents and disgruntled rivals while driving his Mach 5 car in a series of increasingly-improbable road races (in one race, his brakes are intentionally disabled to make the contest even, because his opponent’s car has been similarly damaged!).
Although we see a few of the gizmos that characterized the Mach 5 in the cartoon (the bird robot, the sealed-off cockpit, the under-chassis jacks), the stories are more concerned with action than with showing off all the hardware available. In typical Japanese style, many of the stories are about resolving your differences through non-violent means, rather than just punching everyone in sight, but, that said, there’s still plenty of action, both hand-to-hand (Speed is an accomplished martial artist) and on the racetrack.
The stories are obviously written for kids, but as an adult, I still found them fast-moving and entertaining. In one particularly bizarre sequence that would never pass muster for an American “kids’ comic” today, the annoying young sidekick Spritle is actually strapped to an altar and threatened with a razor-sharp swinging blade, a la The Pit and the Pendulum!
The real prize, though, for adults, is the artwork. Yoshida draws in a clean, fine-line style that’s detailed and dynamic. These volumes are a treat for anyone who appreciates the graphic design elements in comic strips, and each panel is bursting with 60s pop-art style, from the legendary design of the Mach 5 itself down to Speed’s argyle socks (seen in close-up every time he steps on the gas).
In terms of the layout of individual panels, and the “pacing” from panel-to-panel, the artwork has a cinematic visual style that’s pretty far beyond most mainstream American comics of the time, and is reminiscent (to me) of the cutting-edge work that Jim Steranko was producing in America around the same time (1967).
Finally, to my untrained eye, it appears that the last story in the collection (“Race to Fire Island”) was drawn by a different artist, although no other artist is credited besides Yoshida (presumably it was drawn by one of his assistants).
THE COLLECTION
Digital Manga has put together a truly impressive package here. The books are well-made hardcovers with sewn bindings (a practice I wish DC and Marvel would adopt), printed from right-to-left (and “back” to “front”) in the traditional Japanese style. The two volumes (one featuring Speed on the cover, the other featuring Racer X) come packaged in a durable slipcover decorated with a gorgeous wrap-around illustration of the Mach 5. Underneath the dust jackets, the actual book covers have been printed in a beautiful minimalist style (again, with Speed on Volume 1 and Racer X on Volume 2) that perfectly complements the slipcover.
The strips are printed on high-quality matte-finish paper and the artwork is (as much as possible) crisply reproduced. The original artwork was, presumably, long-gone by the time they assembled this collection, and several of the early stories have a rougher look, as if mastered from a higher-generation copy, but the visual brilliance of the art is always apparent, and on the cleaner-looking stories (mostly in the second volume), the image quality is fantastic.
My only reservation about this release concerns a very peculiar decision that was made to print translations of each sound effect next to the original Japanese rendition wherever they appear. At best, this clutters up the panels by introducing two visual elements where the original strip had only one; at worst, it destroys the careful composition of some of the more dynamic panels, and in some cases, it even obscures a noticeable portion of the original art.
That seems like a rather large imposition to make on the author's original work, and it doesn't help that the English sound effects are added in a generic "krazy komics" typeface that doesn't fit in at all with the stylized, dynamic style used for the Japanese characters (which are often drawn in perspective to give them some "depth" within the image). It seems to me that most readers would consider it more valuable to see the original, unaltered artwork than to know whether each car's engine is going “VROOOM” or “VARRROOOM” at any particular moment.
Still, overall, I have to give this collection an enthusiastically positive rating. Digital Manga has done a great job of presenting the original strips that most American have probably never seen, but which inspired the whole Speed Racer pop culture phenomenon for the next 40 years. For collectors who like to “get back to the roots”, these volumes definitely deserve a place on your shelves, alongside the increasing number of other high-quality reprint series (e.g. Complete Peanuts, Complete Popeye, etc.) that have made the early 21st Century a real “Golden Age” for classic comic reprints.
MUSIC FLASHBACK: A Rainy Weekend with The Dead at Jones Beach
About four years, I went with some friends to see "The Dead" (the surviving members of the Grateful Dead) at Jones Beach on Long Island. We didn't know it at the time, but this turned out to be the final (to date) joint tour of the surviving Grateful Dead members, who had toured together sporadically since 1998, and more regularly from 2002-2004.
In general, each tour was an improvement on the previous one. While a lot of people undoubtedly wrote them off as pure nostalgia -- after all, nostalgia has been one of the primary driving forces in the American music industry for the last 10-15 years -- the former members of the Grateful Dead were always talented and creative enough to keep the concerts fresh, even for a lot of jaded Deadheads who had no interest in copycats like the Dark Star Orchestra or the boring majority of one-riff "jam" bands.
Still, the constant shuffling of band members should have been an indication that things wouldn't last long, and as of the summer of 2008, the gap between "formerly the Grateful Dead" tours has been the longest since Jerry Garcia died in 1995. In retrospect, a lot of the appeal of each individual tour had as much to do with potential as with the actual music played; in other words, there was always a feeling of "if they're this good now, think how good they'll be after a few tours!"
Unfortunately, those few tours (with any constant lineup) never materialized, and we fans have been left with a few happy memories as the legacy of "The Dead" (and "The Other Ones", as they were known from 1998-2002) rather than any particularly significant body of musical work.
This is a revised version of a review that I wrote at the time.
The Dead
Jones Beach Amphitheater, Wantagh, NY
August 13 & 14, 2004
We got back Sunday from a weekend trip to Jones Beach to see the latest incarnation of "The Dead". All in all a great time was had by all and it was very much "worth the trip". While overcast all weekend, the rain didn't start in earnest until the second set of the second show.
First off, some words of praise for the venue. This is the second trip I've made to Jones Beach to see The Dead, and this is now one of my favorite "big" venues in the Northeast. There are a few small minuses -- the venue has no roof, so you might get wet, and there are no beer sales -- but they're far outweighed by the plusses (which include no obnoxious drunks and great sound because there's no roof).
Plus, well, it's just NEW YORK. As Phil Lesh memorably said at the end of the first concert, "We just can't get up here and play the same old stuff for you guys". Even sober, a New York crowd is a high-energy crowd, and any performer is going to get off on that. For the Dead, a loud, boisterous crowd can be pure gold, as evidenced by the large number of official live recordings they've chosen to release from the New York area.
This weekend, they were clearly the best post-Jerry Dead-related band I've seen. I was originally skeptical that they were once again messing with the lineup, losing keyboardist Rob Barraco and vocalist Joan Osbourne at the beginning of the year, and adding singer/guitarist Warren Haynes to the band; even though Warren is a great musician, I was more concerned that the frequently-shifting lineup might not gel easily.
I shouldn't have been worried. Barraco was always merely competent, as a keyboardist and a vocalist, with none of the rhythmic or harmonic sophistication that Jeff Chimenti brings to the band. And Warren Haynes is a (no pun intended) huge addition to the band, in terms of his playing and his vocals.
It probably helped that the Jones Beach shows came at the end of almost two months of touring (with a short break in the middle). This is also the third year in a row that the four original Dead members have toured... the most touring they've done since Jerry died. They're definitely comfortable with who they are now (and who they aren't) and are getting better with every tour at playing to their strengths (although that's still not foolproof -- they wouldn't be "The Dead" if it was! -- and Bob Weir's singing voice seems to be deteriorating at an alarming rate).
While the GD were notorious for almost never rehearsing, this band has taken obvious and infectious delight at digging out some of their most obscure and complex numbers. The baroque creations of the late 60s ("St. Stephen", "The Eleven", "Born Cross-Eyed", etc) and the pseudo-fusion of the mid-70s ("Slipknot", "Unbroken Chain", etc.) were often beyond the reach of the latter-day Grateful Dead, and Garcia admitted as much in a late-80s interview in The Golden Road fanzine where he said it was too much trouble for them to re-learn and rehearse complex songs like "St. Stephen".
Watching the new band, it's sadly obvious where the weak link was in that regard. In terms of tightness and technical virtuosity, this band is so much better than the old Grateful Dead that at times it's literally awe-inspiring. Not just because of the high-quality sidemen they've brought into the group, but because of how much better the GD guys play when they don't have to worry about the bandleader dropping beats or missing the changes. They're fearless when it comes to re-visiting 'difficult' songs from their back catalog, and the results often reveal musical gold that was sometimes obscured by sloppy performances in the past.
But the Grateful Dead were never about technical virtuosity or note-perfect renditions. The GD were about magic, and the other thing that's obvious about all of the post-GD groups (starting with 1998's Other Ones) is the almost inevitable lack of that magic. The Grateful Dead always gave a lot of lip-service to the idea that they were a "collective" with no real leader (yeah, so was the Soviet Union!), and some of us even bought it, for a while. After all, the difference in sound between the Grateful Dead and Jerry's solo "bar band" was immense, and there's no question that every member of the GD contributed far more than mere "accompaniment" on any given night.
But they had a leader, make no mistake, and almost every aspect of their music was based around responding (one way or another) to his ideas (early on, of course, they had two leaders, Jerry and Pigpen, but Jerry was always the primary instrumentalist). Jerry was almost always the one with the final decision where the music was going to go at any given moment, and the band basically lived or died by his level of inspiration on any given night.
Since Jerry died, they've never managed to find someone who could really fill his shoes in terms of shaping the band's sound. The first couple of Other Ones tours featured two guitarists and a sax player in the "solo" slot and suffered from the inevitable "whose turn is it now?" syndrome that resulted. In 2002 they returned with only two guitars, Bob Weir and Jimmy Herring. It was an exciting time to see the band -- certainly more exciting than I really expected any "Other Ones" show to be at that point -- and the band was playing better together than they had in a long time.
But over the next year or so, Herring never succeeded in stepping into Jerry's shoes. Nobody expected him to become a note-for-note Jerry clone, but there was always something missing. He rarely seemed to move beyond being a sideman. He's a technical wizard (of the John McLaughlin/Steve Morse school), and his solos were never less than tasteful and well-constructed, but he just never seemed like he was about to cut loose and lead the band on a bat-out-of-hell musical voyage across the cosmos. And really, what do you want to see at a Dead show? Tastefully succinct melodies, or musical voyages cross the cosmos? Thought so.
So this year, along comes Warren Haynes. In bassist Phil Lesh's band, Warren was usually the one who DID lead the band on long, melodic flights of fancy. Stylistically, he's a perfect match for The Dead, with a killer melodic sense, strong vocals and a huge, varied repertoire (he even sang a Metallica song with The Dead the first night).
Vocally, Warren is a killer, and they have wisely let/asked him to sing a lot, sometimes including songs that the others had "covered" in the past (e.g. "Terrapin"). He's expressive enough that he can take someone else's signature tune (e.g. "Into the Mystic", sung with The Dead or "Alison", sung solo the second night) and render it in his own voice. His presence frees Phil from any heavy vocal duties, but, curiously, the band chose to do mostly Weir (and Mickey Hart) vocals on Saturday, after a very Warren-heavy show the night before. As I mentioned earlier, Weir's voice sounded pretty bad, and while his new speak/sing style can work to good effect (in terms of differentiating his performances from Jerry's), it can really reveal his limitations as well.
So now The Dead have this strong vocalist, who's also a killer guitarist, and the inevitable question is, "Do they need three guitarists"? Three guitars is usually too much for ANY band, unless they're the Gipsy Kings, and Jimmy seemed the odd man out during much of Friday's first set. But Friday's second set played heavily to his strong points. He covered all the fast "fiddly bits" in "Slipknot" and "Unbroken Chain", and he continues to excel at soloing in that fusiony style the Dead were playing with in the mid-70s.
In fact, my opinion of Jimmy Herring's playing has continued to improve almost every time I've seen him. Each night at Jones Beach, he did a "space" segment, accompanied only by Mickey Hart on Beam, that was almost Frippian in its dissonant beauty. His soloing dominated the second night's show, and there was much less of the pointless "woodly-woodly" playing that he sometimes fell back on during previous Dead/Other Ones tours.
But in the end, although each guitarist played exceptionally well throughout the weekend, I still came away thinking that three guitars is too much (unless you're the League of Crafty Guitarists). There were times when Warren took the lead and times when Jimmy took the lead, but at each point, the other one was largely superfluous due to the presence of Weir (plus, the band still suffers from occasional touches of "whose turn is it now?"). In Phil's band, Jimmy and Warren always provide great rhythm support for each other, but in The Dead, there's always one guitarist too many.
If I had to pick, I'd say that Warren is more suited to The Dead. Whether he wants to be a full-time member is an entirely different question -- it would probably be pretty creepy after starting his career in the "majors" filling in for Duane Allman -- but even aside from his vocals, Warren's musical personality is much more suited to The Dead. Jimmy seems to be a soloist from the Armstrong/Parker tradition: say what you've got to say and shut up. Warren is much more interested in spinning extended melodic flights, a la Rollins or Coltrane, but more importantly, Warren is a leader. As technically proficient and stunning a player as Jimmy is, he still plays like an accompanist when he's in The Dead. He never seems ready to "take the bull by the horns" and drag the band hither and yon according to his whim.
With Warren Haynes, the post-Jerry band has, for the first time, a leader who's willing and able to step into that position (Bruce Hornsby was certainly able, and probably willing, during the original Other Ones tours, but I don't think he really got the leeway he needed to mold the band in his image). That's a position that I just don't every see Jimmy Herring stepping into, after seeing him play with The Dead for three years in a row now.
Even if Warren doesn't want to continue with the band after this year, I can only hope that they learn from the experience and find someone with a strong enough musical personality (and fearlessness) to take charge. Because all the tasteful, brilliant, technically flawless accompaniment in the world isn't going to make up for the fact that, until now, The Dead have been Four Sidemen In Search of a Leader. Unfortunately, the fact that Warren was the sideman for most of Saturday's show makes me wonder whether the four GD guys have realized this.
As for Jimmy Herring, as well as he played, and as much as my opinion of him has improved, he still seems like a (chuckle) fish (sorry) out of water when playing with the Dead. This guy should be back playing with Billy Cobham and Alphonso Johnson -- playing real fusion, not Dead covers.
Overall, though, there's no question that this was a great weekend of music. The band was jamming hard the first night, with each song following the previous one like a runaway train. The setlist itself can't capture the feeling, as each song featured top-quality jamming within it, which made each new song transition that much more of a pleasant surprise as they piled classic jamming tune upon classic jamming tune ("What do they have left for tomorrow?" was a commonly-heard question after the first show). Things were definitely chaotic and often out-of-control but this show was the closest to real, on-the-edge "we can do no wrong" playing I've heard from The Dead in a long time (fittingly, it also featured its share of "classic" Dead flubs -- "we can do no wrong" is always a fleeting illusion, after all! -- including a total train wreck at the end of "Shakedown Street" and an impressive double-reverse train wreck with a half gainer that led back into "Slipknot/Franklin's Tower" at the end of the set). As incongruous as it might seem, Warren's Metallica cover ("Nothing Else Matters") fit in perfectly well between "Shakedown" and "Cryptical Envelopment".
Saturday night was much more of a controlled, rocking show (especially the first set, which was very up-tempo) featuring big hits ("Truckin'", "Iko Iko") and obscure rockers ("Golden Road", "Mason's Children"). The second set got off to a ripping start with a massive "Terrapin" before a rocking "Dancing in the Streets" (which was, unfortunately, marred by truly horrible vocals from Weir; they should transpose this song to a different key for him). The title of "Only The Strange Remain" used to be a self-fulfilling prophecy for the Other Ones as many treated it as an excuse for a bathroom break, but the version from Saturday night was so heavy it verged on "Victim or the Crime" territory.
It was raining pretty steadily by the end of drums/space, though, and unfortunately, Weir chose to bring the energy level down with a Jerry ballad ("Standing on the Moon"). His slightly-faster arrangement was well-done, but the song really took a lot of the energy out of the set. "China Cat - Rider" followed, but while the previous night's jams had been chaotic and inspired, this one just seemed chaotic (or maybe I was just too tired by then). "Turn on Your Love Light" ended the show on an uptempo note with ripping solos from everyone, before a "One More Saturday Night"/"Ripple" encore that was, unfortunately, compromised once again by Weir's vocals. Here's hoping he gets some rest before the Ratdog tour.
There's a couple more shows left in this tour, and then who knows what they'll be up to in the fall and winter. If you don't like the New Dead, you know it, and this version of the band probably won't change your mind. If you've been on the fence, though, you should really check them out this time around. And who knows what next year will have in store?
In general, each tour was an improvement on the previous one. While a lot of people undoubtedly wrote them off as pure nostalgia -- after all, nostalgia has been one of the primary driving forces in the American music industry for the last 10-15 years -- the former members of the Grateful Dead were always talented and creative enough to keep the concerts fresh, even for a lot of jaded Deadheads who had no interest in copycats like the Dark Star Orchestra or the boring majority of one-riff "jam" bands.
Still, the constant shuffling of band members should have been an indication that things wouldn't last long, and as of the summer of 2008, the gap between "formerly the Grateful Dead" tours has been the longest since Jerry Garcia died in 1995. In retrospect, a lot of the appeal of each individual tour had as much to do with potential as with the actual music played; in other words, there was always a feeling of "if they're this good now, think how good they'll be after a few tours!"
Unfortunately, those few tours (with any constant lineup) never materialized, and we fans have been left with a few happy memories as the legacy of "The Dead" (and "The Other Ones", as they were known from 1998-2002) rather than any particularly significant body of musical work.
This is a revised version of a review that I wrote at the time.
The Dead
Jones Beach Amphitheater, Wantagh, NY
August 13 & 14, 2004
We got back Sunday from a weekend trip to Jones Beach to see the latest incarnation of "The Dead". All in all a great time was had by all and it was very much "worth the trip". While overcast all weekend, the rain didn't start in earnest until the second set of the second show.
First off, some words of praise for the venue. This is the second trip I've made to Jones Beach to see The Dead, and this is now one of my favorite "big" venues in the Northeast. There are a few small minuses -- the venue has no roof, so you might get wet, and there are no beer sales -- but they're far outweighed by the plusses (which include no obnoxious drunks and great sound because there's no roof).
Plus, well, it's just NEW YORK. As Phil Lesh memorably said at the end of the first concert, "We just can't get up here and play the same old stuff for you guys". Even sober, a New York crowd is a high-energy crowd, and any performer is going to get off on that. For the Dead, a loud, boisterous crowd can be pure gold, as evidenced by the large number of official live recordings they've chosen to release from the New York area.
This weekend, they were clearly the best post-Jerry Dead-related band I've seen. I was originally skeptical that they were once again messing with the lineup, losing keyboardist Rob Barraco and vocalist Joan Osbourne at the beginning of the year, and adding singer/guitarist Warren Haynes to the band; even though Warren is a great musician, I was more concerned that the frequently-shifting lineup might not gel easily.
I shouldn't have been worried. Barraco was always merely competent, as a keyboardist and a vocalist, with none of the rhythmic or harmonic sophistication that Jeff Chimenti brings to the band. And Warren Haynes is a (no pun intended) huge addition to the band, in terms of his playing and his vocals.
It probably helped that the Jones Beach shows came at the end of almost two months of touring (with a short break in the middle). This is also the third year in a row that the four original Dead members have toured... the most touring they've done since Jerry died. They're definitely comfortable with who they are now (and who they aren't) and are getting better with every tour at playing to their strengths (although that's still not foolproof -- they wouldn't be "The Dead" if it was! -- and Bob Weir's singing voice seems to be deteriorating at an alarming rate).
While the GD were notorious for almost never rehearsing, this band has taken obvious and infectious delight at digging out some of their most obscure and complex numbers. The baroque creations of the late 60s ("St. Stephen", "The Eleven", "Born Cross-Eyed", etc) and the pseudo-fusion of the mid-70s ("Slipknot", "Unbroken Chain", etc.) were often beyond the reach of the latter-day Grateful Dead, and Garcia admitted as much in a late-80s interview in The Golden Road fanzine where he said it was too much trouble for them to re-learn and rehearse complex songs like "St. Stephen".
Watching the new band, it's sadly obvious where the weak link was in that regard. In terms of tightness and technical virtuosity, this band is so much better than the old Grateful Dead that at times it's literally awe-inspiring. Not just because of the high-quality sidemen they've brought into the group, but because of how much better the GD guys play when they don't have to worry about the bandleader dropping beats or missing the changes. They're fearless when it comes to re-visiting 'difficult' songs from their back catalog, and the results often reveal musical gold that was sometimes obscured by sloppy performances in the past.
But the Grateful Dead were never about technical virtuosity or note-perfect renditions. The GD were about magic, and the other thing that's obvious about all of the post-GD groups (starting with 1998's Other Ones) is the almost inevitable lack of that magic. The Grateful Dead always gave a lot of lip-service to the idea that they were a "collective" with no real leader (yeah, so was the Soviet Union!), and some of us even bought it, for a while. After all, the difference in sound between the Grateful Dead and Jerry's solo "bar band" was immense, and there's no question that every member of the GD contributed far more than mere "accompaniment" on any given night.
But they had a leader, make no mistake, and almost every aspect of their music was based around responding (one way or another) to his ideas (early on, of course, they had two leaders, Jerry and Pigpen, but Jerry was always the primary instrumentalist). Jerry was almost always the one with the final decision where the music was going to go at any given moment, and the band basically lived or died by his level of inspiration on any given night.
Since Jerry died, they've never managed to find someone who could really fill his shoes in terms of shaping the band's sound. The first couple of Other Ones tours featured two guitarists and a sax player in the "solo" slot and suffered from the inevitable "whose turn is it now?" syndrome that resulted. In 2002 they returned with only two guitars, Bob Weir and Jimmy Herring. It was an exciting time to see the band -- certainly more exciting than I really expected any "Other Ones" show to be at that point -- and the band was playing better together than they had in a long time.
But over the next year or so, Herring never succeeded in stepping into Jerry's shoes. Nobody expected him to become a note-for-note Jerry clone, but there was always something missing. He rarely seemed to move beyond being a sideman. He's a technical wizard (of the John McLaughlin/Steve Morse school), and his solos were never less than tasteful and well-constructed, but he just never seemed like he was about to cut loose and lead the band on a bat-out-of-hell musical voyage across the cosmos. And really, what do you want to see at a Dead show? Tastefully succinct melodies, or musical voyages cross the cosmos? Thought so.
So this year, along comes Warren Haynes. In bassist Phil Lesh's band, Warren was usually the one who DID lead the band on long, melodic flights of fancy. Stylistically, he's a perfect match for The Dead, with a killer melodic sense, strong vocals and a huge, varied repertoire (he even sang a Metallica song with The Dead the first night).
Vocally, Warren is a killer, and they have wisely let/asked him to sing a lot, sometimes including songs that the others had "covered" in the past (e.g. "Terrapin"). He's expressive enough that he can take someone else's signature tune (e.g. "Into the Mystic", sung with The Dead or "Alison", sung solo the second night) and render it in his own voice. His presence frees Phil from any heavy vocal duties, but, curiously, the band chose to do mostly Weir (and Mickey Hart) vocals on Saturday, after a very Warren-heavy show the night before. As I mentioned earlier, Weir's voice sounded pretty bad, and while his new speak/sing style can work to good effect (in terms of differentiating his performances from Jerry's), it can really reveal his limitations as well.
So now The Dead have this strong vocalist, who's also a killer guitarist, and the inevitable question is, "Do they need three guitarists"? Three guitars is usually too much for ANY band, unless they're the Gipsy Kings, and Jimmy seemed the odd man out during much of Friday's first set. But Friday's second set played heavily to his strong points. He covered all the fast "fiddly bits" in "Slipknot" and "Unbroken Chain", and he continues to excel at soloing in that fusiony style the Dead were playing with in the mid-70s.
In fact, my opinion of Jimmy Herring's playing has continued to improve almost every time I've seen him. Each night at Jones Beach, he did a "space" segment, accompanied only by Mickey Hart on Beam, that was almost Frippian in its dissonant beauty. His soloing dominated the second night's show, and there was much less of the pointless "woodly-woodly" playing that he sometimes fell back on during previous Dead/Other Ones tours.
But in the end, although each guitarist played exceptionally well throughout the weekend, I still came away thinking that three guitars is too much (unless you're the League of Crafty Guitarists). There were times when Warren took the lead and times when Jimmy took the lead, but at each point, the other one was largely superfluous due to the presence of Weir (plus, the band still suffers from occasional touches of "whose turn is it now?"). In Phil's band, Jimmy and Warren always provide great rhythm support for each other, but in The Dead, there's always one guitarist too many.
If I had to pick, I'd say that Warren is more suited to The Dead. Whether he wants to be a full-time member is an entirely different question -- it would probably be pretty creepy after starting his career in the "majors" filling in for Duane Allman -- but even aside from his vocals, Warren's musical personality is much more suited to The Dead. Jimmy seems to be a soloist from the Armstrong/Parker tradition: say what you've got to say and shut up. Warren is much more interested in spinning extended melodic flights, a la Rollins or Coltrane, but more importantly, Warren is a leader. As technically proficient and stunning a player as Jimmy is, he still plays like an accompanist when he's in The Dead. He never seems ready to "take the bull by the horns" and drag the band hither and yon according to his whim.
With Warren Haynes, the post-Jerry band has, for the first time, a leader who's willing and able to step into that position (Bruce Hornsby was certainly able, and probably willing, during the original Other Ones tours, but I don't think he really got the leeway he needed to mold the band in his image). That's a position that I just don't every see Jimmy Herring stepping into, after seeing him play with The Dead for three years in a row now.
Even if Warren doesn't want to continue with the band after this year, I can only hope that they learn from the experience and find someone with a strong enough musical personality (and fearlessness) to take charge. Because all the tasteful, brilliant, technically flawless accompaniment in the world isn't going to make up for the fact that, until now, The Dead have been Four Sidemen In Search of a Leader. Unfortunately, the fact that Warren was the sideman for most of Saturday's show makes me wonder whether the four GD guys have realized this.
As for Jimmy Herring, as well as he played, and as much as my opinion of him has improved, he still seems like a (chuckle) fish (sorry) out of water when playing with the Dead. This guy should be back playing with Billy Cobham and Alphonso Johnson -- playing real fusion, not Dead covers.
Overall, though, there's no question that this was a great weekend of music. The band was jamming hard the first night, with each song following the previous one like a runaway train. The setlist itself can't capture the feeling, as each song featured top-quality jamming within it, which made each new song transition that much more of a pleasant surprise as they piled classic jamming tune upon classic jamming tune ("What do they have left for tomorrow?" was a commonly-heard question after the first show). Things were definitely chaotic and often out-of-control but this show was the closest to real, on-the-edge "we can do no wrong" playing I've heard from The Dead in a long time (fittingly, it also featured its share of "classic" Dead flubs -- "we can do no wrong" is always a fleeting illusion, after all! -- including a total train wreck at the end of "Shakedown Street" and an impressive double-reverse train wreck with a half gainer that led back into "Slipknot/Franklin's Tower" at the end of the set). As incongruous as it might seem, Warren's Metallica cover ("Nothing Else Matters") fit in perfectly well between "Shakedown" and "Cryptical Envelopment".
Saturday night was much more of a controlled, rocking show (especially the first set, which was very up-tempo) featuring big hits ("Truckin'", "Iko Iko") and obscure rockers ("Golden Road", "Mason's Children"). The second set got off to a ripping start with a massive "Terrapin" before a rocking "Dancing in the Streets" (which was, unfortunately, marred by truly horrible vocals from Weir; they should transpose this song to a different key for him). The title of "Only The Strange Remain" used to be a self-fulfilling prophecy for the Other Ones as many treated it as an excuse for a bathroom break, but the version from Saturday night was so heavy it verged on "Victim or the Crime" territory.
It was raining pretty steadily by the end of drums/space, though, and unfortunately, Weir chose to bring the energy level down with a Jerry ballad ("Standing on the Moon"). His slightly-faster arrangement was well-done, but the song really took a lot of the energy out of the set. "China Cat - Rider" followed, but while the previous night's jams had been chaotic and inspired, this one just seemed chaotic (or maybe I was just too tired by then). "Turn on Your Love Light" ended the show on an uptempo note with ripping solos from everyone, before a "One More Saturday Night"/"Ripple" encore that was, unfortunately, compromised once again by Weir's vocals. Here's hoping he gets some rest before the Ratdog tour.
There's a couple more shows left in this tour, and then who knows what they'll be up to in the fall and winter. If you don't like the New Dead, you know it, and this version of the band probably won't change your mind. If you've been on the fence, though, you should really check them out this time around. And who knows what next year will have in store?
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