Imaginary Covers

by Scott

AC/DC recently released what is being hailed as their best album in nearly 30 years and, granted, the band sounds great but, when it comes to the success of the new material, the songs themselves, apart from the delightful “Rock and Roll Train” the band seems incapable of creating any new material that even verges on the best of their classic material. After mulling this over for a while, a thought occurred to me, while they are still a talented team of musicians that plays well together they seem to have run out of steam in terms of songwriting. So, why not do what so many other artists have done in the later stages of careers: the cover album! Many artists, from Rod Stewart to James Taylor who find their well of original material drying up, will often resort to an album composed entirely of the songs of others. This provides an interesting opportunity for the artist to display their talents as vocalist, musicians or arrangers without the burden of having to produce quality original material.

On the one hand, it may seem lazy (and the worst of these albums usually are) on the other hand, when done properly, it is an interesting opportunity to hear a great artist giving their unique take on an already great song. A while back on this blog, I listed Def Leppard’s Yeah! as one of my ‘most underrated’ albums. This, I think, is a great example of what a good covers album should sound like: a group of artists having fun playing music that they love, while still giving their own unique twists on the songs. In the case of Def Leppard, this meant covers of, often obscure, glam and 70’s rock tunes that the band members grew up on. For AC/DC, who at the end of the day are just a good ‘ol fashioned Rock N’ Roll/Boogie Woogie Blues band, I would suggest an album of early rock songs: imagine how great the band would sound tearing through “Jailhouse Rock” or classic Chuck Berry numbers like “Too Much Monkey Business”

This line of thought led me to a rather odd musical question that crosses my mind every now and again: What covers would you most like to hear (but probably never will)? That is, what is an artist/song pairing that seems absolutely perfect… or that you think would just be really interesting.

Here are some of my favorite ‘Imaginary Covers’:

Bruce Springsteen tackling Don McClean’s “American Pie”- Is there really any explanation necessary for this one? Who better than the great American Rock N’ Roll purist to cover this song that chronicles the history of the music he loves?

Queensryche doing Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Diana”- I don’t know how I ever came up with this one. Basically, the song is Jackson’s attempt a sort of sexy heavy metal song and I think Queensryche (a very underrated band in their own right) could pull it off; I also think Geoff Tate’s voice would be a great match for this one.

Johnny Cash Vs U2’s “Wake Up, Dead Man”- I cannot begin to describe how much I hope that somewhere, in that collection of three dozen or so songs that Rick Rubin has yet to release from his final sessions with ‘The Man In Black’, that there is his take on this woefully underrated U2 track from their equally underrated album ‘Pop’. This is mostly because I think hearing Cash deliver the opening line of the song (which I consider one of my favorite opening lines) “Jesus, Jesus help me, I’m alone in this world. And a fucked-up world it is too” in the deep but worn vocals of his final days would be a damn near transcendent experience.

Also, do you think any of these would actually be a good idea? Maybe some ideas for covers (like U2’s cover of “Instant Karma” that I mentioned last week) are best left exclusively to the imagination.

Jason Powell on Uncanny X-Men #184

[I make a comment below in italics -- GK]

[Guest Blogger Jason Powell continues his issue by issue look at Chris Claremont’s X-Men run. For more in this series, see the toolbar on the right.]



“The Past of Future Days”

It’s probably no coincidence that, during the John Byrne tour de force of “Days of Future Past,” the year 1984 is a key date in the dystopian chronology laid out by Kate Pryde. It is and will probably always be the emblematic year for dystopian futures thanks to George Orwell. (Claremont even acknowledges Orwell explicitly in issue 183.) So Claremont choosing to do a sequel to “Days” when the actual year 1984 came about is surely no surprise. What’s more fortuitous is that James Cameron (to whom Claremont already owes a huge debt for the influence of “Aliens” upon the Brood) made a movie in 1984 all about a future where robots take over and both humans and robots head back in time to change destiny.

This confluence of serendipitous chronologies leads to “The Past of Future Days,” a scattered, schizophrenic X-Men story that falls rather shockingly below par given the tight cohesiveness of the previous issue. This is an era for X-Men that sees Claremont very much abandoning traditionally structured storytelling. Perhaps still intimidated by the shadow of his great accomplishments on the series, Claremont is deliberately pre-empting any weight of expectation to live up to something like “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” or even the more recent masterpiece with Paul Smith eventually to be christened “From the Ashes.” By eschewing any semblance of classical structure for a much messier narrative style, he forces readers to abandon any preconceived expectations and to simply surrender to the bizarre flow. The tight, laser-beam plotting of the Byrne era had been slowly diffusing anyway in the years since Byrne departed. It’s right at around Uncanny #184 that the light scatters completely, reflected disco-ball style in several directions at once (appropriate then, that part of this issue is actually set in a disco).

Hence, last issue featured Kitty Pryde packing up and heading to Chicago to visit her dad (a segue into the six-part Kitty Pryde & Wolverine miniseries, which in turn is the reason why neither of those characters appear in Uncanny for the next eight months). It also ended with a cliffhanger involving the return to the X-universe of Selene (who’d first appeared in New Mutants #s 9-11). Meanwhile, New Mutants #18 (contemporaneous with “The Past of Future Days”) opens with Rachel from the “Days of Future Past” arc having just arrived, Terminator-style, in the present. After a long introduction in New Mutants, she disappears only to turn up here, in Uncanny #184, and (apropos of nothing) battle Selene. Meanwhile, a new character called Forge is also introduced -- in one of the most embarrassing debut panels any superhero has had to endure. Honestly, I know it’s almost 25 years old, but a horizontally striped shirt, short shorts and a cane – not to mention the effeminate posture? Surely even in ’84 this looked awful.

Forge, a Native American, is lectured by Naze when we first meet him. “The ancient patterns are being broken, the proper order of things overturned!” says Naze. “The fabric of life itself is unraveling!” This may be an oblique reference to the “Demon Bear” arc in New Mutants 18-20, which focused on Danielle Moonstar, a character that – like Forge and Naze – is a Cheyenne Indian. It’s an oblique reference to something, at any rate, and the Naze thread will not find a proper resolution for over 3 years.

Claremont also makes this issue tie in to the “Dire Wraith war,” the premise of his friend Bill Mantlo’s action-figure-based comic book Rom. As if it all wasn’t overdetermined enough...?

With all this material crammed into the issue, how do the X-Men fit in? Well, four issues from the end as it turns out: That’s when they finally show up. And while it’s great to see them, it certainly raises the question of where Claremont’s mind is at. Up to this point during his tenure, Claremont has always seemed more excited about the X-Men characters he inherited than the ones he created himself. But that focus seems to have shifted now – Uncanny #184 sees Claremont more at home with Forge, Mystique, Valerie Cooper, Rachel and Selene (all original Claremont creations or co-creations) than with the staple Cockrum/Wein characters -- Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, etc. – all of whom are shunted aside here, relegated to the role of guest stars in their own comic.

[This idea of an anxiety of influence relationship not with a precursor but with the creators younger self has a big hold on my imagination this week, as I have been thinking a lot about Miller's Batman. I mentioned this in the Spirit post this week -- it is just a coincidence to see it come up here. Something very much worth thinking about.

Also: I like the scattered stuff in this period. It is another aspect of what you can do with a title before it becomes a total commodity: you pick the thing up and you don't know what the hell you are going to get. The overdetermination you are talking about here is genuinely absurd, and kind of awesome in a way only long running comics at big corporations can be.

And as my friend Brady said (I think, and I think I may have mentioned this before) -- how totally CLASSY to have Kitty and Wolverine out of the book for eight months while they go on their own adventure. For all of his outlandish science fiction, Claremont is unwilling to break a fundamental rule of continuity -- a rule that guides far too much at the big comics companies while paradoxically being ignored all the time -- that a person SHOULD NOT BE IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE.]

Comic Geek Speak 550

I was on Comic Geek Speak for 20 minutes last night, talking about the effects of superhero movies on superhero comics. Nothing groundbreaking to the people around here, but I thought I would mention it. I come in right after the 16 minute mark. HERE IS THE LINK.

Two Comic Book Trailers

Watchmen



Stephen Frug hates it so much he cannot even speak. He hates it so much I am on the verge of taking up a collection to make him go to the movie and write a really detailed review of how much he hates it, because from his blog it sounds like he is not going to go anywhere near it. I still hold out cautious optimism, of the sort when you know the relationship you are in will end in tears, but you go ahead and just try to enjoy the time you have left. In this case it is the time between the trailers and the actual movie, though for Stephen Frug, the party ended earlier than that.

Reactions?

The Spirit



I am starting to actually get interested in this. Miller's interest in the Spirit character is odd, because it obviously means a lot to him, but it is far too distant for a mainstream crowd to recognize, and it is even too distant for me to really get hung up on it as an "interpretation" of the character -- in a completely uncritical and lazy way I have already decided this is basically a new Miller character with no connection to Eisner's character, which is perhaps how Miller wants it. I have been thinking a lot about Miller's Batman. I have written extensively about how creators after Miller have lived in the Shadow of his Bat, but how has Millers later career been in the Shadow of that same Bat? What kind of anxiety of influence thing does he have, not with an earlier creator, but with his younger self? Is there any chance that his Spirit movie will be some kind of Batman movie is disguise? Cause that would make me like it. I will go see it in theaters.

John Darnielle's Master of Reality

Spoilers.

John Darnielle is the main guy from my favorite band, The Mountain Goats. Recently he wrote a book for Continuum's 33 1/3 series, in which various creative people respond to a single album in a short volume of between 25,000 and 30,000 words (a third the size of my superhero book). These can range from lit-crit-style analysis of lyrics and music journalism to, in Darnielle's case, a novella. The series is masterminded by my editor and friend David Barker, who is a total genius.

Darnielle's book is on Black Sabbath's Master of Reality. The first half takes the form of a journal written by a 16 year old in a psychiatric institute. The second half consists of letters written ten years later from the same kid to the doctor who was in charge of him at the institute. In the first half he is trying to convince the doctors to give him his Black Sabbath tapes back, as it is the only thing that is going to make him feel better; in the second half he tries to explain to the doctor why Black Sabbath matters so much to him, from a more articulate perspective.

Darnielle, in his songs, is a storyteller, most often writing from various fictional personas, so he has no trouble establishing a voice -- here it is a very Catcher-in-the-Rye perspective. The first two "journal entries" consist only of the words "FUCK YOU ALL GO TO HELL." The third begins "I am sitting here writing this, it is 10:30 at night and lights out was half an hour ago (which is stupid by the way) and I am angry I want to kill somebody and that is not a threat so if you write that on my chart all it will do is make me want to kill MYSELF!!! EVEN MORE!!!" Darnielle used to be a nurse and still works with children, so he knows from where he speaks. Surprisingly the most moving part of the novel is its dedication: "to all the children to whom I ever provided care, in the earnest hope that your later lives have brought you the joy, and love, and freedom that was always yours by right".

I initially thought that I wanted a radically more distanced and articulate voice in the second half of the novel, to get a very different perspective on Black Sabbath. But there is something really honest about Darnielle's showing us that the kid's experiences in the psychiatric institute really did harm him just as he said it would, and that he did not grow up to be some total success with no emotional baggage. Ten years later he is still very stuck, working a dead end job. What Darnielle gives us is not a story of success, but one of survival -- because of Black Sabbath and its surprisingly positive message, this kid, who was going to kill himself will survive. That understated strength is the best part of the novel.

My only complaint with the book, and this is really not Darnielle's fault because it was probably never his intention, is that at no point did it make me want to actually listen to Black Sabbath. He does a good job explaining why it matters to this 16 year old, and this 26 year old, but I wanted it to matter to me. It was a different perspective on the album, but I stayed on the outside of that perspective the whole time. I could sympathize but never identify. Darnielle can make strange things matter -- I have a Backstreet Boys album on my iPod because of him -- and I was unfairly looking for that from him this time around.