Review: 'Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas: Beyond Halloween Town'

Unlike a lot of Generation X'ers with similar sensibilities to my own, I was never overly enthralled with Nightmare Before Christmas because I don't think there's much of a story there. Jack Skellington's biggest problem is he's sick of Halloween? Sorry, but I cannot relate.

However, I think that a lot of the members of the massive Nightmare Before Christmas cult are mostly enthralled by the movie's images, and that is something to which I can relate. It's a friggin' great-looking movie, with delightful character designs brought to life with marvelously organic stop-motion animation. While I tend to zone out half-way through the movie (which I rewatch more than I would if I didn't have a kid), it's impossible to be a total Nightmare Scrooge because of its style, visuals, and technique.

While Emily Zemler's new book Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas: Beyond Halloween Town obviously can't convey the technique, it abounds with style and visuals and should scratch the itch for anyone like me who enjoys taking in the look of the film but doesn't really need to spend the full eighty minutes with it. 

For the many who do need that, this book will be even more appealing as it relates the tale of how the phenomenon started as a series of Burton's poems before Caroline Thompson developed them into a script and Danny Elfman developed it into a musical and the finished product developed a cult which then developed into the holiday-mega-merchandizing bonanza it is today. 

Because there are only 150 pages of content in this book, and text isn't its raison dêtre, I'd hesitate to call Zemler's book the definitive story of the making of Nightmare Before Christmas, but with its captivating images of concept art, behind the scenes puppetry, fan contributions, and merch that do, in their own way, tell the real story behind this film's deathless popularity, one could reasonably argue that Beyond Halloween Town is the definitive Nightmare book after all.

Review: 'Collecting The Simpsons'

As soon as The Simpsons went from being the thing that made people watch The Tracy Ullman Show to its own weekly entity in early 1990, the merchandising began. After all, no one new how long the bugged-eyed, yellow-faced dysfunctional family would last, so might as well strike while the inanimate carbon rod was still aglow. 

Five billion years later, The Simpsons is still on television, running half-assed Disco Stu cameos into the ground for the remaining cockroaches and a landfill full of plastic Bart Simpsons. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. In the year 2023, we are merely on the series thirty-fifth season, and there are probably still a few humans watching the current crop of half-assed Disco Stu cameos. Not too much to get excited about there. But for those of us who remember when you could tune in one Thursday night and watch a spot-on Beatles parody called "Homer's Barbershop Quartet", and on the following one, take in Sideshow Bob stepping on rake after rake in "Cape Feare", and just seven days later see a bee bite Homer's bottom and make his bottom big in "Homer Goes to College", and do it all while snuggling a Bart Simpson doll, it seemed as though The Simpsons could pump out sheer comic brilliance and colorful, bug-eyed merchandise forever.

While the first part of that statement is wrong, the second one is right, although by Warren Evans's estimate in Collecting The Simpsons, "50 percent of the Simpsons merchandise that is still in circulation today was created and released within [the series'] first three years" of the series existence. That's just one of the fascinating factoids his and James and Lydia Hicks's book coughs up. Want to know why so much early Bart Simpson merch depicted the kid who only owns orange shirts in blue ones? It's in here. Want to know whatever happened to that life-sized Simpsons house that actually got built in Nevada in 1997? It's in here. Want to know Matt Groening's feelings about African-American appropriation of Bart Simpson as a cultural icon? It's in here. Want to know who really wrote "Do the Bartman"? It's in here. Want to know where you can get an actually-edible, Simpsons-accurate donuts the size of a small-child's head? It's in here.

That Collecting The Simpsons is more than just brilliantly colorful images of brilliantly colorful toys, banned T-shirts, fast-food premiums, Doritos bags, theme-park rides, kitchenware, bath products, games, books, comics, CDs, and clocks really justifies its existence, but those full-color pictures are what makes it an absolute joy. The writers' enthusiasm for and sense of humor about all this stuff doesn't hurt either. It's been 25 years since I've seen a new Simpsons episode that was really worth getting excited over, but Collecting The Simpsons definitely is. 

Review: 'Hardcore: The Cinematic World of Pulp'

Pulp had been at it for close to two decades when they finally joined the upper echelon of contemporary British pop with Different Class in 1995. For a band as erudite and self-aware, that kind of success doesn't go down easily, and their next album was an expression of that hard comedown.

Bleary and weary, This Is Hardcore is a weird centerpiece for a book like Paul Burgess and Louise Colbourne's colorful coffee table-ish Hardcore: The Cinematic World of Pulp. However, the album's artistic bona-fides make the choice less odd. The record spawned four lush music videos, inspired collages and paintings, and had one of the decade's most recognizable (and infamous) jackets, though Burgess and Colbourne mostly steer clear of exploiting that arguably exploitative image of model Ksenia Sobchak prone and in the buff. There is a completely hilarious image of the censored Malaysian version of that cover with an ugly gold sweater photoshopped onto Sobchak.

There are also lots of behind-the-scenes shots and stills from the "Party Hard", "Help the Aged", "A Little Soul", and "This Is Hardcore" music videos; a storyboard for "Party Hard"; examples of Pulpy artwork (most notably Sergei Sviatchenko's disturbing collages); and shots of the band on stage at the release party. 

The authors and several guests supply essays on the times, and director Garth Jennings conducts a very, very brief and unilluminating interview with band leader Jarvis Cocker that is almost comically split into two installments. Without question the most substantial piece of text in Hardcore is a 14-page interview with keyboardist Candida Doyle, who is unabashedly unenthusiastic about both the album and the era this book celebrates. However, her weariness over that period captures the temper of This Is Hardcore more honestly than most of the rest of this rather candy-coated book does. An essay by Pulp-documentarian Florian Habicht is also a must-read for the most horrifying interview-mishap tale ever told... that he was brave enough to recollect it in this book for posterior posterity is way more hardcore than anything on This Is Hardcore.

Review: Vinyl Reissue of Tommy Flanagan's 'The Cats'

With a quartet or his own simple, appealing tunes and one Gershwin classic propped on his piano, Tommy Flanagan led the session that produced his second album on April 18, 1957. However, he ceded credit to the one-off ensemble he put together for the occasion, which is probably what ones does when playing with such luminaries as Kenny Burrell and John Coltrane. Yet The Cats often is very much Flanagan's show. His searching, autumnal keys receive soft support from drummer Louis Hayes and bassist Doug Watkins on Gershwin's "How Long Has This Been Going On" while the rest sit it out. When the whole band joins in, which they do for the rest of these sides, they most definitely play as a very organized ensemble, Coltrane's melodic, tonally complex harmonies with trumpeter Idrees Sulieman providing much of the tangy flavor. 

The rhythmic variations among the numbers is what keeps The Cats eclectic and interesting, as the combo barrels through the Mingus-like "Minor Mishap", draws back everything for "How Long Has This Been Going On", gets rhythmically playful with "Eclypso", eases into "Solacium", and alternately skates and lurches through "Tommy's Tune", on which Burrell gets off some of his slickest licks. 

Originally released in late 1959, long after its recording date, The Cats has gotten several re-releases throughout the years, but I don't doubt that you'd be hard-pressed to hunt down a tastier one than the AAA-mastered edition that is now joining Craft Recordings' "Original Jazz Classics" series. The series has a pretty powerful track recorded of excellence, and this beautifully detailed, incredibly present piece of audio on perfectly flat, perfectly silent 180-gram vinyl maintains that record impeccably.

Review: Nirvana's 'In Utero' 30th Anniversary Box Set

After what seemed like an interminable wait, Nirvana finally released their follow up to Nevermind--the album that almost single-handedly plopped the pre-fab term "Alternative Rock" into the mainstream--in autumn of 1993. The band's purported goal was to shake off all the meat-heady fans they'd acquired since putting out a slick disc of metal-ish sounding drums and guitars and big sing-along choruses. Did it work? Well, although In Utero only sold half of Nevermind's figures, that's still pretty damn good, especially for an album so challenging and, despite some mixed notices, rewarding. Nevermind is a great record, but it lacks the personal atmosphere and unsanitized urgency of the record released just six months before the band's main voice took his own life. And that isn't just romanticizing a tragedy. Even before Kurt Cobain died, In Utero stood out for its perfect mix of classic melodiousness ("All Apologies", "Heart Shaped Box", "Scentless Aprrentice", "Dumb") and terrifying abrasiveness ("Scentless Apprentice", "Milk It", "Tourettes"), Steve Albini's massive and filthily organic production, and the tendrils of sadness twining through Cobain's grisly surrealism. 

That's a heavy legacy for an album being given the jolly 30th anniversary treatment, and it may account for why there is an almost total lack of text in this nine-pound-plus vinyl box set. The only reading on offer in the set's 48-page hardback book is a photo of Albini's letter to the band stating his working methods and expectations of the group. The rest is photos, graphics, and a few vellum pages. 

That leaves most of the talking to the music, of which there is eight-LPs worth. Leading the set is a new remaster of the core album, and compared to the Back to Black edition that has been the most common and affordable vinyl option for the past 15 years (and, frankly, the only copy I have for comparison purposes), I found this new remaster by Bob Weston (Albini's assistant engineer during the original sessions) to be much more dynamic, with better defined guitars, punchier bass and drums, and a deeper sound stage. It's also louder without being fatiguing on the ears.

Sitting in the other pocket of the main LP's gatefold is a disc with B-sides and compilation tracks on one side and a selection of live cuts from different sources on the other. The B-sides are an excellent assortment with such gems as Dave Grohl's menacing ballad "Marigold", the unbelievably catchy "Sappy" from the No Alternative comp, and the grinding "I Hate Myself and Want to Die" from the soundtrack of that Beavis and Butthead movie. The live cuts are mostly culled from a Rome show that was one of Nirvana's final concerts, but there's also a performance of "Milk It" recorded in Springfield, MA, and "Tourettes" from NY, both from '93. Despite some AI tinkering to exaggerate the separation between Cobain's and Pat Smear's guitars, the dinkiness of Grohl's usually elephantine drums, and the unsettling effect of having the audience's cheers almost completely muted, the Rome stuff sounds pretty good, as does that version of "Milk It" with extra-mumbly vocals from Kurt. "Tourettes", however, sounds like a low-grade MP3, quite possibly because of that AI business.

Which brings us to the next six-LPs in the set. There's a full set recorded at LA's Great Western Forum on December 30, 1993 and a nearly identical one from Seattle's Center Arena on January 7, 1993, both presented as triple-LP sets. While these recordings don't sound as gnarly as "Tourettes", they aren't ideal fidelity either. Of the two sets, the one from Seattle is less compressed with fewer artifacts. All in all, the sooner this current fascination with AI's ability to put people out of work and make old recordings sound weird comes to an end, the better. Nevertheless, the performances are terrific in spite of Nirvana's reputation for being an erratic live band during their troubled final year.

For the most part the vinyl is quiet, flat, and well-centered. Only the main album's bonus disc has a bit of a warp in the set I received, though it does not affect the sound. 

The packaging is certainly lavish, with that hardcover book, a clear acrylic panel featuring a print of the organ-exposing angel from the album cover, and a packet of goodies Krist Novoselic likened to the extras included with The Who's Live at Leeds. There are repros of concert tickets, posters, ads, fliers, and backstage passes. I was most impressed with the two live albums' triple-pocket jackets, the likes of which I'd never seen. Finally, a non-frustrating, non-chintzy way to store triple albums. Now there's something to celebrate.

Review: 'A Disturbance in the Force: How and Why the Star Wars Holiday Special Happened'

For years, it seemed like some sort of weird dream. Yet I could remember every detail of staying up late at the age of four at my grandmother's house to watch the first piece of Star Wars visual entertainment since Star Wars. I could remember sitting right in front of the screen in a wood paneled den and the names of every member of Chewbacca's family and their UFO-shaped house in the trees and dozing off while struggling to remain awake and the creepy sensation of listening to Princess Leia sing that gross song. If my grandma and I hadn't spent the next few years laughing over the names "Lumpy" and "Itchy," I might have concluded that none of it had really happened, because there was no Internet to remind us that The Star Wars Holiday Special really did air on November 17, 1978, on CBS. George Lucas certainly wasn't going to remind us. 

Now remembered as the most heinous mistake ever made in the name of Star Wars, the infamous Holiday Special eventually slipped past Lucas's embargo to surface on bootleg VHS tapes, and it can now be enjoyed by anyone with YouTube access. Who would have thought that it would one day be easier to watch the Holiday Special than the theatrical version of Star Wars that caused millions to fall in love with the franchise? What a world we live in.

And, really, why would anyone but the most humorless basement dweller want to live in a world without The Star Wars Holiday Special? Where else can you see Boba Fett's debut as a duplicitous cartoon character? Where else can you see Mark Hamill with a year's supply of free Mary Kay samples caked on his face? Where else can you see Bea Arthur do an arhythmic two-step with Walrus Man? Where else can you see Chewbacca's dad get off to proto-Internet porn? Where else can you see the worst of seventies variety TV collide with the best of seventies blockbuster entertainment? Honestly, if you can't find any pleasure in at least knowing this travesty exists, you might not be worth knowing. And I'd rather watch The Star Wars Holiday Special than The Phantom Menace any day.

Would Steve Kozak? Considering that the network-television veteran both made a documentary and wrote a book about this topic, I'd like to think he would. He certainly affords it unprecedented attention in A Disturbance in the Force: How and Why the Star Wars Holiday Special Happened. 

Kozak also wastes no time in defining the thing that he believes motivated Lucas to plunge his precious space baby in the tacky waters of seventies variety TV: spite. That shouldn't be too much of a revelation since Lucas has always seemed to consume heaping bowlfuls of spite as if they were the breakfast of champions. It's certainly why we're not allowed to legally watch a high-quality copy of the theatrical version of Star Wars anymore. 

The ins and outs of this spite tale are fascinating. The object of Lucas's ire was a Warner Bros executive who not only demanded that the director's first film, THX-1138, be edited drastically but also attempted to get Lucas to agree to a rerelease of that film in the midst of Star Wars' success by arguing that the current phenomenon would fade from the public's consciousness as quickly as it took command. Lucas believed that the Holiday Special would prolong interest in Star Wars and prove that guy from WB wrong. Whoops!

There are also a lot of non-theoretical genuine revelations in A Disturbance in the Force, because Kozak leaves no asteroid unturned while exploring what you might assume to be a limited topic. It ain't! This is not only the story of how one guy's grudge begat a deathless nugget of televisual poop. It's also a tale of hazardous video shoots, drug-related chaos, unfettered merchandising, unstable leadership, stormtroopers suffering panic attacks, and--almost-- human/wookiee interspecies marriage. We learn everything there is to know about the unveiling of Boba Fett, what Bea Arthur and Jim Morrison have in common, why Hamill is so excessively made up, and why Grace Slick was a no-show during Jefferson Starship's horrid performance (drugs!), her reaction to that performance after Kozak asks her to watch it (bad!), and the role for which she was originally considered (proto-Internet porn!). A photo of Darth Vader choking the author of "White Rabbit" makes A Disturbance in the Force a true must-read for hardcore fans of Star Wars and Grace Slick. 

Speaking as such a fan, I'm as grateful that a book as entertaining, thorough, and weird as A Disturbance in the Force exists as I am that The Star Wars Holiday Special does. I'd much rather read it than the novelization of The Phantom Menace.

[Disclosure: A Disturbance in the Force was published by Rowman & Littlefield, which is also the publisher of my books The Who FAQ and 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Minute.]

Review: Guided by Voices' 'Live from Austin, TX'

Although I'd seen Guided by Voices live a number of times, and knew their routine pretty well, I was still shocked to see their performance on the concert series Austin City Limits in 2005. Well-known for lubricating his performances with buckets of Rolling Rock, Robert Pollard held nothing back for his public television debut. His slurring and capering and hilariously inebriated rants were not the kinds of things you usually saw on PBS. 

But it wouldn't have been a GBV show without the beer, and since Pollard had already announced his band's eminent breakup during a show at NYC's Bowery Ballroom (I was there!), he must have realized that he had nothing to lose. Or maybe he just had a serious drinking problem.

In any event, the Austin City Limits performance offered as much unpredictability, energy, sloppiness, and charm as any Guided by Voices performance. Hearing the full performance on New West Records' Live from Austin, TX, nearly twenty years later, I'm actually surprised that it holds up so wonderfully as a listening experience. The band's line up in 2004, when the performance was recorded, was not their most celebrated, but it was certainly one of their most professional. Not indulging nearly as much as their frontman, stalwart guitarist Doug Gillard and drummer Kevin March held everything together even as Pollard has increasing trouble enunciating and bassist Chris Slusarenko and rhythm guitarist Nate Farley start sliding off course a bit. The setlist was terrific, favoring their latest (Half Smiles of the Decomposed) and most beloved (Bee Thousand) albums but sprinkling in choice selections from most of their dozen other LPs, as well as delicious obscurities like "Dayton Ohio-19 Something and 5", "Do the Earth", and the glorious "My Impression Now". By the time Pollard introduces Gillard as "Duh Gillar" before launching into an epic rendition of "Secret Star", you know he's more than three sheets to the wind, but he's still able to hit most of those high notes in "Pendulum", carry the melody of "Tractor Rape Chain", pull off the melismas of "Buzzards and Dreadful Crows", and remember most of the words to "Fair Touching". In his own sloshy way, Bob was a pro too. 

What's less surprising is how much the fun of seeing the band live during those days floods back when listening to Live from Austin, TX today. It's also valuable as the only official live GBV album on vinyl (I would sell my old ticket stubs to get a reissue of the Live from the Wheelchair Races compilation on vinyl). Originally released on black vinyl in 2017, Live from Austin, TX is about to get a special Record Store Day release on red splatter vinyl. However, the review copy I received is the previously issued black vinyl, which sounds really good on flat, well-centered vinyl. My copy was a bit crackly from inner-sleeve residue, but that washes away. 

Review: New Editions of The Beatles' '1962-1966' and '1967-1970'

After the super deluxe edition of Revolver was released this time last year, many Beatlemaniacs believed that the next big holiday release would be a similar set devoted to Rubber Soul. Surprise! Instead we're getting new editions of the two essential Beatles compilations, 1962-1966 and 1967-1970, both of which are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary this year. An odd choice, you may think, but this release is mainly serving one very specific purpose, a job that it wouldn't make sense for a deluxe edition of Rubber Soul to do. 

You see, back in the mid-nineties, when Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were mining rough John Lennon demos for material to spruce up and overdub for release on the Anthology compilations, they began work on a third track in addition to "Free As a Bird" and "Real Love". Then George apparently soured on "Now and Then" and didn't want to complete it. As the story goes, the Quiet One dismissed it as "rubbish." While that assessment may have been a tad harsh, the song didn't exactly scream to be heard. Like the two tracks that were completed and released, "Now and Then" is a down-tempo, down-mood song. It's more melodic than the dreary "Free As a Bird" but less appealing than the pretty and genuinely moving "Real Love". Had John written it during the days when he was coming up with ingenious stuff like "Rain", "Strawberry Fields Forever", and "Happiness Is a Warm Gun", "Now and Then" would never have found a home on a Beatles record... but it might have been worthy of a Double Fantasy or at least a Milk and Honey. 

Some three decades later, Paul decided to pick up work on "Now and Then" and coaxed Ringo along to add a new drum track for what the guys promise will be the final song "The Beatles" ever release. It's definitely a technologically impressive achievement, with John's voice sounding infinitely more natural and up front than nineties tech was able to make it sound on "Free As a Bird" and "Real Love". Giles Martin's production and Paul and Ringo's newly recorded backing are modest in keeping with a very modest composition.

So, "Now and Then" is now seeing release as a single, but it also needs a long-playing home, which is why we're getting updates of 1962-1966 and 1967-1970. Since the new song has no relationship to Rubber Soul or any other proper Beatles album, the compilations are relatively sensible vessels for its release (although a fourth Anthology, with still-unreleased things like the band version of George's "All Things Must Pass", "Mad Man", and "Watching Rainbows", would have been the dandiest). And for this occasion, the so-called "Red" and "Blue" albums are being issued in versions quite different from the 1973 ones. 

Most notable for re-mix aficionados is that none of the included tracks appear in their original mixes from the sixties. Thirty-five of the mixes are all-new. The process involved the MAL (Machine Assisted Learning) software Giles Martin used to separate instruments clumped together on a single track when he remixed Revolver. This means that for the first time ever, the original recordings of "Love Me Do" and "She Loves You" are being released in stereo, although "She Loves You" is muddier than the original mono and hearing a "Love Me Do" in which Paul's bass occupies the left speaker nearly alone for most of the song while the guitar and drums are panned pretty hard to the right is more interesting on a technological level than a listening one. Mixing 101: You gotta center the rhythm section or risk losing all your power. 

Fortunately most of the new mixes on 1962-1966 pass that particular test, and though The Beatles' arrangements tended to be pretty simple during this era, there are interesting things to discover among the remixes. "I Feel Fine", "Ticket to Ride", and "Drive My Car" feature drums both centered and spotlighted in channels, which is an unusually wide spectrum for Ringo's contribution. "A Hard Day's Night" now emphasizes some interestingly staccato rhythm guitar in the left channel. A big cymbal crash kicks "Eight Days a Week" into gear. The strings of "Yesterday" are divided between channels while Paul's voice and guitar are centered. This particular remix is superb, and really, most of the the newly remixed tracks on 1962-1966 have never sounded better in stereo. All of the 1966 tracks had already been remixed for last year's special edition of Revolver, which was a mixed bag of successful and not-so-successful remixes, though most of what's included here is well done.

1967-1970 relies much more heavily on previously released remixes, since we've already gotten deluxe editions of all the proper albums The Beatles released from 1967 to 1970. A half dozen other numbers had been remixed way back in 2015 for the 1+ compilation and are making their vinyl debuts here. The only newly remixed tracks hail from Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, and a couple of B-sides. 

Of these, the most audaciously different is "I Am the Walrus", which really slathers on the noises that consume the end of the track. Although this remix is already stirring controversy among fans, I'm much more open to radically different remixes on a compilation like this than on a proper album, so I enjoy the novelty of it even as I continue to question the decision to nudge the rhythm section off to the left channel instead of centering it. It makes even less sense to fully shove it off to the side for something as ass-kicking as "Revolution". Lennon dismissed the original stereo mix as "ice cream" because of its wide, weakening separation, and this remix is only slightly less hard-panned. "Magical Mystery Tour", however, rocks harder with a lot of emphasis on George's previously buried Chuck Berry-esque guitar and heavier drums, though Ringo still isn't centered for some reason. Bass and drums are centered on "Hey Bulldog", which they hadn't been on the acclaimed 1999 remix on the Yellow Submarine Songtrack, so this is a nice improvement. I also dig the novelty of having "A Day in the Life" and "Dear Prudence" with clean intros for the first time on vinyl. The placement of instruments in "Old Brown Shoe" sounds similar to those of the original mix, though errors are introduced when George's slide guitar is clipped off a couple of times in the second verse. Whoops!

As you may have already sussed from some of the songs I've referenced above, the other big deal with these new versions of 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 is that the original track line ups have been expanded with additional songs. The originals actually did a good job of compiling the most popular Beatles originals (no covers were included), but there were some notable omissions. Even when I bought those records at the extremely unripe age of 13, I was surprised by the absence of certain songs with which I was very familiar from the radio. Where were "Do You Want to Know a Secret" (a number-two hit in the U.S.), "P.S. I Love You" (a top-ten hit here), "I Should Have Known Better", "She's a Woman" (top-five), "I'm a Loser", "No Reply", "I'll Follow the Sun", and "Rain" (top-25)? At least some of these could have been included since 1962-1966 was so notoriously skimpy, with just fourteen or fifteen minutes of music on each of its first three sides. The decision to place seven tracks on sides One and Three but only six on sides Two and Four always seemed like a blatant waste of valuable space. Aside from the absence of "When I'm 64", 1967-1970 didn't really have any glaring omissions, and its sides were pretty jam-packed anyway.

So, when rumors that 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 would each be expanded to 3-LP sets hit the Internet, speculation went wild. I doubt anyone correctly predicted the extra tracks we ended up with. With the exception of "You Really Got a Hold on Me", the dozen songs added to 1962-1966 are fairly logical selections. "Twist and Shout", "I Saw Her Standing There", "Taxman", "Here, There, and Everywhere", "Get to Get You Into My Life", and "Tomorrow Never Knows" are widely considered to be classics, and the abundance of Revolver additions makes up for the short shrift The Beatles' best album received on the original 62-66. John's "I'm Only Sleeping" is a less well-known track from that record but important for its pioneering use of backward guitar and a necessary reminder that Revolver wasn't mainly Paul's show. "This Boy" has long been admired as a grand showcase for the guys' harmonies. "You Can't Do That" made Billboard's Top-50 on the flip-side of "Can't Buy Me Love". "Roll Over Beethoven" was a radio-staple in the U.S. and a smash single in several markets (it even went to number one in Australia), and it gives George Harrison a bit more representation on a compilation that once completely lacked his lead vocals. His singing and writing also get a bit more attention with the addition of "If I Needed Someone", though Rubber Soul was the one album that was really overrepresented on the original. However, none of the songs I'd mentioned in the previous paragraph were added. The compilers also doubled down on the original record's skimpiness by placing only six songs per side on this set's bonus LP. Huh.

If 62-66 seems like a bit of a missed opportunity in terms of bonus tracks, then 67-70 is downright baffling. On this set, only half of the selections make some sort of sense. "Blackbird" and "Oh! Darling" are two of The Beatles' most streamed cuts, so their presence on the new 67-70 makes commercial sense. The exclusive tracks on Yellow Submarine were not represented at all on the original compilation, so the inclusion of fan-fave "Hey Bulldog" feels right. As for better representing the formerly underrepresented "White Album", "Dear Prudence" seems like a natural choice, but the only reason I can come up with for why the obscure "Glass Onion" was chosen is that a popular movie shares its title, which would be a dumb reason to select it for a greatest hits-type album in lieu of more celebrated tracks like "Helter Skelter" or "Happiness Is a Warm Gun". 

The decision to include other oddities like "Within You, Without You", "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", and "I Me Mine" only makes sense if we assume that the Lennon and Harrison estates were deeply involved in the track selection and really like these particular numbers. I can't feature any other explanation for why they were included since they lack the familiarity and immediacy of the hits or the obvious rewards of milestones like "Tomorrow Never Knows" or "A Day in the Life". If "Revolution 9" had been added, I wouldn't be that much more mystified.

I completely understand that there was a desire to include more Harrisongs, since George was underrepresented on the original records, but there were certainly more sensible choices. To capture his sitar phase, "The Inner Light" would have been the ideal choice: it's a lovely, sprightly, concise track that, unlike "Within You, Without You", Giles has yet to remix. "For You Blue" was technically a number-one hit in the U.S. since the "Long and Winding Road" single was released right after Billboard discontinued its policy of issuing discrete chart positions for B-sides. It's certainly zingier than the dour "I Me Mine". And because "I Want You" and "Within You" are so very, very long, there are only a scant eight oldies on the bonus LP of 1967-1970, although that record is still short enough that a couple of other songs could have been included without any reduction in audio quality. 

For the CD iterations of these new compilations, the extra tracks are chronologically incorporated into the original running order. For the vinyl versions, they appear on bonus LPs appended to each set. This makes the oddity of the song choices stand out more, although getting a little creative with the order in which you play each side improves the flow a lot. (I recommend playing the first side of the bonus LP of 62-66 after side One of the original album and ending the set with the second side of the bonus. As for 67-70, play the first side of the bonus after side Two—skipping "Now and Then", which you may not need to hear more than once anyway, and "Within You, Without You", which really doesn't belong on a hits compilation— and play the second side of the bonus after side Three of the original album. Do as you please with "I Want You" and "I Me Mine".)

Instead of packaging the vinyl in the triple-fold-out covers Apple used for Mono Masters and the Anthology sets, 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 are each housed in reproductions of the original gatefolds, with one LP stored in one side and two in the other. While some may not like storing records in the same pocket, I definitely prefer this approach to the triple-fold covers, which make accessing the middle LP cumbersome. The pockets in the new gatefold are wide enough that the fit isn't too tight. The only new additions are inserts with liner notes for each set and new lyric inner sleeves for the bonus discs that match the styles of the original ones. There's also a slipcase if you opt for the complete package containing both sets.

The vinyl is uniformly flat and quiet with well-centered spindle holes. Bass is a bit overbearing on a lot of the newly remixed cuts on 1962-1966, as well as the first two Sgt. Pepper's tracks, "Glass Onion", and "Hey Bulldog" on 1967-1970, and you may want to adjust the tone controls on your sound system to tame it. Non-fill spots at the end of "Can't Buy Me Love" and in a few spots throughout "Yesterday" cause a touch of unwanted noise, but I only noticed this issue after listening through headphones. On 1962-1966, a bit of inner groove distortion also mars "Can't Buy Me Love", even with side One's conservative amount of music. On 1967-1970, IGD is excessive on "All You Need Is Love" on side One, but less so on sides Three and Four. "Revolution" and "I Want You" are so naturally distorted that if there's any unintended distortion at the ends of sides Two and Six, it is completely unnoticeable (actually, John's voice sounds clean on the former, so I assume there isn't any on side Two). 

And so, with this curve-ball in the release schedule, I'm reluctant to predict what we can expect from The Beatles' camp next year, but based on the nice way the remixed Rubber Soul tracks sound on this latest release, it might be good to follow through with the set a lot of fans expected to get this year. We shall see in 2024.

Review: 'B-Side'

For every hit that makes it onto the radio or Billboard's Hot 100, there's something more obscure happening on the other side. It might be a piece of tossed off trash, but it might also be of exceptional quality ("Rain"), a chance to throw a less prolific band member some royalty cash ("The Inner Light"), or an excuse to get inspiredly loony ("You Know My Name [Look Up the Number]"). Some B-sides are even better than their smash A-sides... at least that's my stance on all those Beatles flip sides I referenced in the previous sentence. 

Andy Cowan pays long overdue homage to flips in his new book B-Side. He runs through more than 500 of them, each chronicled with a brief paragraph on the particular song's history and appeal. Since he only discusses one B-side per artist, he casts a very wide net. I'm not sure if any music listener is eclectic/devoid-of-personal-taste enough to want a book that discusses The Who, Engelbert Humperdinck, Artie Shaw, Can, Frankie Avalon, The Sex Pistols, Shania Twain, N.W.A., Vangelis, The Pixies, Adele, Perry Como, PJ Harvey, Moby, Miles Davis, Sammy Davis Jr., Human League, Megadeth, Vanilla Ice, and Echo and the Bunnymen, but if such a person exists, this is the book for them (kudos, though, for including Zacherley!). 

Since most readers probably won't qualify and will want to zip to their favorite eras or artists, Cowan's decision to organize his book alphabetically by song title might prove a bit frustrating. But the concept is still nifty, and he does discuss such Psychobabble approved gems as The Stones' "Child of the Moon", Prince's "Erotic City", The Who's "Heaven and Hell", R.E.M.'s "Ages of You", XTC's "Dear God", Hendrix's "51st Anniversary", Sly Stone's "Everybody Is a Star", Small Faces' "Just Passing", and The Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby". I also like that he digs deep for some groovy oddities, such as The Syn's "14 Hour Technicolor Dream", The Creation's "Through My Eyes", and Tintern Abbey's "Vacuum CLeaner".

I did learn a few things, such as the apparent fact that the screaming at the beginning of "Child of the Moon" is that of producer Jimmy Miller and not Mick Jagger and that a certain naughty word I always assumed I was mishearing in Syd Barrett's "Candy and a Currant Bun" is, indeed, the naughty word in question. But without question this book's biggest revelation is the parade of A-Sides that started life as B-Sides, such as Gene Vincent's "Be-Bop-a-Lula", Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock", The Doobie Brothers' "Black Water", Bill Withers's "Ain't No Sunshine", Dionne Warwick's "Alfie", and Brenda Lee's "I'm Sorry". Who knew? Sometimes, though, these matters are down to the fact that Cowan is English, and A's and B's sometimes flipped across the pond, so for him, The Kink's "Who'll Be the Next in Line" is a B-side.

And since I'm sure you're wondering, the Beatles B-side Cowan selected is "Revolution".

Review: 'Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live At The Hollywood Bowl: August 18, 1967'

Two months to the day after The Jimi Hendrix Experience became an overnight stateside phenomenon at the Monterey Pop Festival, the group freaked out California a little further south at the Hollywood Bowl. The band was simply white hot at this point, still flying from rearranging brains en masse at the beginning of the summer and still so fresh that they hadn't even put out a sophomore LP yet. This material must have still been new enough that Jimi hadn't quite gotten it all down yet, as he kept forgetting to sing lines in "The Wind Cries Mary". But such gaffs are part of the charm of hearing a vintage, unadulterated performance, as you can on the new live disc, Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live At The Hollywood Bowl: August 18, 1967. The power of the band at this stage in their career is what makes it electrifying. 

Review: 'The Wicker Man: The Official Story of the Film'

Like most true cult films, The Wicker Man has certain trappings of a particular genre (horror), but it's actually pretty hard to categorize. For most of its run time, it would be better classified as a police procedural or mystery. Midway through production, director Robin Hardy declared it was a musical. Indeed, The Wicker Man is all these things, which is just one reason it is such a unique viewing experience. However, it can also be frustrating since it exists in so many forms due to a less than respectful release that saw it get chopped to pieces to play second-fiddle to Nic Roeg's Don't Look Now, with which it joined forces for an admittedly excellent double feature in 1973. Complicating the story further, there are questions as to how much it was influenced by David Pinner's novel Ritual, how much it was auteured by Hardy (whom many of the folks involved in the film describe as barely competent), and how miserable the cold, combative, and stressfully compressed shoot was.

Indeed, making The Wicker Man doesn't seem like it was that much fun for the people who made The Wicker Man, but that also makes the story of its making juicy with drama. That's a boon for writer John Walsh and his new book, The Wicker Man: The Official Story of the Film. He gets into the film's literary genesis, the historical accuracy of its pagan depictions, its music, and its troubled making, so full of animosity (Britt Ekland vs. Ingrid Pitt; Christopher Lee vs. Michael Deeley; Robin Hardy vs. everyone). He makes attempts to solve myths associated with the film, such as the notion that Deeley deliberately botched the film's release and that Rod Stewart made an attempt to buy every print of the film because he didn't approve of girlfriend Ekland showing so much skin in the flick, although there's so much bad blood and opportunities to be self-serving among the Wicker Man gang that the reliability of the sources may sometimes be questionable. 

But who cares? What matters is that the telling is delicious and the book is full of fascinating tidbits (I hadn't known that Christopher Lee held some sway over the script's rewrites) and images that include shots of the construction of the title man, original sheet music for its wonderful songs, actors in the studio recording those songs, some fabulous fan art, stills of deleted scenes that have not been included in any cut of the film, and a handy chart for differentiating the film's various edits. Now if only the longest and best edit could somehow get properly restored...

Review: 'Written in Their Soul – The Hits: The Stax Songwriter Demos'

A Stax record is instantly recognizable by a distinctive voice like Otis's or Carla's and the raw but thick backing from house bands Booker T. & The MG's and The Mar-Keys. Of course, a record doesn't begin with what you hear on the radio or vinyl. It usually starts off as lyrics and chords on a piece of paper and then first achieves sound on a rough demo to give producers and artists a clearer taste of the song. 

Hearing a Stax hit that doesn't quite sound like a Stax record is a bit jarring and more than a little fascinating, and that's what you can expect from Written in Their Soul – The Hits: The Stax Songwriter Demos. A familiar item such as The Staple Singers' "Respect Yourself" is nearly unrecognizable in co-composer Mack Rice's minimalistic, distorted, aggressive guitar and voice demo. Eddie Floyd's "I'll Always Have Faith in You", recorded by Billy Eckstine, is stripped to Floyd's haltingly and hauntingly beautiful voice and guitar that makes the finished record sound over-dramatic rand over-produced in comparison. However, Carla Thomas's "A Woman's Love" sounds nearly finished with the artist's own extraordinary voice in place and a comparatively full arrangement of piano and echoing guitar. Deanie Parker gets full band accompaniment for "I've Got No Time to Lose", which Carla Thomas ended up recording 

These demos were originally included on an expansive CD set called Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos, but a baker's dozen of the most recognizable numbers from that collection have been distilled on the limited edition (5,000 units) orange vinyl Hits for Record Store Day. By nature demos aren't always hi-fi, but this is as nice of a presentation as you can get on flat, quiet vinyl.

Review: The Dave Brubeck Quartet's 'Jazz at Oberlin'

For their first LP, The Dave Brubeck Quartet released a live set caught at Oberlin College in Ohio. Although the makeup of the band would change a bit over the years, the cornerstones of Brubeck's elegant yet harmonically adventurous piano and Paul Desmond's cherubic and searching alto sax are in place, although there are not yet those wonderfully imaginative original compositions like "Time Out", "Blue Rondo a La Turk", and "Bluette" that would cause the group's later albums to be widely regarded as classics. Instead the group worked with a quintet of standards such as Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust" and Morgan Lewis's "How High the Moon". Nevertheless, Brubeck and Desmond's effortless interplay is already fully formed, and the latter wastes no time in showing off his fluttering skills on set opener "These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)". The former begins the song in deceptively reserved mode before aggressively stumbling out strident chords that lay waste to his reputation as some sort of purveyor of tepid white-wine jazz. 

From there, they're off, pumping through a sprightly "Perdido", a cooly swaying "Stardust", and hard boogying renditions of "The Way You Look Tonight" and "How High the Moon". Really, the only thing missing is those extraordinary original compositions, but if you just want to hear two of jazz's most distinctive players do their thing, you can't go wrong at Jazz at Oberlin.

And if you've already sampled any of the titles in the audiophile "Original Jazz Classics" series, you can probably already surmise that you won't go wrong with Craft Recording's new reissue of Jazz at Oberlin. Kevin Gray remastered the original master tapes using an all-analog process that is usual for the Original Jazz Classics series yet too few others. The music sounds open, full bodied, and utterly natural, as if the guys are jamming away in your living room.

Review: 40th Anniversary Reissue of Social Distortion's 'Mommy's Little Monster'

Although Social Distortion emerged from the same West Coast hardcore scene as Black Flag and The Circle Jerks in the early eighties, you could be forgiven for assuming they hailed from across the other coast's pond because of Mike Ness's vocal affectations (reminiscent of Jake Burns) and beret (reminiscent of Captain Sensible) and the group's understanding of dynamics and variety, which were often lost on American punks. 

Those strong qualities were there from the beginning on Social Distortion's first album. Recorded in a single session and flashing by in under a half hour, Mommy's Little Monster spews nine memorable tracks that range from the riffy and speedy "The Creeps" to the echoey and anthemic "Another State of Mind" to the hippity-hoppity "It Wasn't a Pretty Picture" to the mid-tempo "Hour of Darkness" to the elated title track to the apocalyptic "Moral Threat". Their lyrics mostly threaten and celebrate punk attitude, while "It Wasn't a Pretty Picture" observes the Decline of Western Civilization with an ambivalence that is both chilling and oddly refreshing. These twenty-one-year-olds were old enough to recognize that society is fucked up and wise enough to know they couldn't offer any solutions.

For its fortieth anniversary, Craft Recordings is reissuing Mommy's Little Monster on vinyl with fully analog "lacquers cut from the original master tapes" (so reads the official pr). The vinyl is dead quiet, although my copy had a slight bowl-effect, which can generate inner groove distortion. Does this record have that problem? How the hell should I know? Social Distortion is so deliberately distorted its tough to tell what is or isn't intended, so I'm just going to go with my gut and say it sounds great, especially considering the recordings' lo-fi origins. The cover, which is awesome, is beautifully reproduced too.

Review: 'Stax Christmas'

If Halloween is the super-cool kid sitting in the back row scowling and painting its nails black, Christmas is the one with the billion-watt smile, eager for everyone to be its friend. And because its lights and ornaments and aggressively cheery songs can come off as a bit desperate, not everyone necessarily wants to be Christmas' friend. Some people actively hate it and flick into kill-mode whenever they hear "Jingle Bells" or that Mariah Carey song.

Review: 'In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution'

Long ago declared dead, vinyl has made a zombie-like comeback in recent years that doesn't seem in danger of declining. A report on sales published in Variety just three and a half months ago provides strong support for such confidence. 

But if you're the kind of person who reads Psychobabble, you probably already know this. In fact, I'd discontinued music reviews on anything but vinyl quite a while ago and walk it like I talk it with my own music collection: I've sold off almost all of my CDs and replaced almost all of the essentials with their vinyl equivalents in a move I hope I won't regret the way I regret exchanging my original vinyl collection for a handful of magic beans back in 1990. 

Basically, I love vinyl, I have pledged allegiance to vinyl, and I demand you do the same. So a book about the current vinyl and turntable revolution should be just the ticket for someone like me. The book's bona fides are strong: its five authors include some of the most well-known rock writers of the twenty-first century: Matt Annis, Gillian G. Garr, Ken Micaleff, Martin Popoff, and Richie Unterberger. In a series of short essays, they discuss the history of the format, stand-out record stores, iconic album covers, the mono vs. stereo debate, important record labels, and, at its most advanced, the parts and components of various varieties of phonographs. There are also some potentially useful tips for phonograph calibration, but by mostly delivering the basics, In the Groove will most appeal to youngsters new to this whole vinyl collecting thingy and are just learning what azimuth is. 

Review: 'The Lyrics' by Paul McCartney (Updated Eidition)

From August 2015 to August 2020, Paul McCartney talked to poet Paul Muldoon about songs he'd written since 1956, and these talks became the basis of the 2021 book The Lyrics. In his foreword, McCartney explains that he'd been approached several times to write an autobiography, but the idea never interested him much, so this is the closest we'll probably get. In a non-linear way, it does get the job done, because the guy who wrote "Bip-Bop" and "Wild Honey Pie" often doesn't engage much with his lyrics and instead uses the various songs he discusses as pretexts to open up about The Ed Sullivan Show ("All My Loving"), Jane Asher ("And I Love Her"), the Beatles' decision to quit touring ("Honey Pie", of all things), the Rolling Stones ("I Wanna Be Your Man"), his bass playing ("She's a Woman"), his mum ("Let It Be"), his feelings about being on the receiving end of John Lennon's infamous nastiness ("Too Many People)", and quite a lot more. 

Because of the casual, conversational nature of the book, Paul allows himself to set aside his affable-at-all-costs persona to get disarmingly candid. More than once he says that John could be "an idiot" while also professing his love for his very complicated partner. However, he rarely expresses any regrets about the songs themselves, only saving a bit of embarrassment for the fun yet somewhat cheesy "Rock Show". This might be because he and Muldoon are fairly selective about the songs they discuss. Indeed, quite a lot are missing, and not just from his solo career, which does not get as much attention as the Beatles days. Fab tunes such as "Every Little Thing", "Getting Better", "I'm Looking Through", and "Oh! Darling" miss the cut, although a new edition makes room for several songs that weren't included in the 2021 one: "Bluebird","Day Tripper", "English Tea", "Every Night", "Hello, Goodbye", "Magical Mystery Tour", and "Step Inside Love". I'm not sure if the addition of these seven songs justifies a second-dip for any but the most dedicated fans, but fans should get at least one copy of The Lyrics, both to learn quite a few new things (I was particularly surprised to read a very different version of the story of how Lennon and McCartney delivered "I Wanna Be Your Man" to the Stones and amused by McCartney's discussion of how mercurial Stevie Wonder could be) and to read it all in Paul's own distinctive voice.

Review: 'Elvis Remembered'

Elvis superfan Shelly Powers chatted with ten people in Elvis's inner circle, posed for pictures with them, and assembled a bunch more vintage ones, and Elvis Remembered is the result. While this may all sound pretty superficial, and not all of Powers's questions are David Frost-quality, she's actually quite good at weaving "What's your favorite Elvis song?" level queries with more probing ones that reveal some fairly personal things about the icon. 

Powers's power to play on the surface before probing beneath is what makes Elvis Remembered worth reading, even if you sometimes have to wade through some completely idle chatter to get there. Really, these chapters read more like conversations than interviews, which could have easily been reigned in with sharper editing, but including expendable chatter like "How's the tea?" reveals her process: Powers gets her subjects comfortable with an amiable presence before diving in to get them to open up about Elvis's good qualities (his extreme generosity; his genuine interest in the problems of those less iconic than himself) and his not-so-great ones (his refusal to ever say he was sorry; his extremely asinine behavior with guns; his drug use). She also knows when to back off on topics that are making her subjects uncomfortable, which may not be the preferred technique of the most probing interviewers, but it's certainly the preferred technique of an empathetic human being. 

Powers also had the gumption to interview some fairly controversial figures in Elvis-lore, such as bodyguard Sonny West, who alienated some with his tell-all biography of his former friend and boss, and Larry Geller, Elvis's "spiritualist," who apparently claimed the King had occult powers or something. Despite the sketchy reputations of some of these guys, and Powers reveals some reservations about some of them in her talks with others, she remains a respectful conversationalist during her interviews and always manages to get something interesting out of them. Sometimes the revelations are downright bizarre, as when Elvis's Blue Hawaii co-star Darlene Tompkins reveals that "Colonel" Tom Parker tortured chickens in a carnival sideshow before managing Elvis. Yecch.

Review: 'The Spice Must Flow: The Story of Dune from Cult Novels to Visionary Sci-Fi Movies'

We are living through very Duney times. The last thing I reviewed here on Psychobabble was Max Evry's oral history A Masterpiece in Disarray. The latest is Ryan Britt's The Spice Must Flow: The Story of Dune from Cult Novels to Visionary Sci-Fi Movies. This is a very different worm from Evry's hulkingly exhaustive 500-page dive into David Lynch's bizarre adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi franchise. Britt delivers only half the page count but sets his blue-within-blue eyes across a more complete vista, reminding us that Lynch's film is only one stop along a hero's journey that began in the early sixties when Frank Herbert, a struggling writer with a debt to the IRS looming over his head, conceived a far off galaxy in which royal houses squabble over control of a sandy drug empire. Dune World was published as a magazine serial in 1963, fleshed out for the more pithily titled novel in 1965, and further expanded for a series of literary sequels. Then came Alejandro Jodorowsky's doomed aborted attempt to adapt it into a film, Lynch's doomed unaborted attempt to adapt it into a film, John Harrison's TV miniseries for the Sci-Fi channel, and Dennis Villeneuve's ongoing big-screen remake series.

Despite wielding a hefty influence on such whiz-bang entertainment as Star Wars, Dune in all its iterations has a reputation for being fairly dense, serious stuff, but Britt goes out of his way to give the property's history a light telling to re-emphasize the fact that once you boil Dune down, it's still a story of heroes and villains and giant worms in outer space. After setting the tone with an extended discussion of Herbert's facial hair, the author blazes along all of the major stops on Dune Avenue, including its influence on its much more eager-to-please kid brother, Star Wars. 

If all you want to learn about is Lynch's film, which despite its rep as a turkey has a pretty sizable cult following and gains extra curiosity simply because it was made by our greatest living filmmaker, A Masterpiece in Disarray is certainly the book to get. But even though Britt only devotes 28 pages to that which Evry devoted 500, we still learn a few new things via Britt's interviews with Kyle MacLachlan and Alicia Witt. And, of course, if you have a more sweeping interest in Dune, Britt earns his keep by discussing matters such as the miniseries and the remake franchise that aren't among Evry's main focal points. And if you're pressed for time, Britt's book is certainly quicker to digest than Evry's, even if it isn't likely to leaving you feeling as satisfied.

Review: 'A Masterpiece in Disarray: David Lynch's Dune, an Oral History'

Having only made one purely avant garde feature that became a smash by playing to freakos at midnight showings and one Oscar-baity period piece, David Lynch was a real weird choice to helm a blockbuster adaptation of Frank Herbert's space opera Dune. But chosen he was, though he couldn't quite be blamed for the critical and commercial disaster it became. Although Lynch's sensibility has never exactly been commercial, he was also at odds with a producer who didn't quit sync up with his vision on this particular project, a truly harrowing production in an inhospitable environment, source material that may be a bit too convoluted and esoteric to translate into matinee fare fit for Star Wars fans, and a truncated run-time that forced the story to get whittled down to a confusing nub. 

Consequently, Dune is the one David Lynch movie many David Lynch fans-- and David Lynch, himself--disown. But its myriad problems are also what make the story of its making so much more fascinating than, say, the making of Blue Velvet, which was an altogether happier and more satisfying experience for everyone involved. 

Writer Max Evry is aware of Dune's flaws, as well as its often ignored charms, which is the correct perspective for anyone qualified to tell its story, which he does in his new book, A Masterpiece in Disarray: David Lynch's Dune, an Oral History. That subtitle is only partially accurate because this book is only intermittently an oral history and doesn't even become one until we're 100 pages into it. Again, Evry is correct. Oral histories fail to get the job done when they rely too much on their interview subjects, who may not cover every necessary part of the story. Evry lets his myriad subjects fill in the gaps but also provides long passages of straight narrative to ensure his making-of account is linear and complete. This is the right way to write an oral history, and A Masterpiece in Disarray is nothing if not complete. The film's unproduced predecessors, casting, scripting, costuming, filming, release, toys, magnificent failures, and legacy are all covered in full detail, whether by Evry's text, his subjects' quotes, or both. 

The author goes above and beyond by even talking with actors who were up for roles but didn't get them, such as Zach Galligan and Kenneth Branagh (both would-be Paul Atriedeses). We get the consequential making-of details as well as the inconsequential trivia that makes oral histories fun reads, such as the original plan to cast Divine as the wicked Baron Harkonnen, the surprising details about ever-affable Kyle Maclachlan's geeky demands during his audition, Lynch's bizarre first meeting with the head of Universal's film division, Patrick Stewart's hilariously clueless first conversation with superstar Sting, and the outrageously scatological reason Charlotte Rampling backed out of the project when Alejandro Jodorowsky was still slated to direct. Perhaps best of all, we get a brief but sweet interview with Lynch, himself, who has long been reluctant to talk about an experience that was pretty painful for him.

A Masterpiece in Disarray is superb because of its content, but it's also a pleasure to read because the book itself was crafted with 1984 Publishing's usual luxurious attention to detail: red gilt edges and ribbon bookmark. It's amazing to think the story of a film so universally panned forty years ago would be treated to such a lush treatment today, but it's Evry's storytelling that really earns such lavish attention. Plus, to be fair, Dune really isn't so bad.

Review: 'We're Not Worthy: From In Living Color to Mr. Show, How '90s Sketch TV Changed the Face of Comedy'

Over TV's first several decades, there were never many more than two or three sketch comedies vying for American air-space at the same time. Your Show of Shows ruled the fifties. Laugh-In and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour took over in the sixties. The Carol Burnett Show and Saturday Night Live gave the format new life in the seventies. SNL continued its reign in the eighties while  SCTV from Canada and Not Necessarily the News on cable applied some competition. 

Then things went haywire in the nineties. In Living Color, MADtv, House of Buggin', The Edge, The Kids in the Hall, The Ben Stiller Show, The State, Mr. Show with Bob and David, The Dana Carvey Show, Upright Citizens Brigade. Not all of these shows had long and successful runs, but all of them made some sort of impression on the Vast Wasteland's landscape, and all are fondly remembered by the cults they earned. 

One such cultist is Jason Klamm, who references fifty-or-so shows and interviewed some 150 individuals for his new book We're Not Worthy: From In Living Color to Mr. Show, How '90s Sketch TV Changed the Face of Comedy. Along with creating dedicated chapters on the biggest or most noteworthy sketch shows of the era, Klamm also fortifies his book with a history of sketch comedy on stage and on TV leading up to the nineties, sprints through lesser known programs from his main decade, and provides chapters on sketch-show derived movies like Wayne's World and talk shows like Late Night with David Letterman and The Conan O'Brien Show, which relied more on sketches than run-of-the-mill celebrity interviews. 

That's a lot of stuff, and these are shows that often have very complex histories and legacies. There've been entire books written on Saturday Night Live, In Living Color, and The Kids in the Hall, and I've read a few, which makes some of these chapters, which mostly run between ten and fifteen pages, feel kind of inadequate or too focused on one particular element. The chapter on The Tracey Ullman Show is mostly about how it birthed The Simpsons. The Saturday Night Live chapter has so much to discuss in so little space that the narrative ends up feeling particularly scattered. 

So the book is strongest when dealing with the shows that didn't have as much of a legacy and can be discussed in brief chapters more satisfactorily. There's certainly a lot to learn on these pages (wait... Rich Fulcher of The Mighty Boosh was Mike Myers's body double in Wayne's World?!? Iiiiit happened...), and if you're anything like me, the more obscure shows will send you running to YouTube in search of clips or complete episodes. Plus, the book is just beautifully designed with its colorful hardcover, ribbon bookmark, blue gilt edges, and bonus film-strip bookmark depicting frames of Molly Shannon as Mary Catherine Gallagher sniffing her pits.

Review: 'Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever'

Watching Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert's TV reviews in the eighties and nineties was only partially about finding out which new movies were worth watching, especially if, like myself, you often disagreed with them (those guys had little affection for horror movies or David Lynch). Watching two guys who look like fairly benign uncles get genuinely exasperated with each other was a big part of it too. As anyone who reads Matt Singer's new book Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever (or watches that infamous behind-the-scenes video of them shooting a TV promo and calling each other assholes) will learn, Siskel and Ebert really didn't like each other. At least at first. After nearly two decades sharing the camera, a sincere love developed between the critics, and viewed from one of several angles, Opposable Thumbs is a sort of Sam-and-Diane love story. 

Since wringing a whole book out of the relationship between two movie critics, even ones as famous as Siskel and Ebert, is probably no simple feat, Singer had to rely on several angles. Some of these are a bit ho-hum, such as his efforts to get to the bottom of how they ended up on TV in the first place or why Siskel's name came first or how the whole "thumbs up/thumbs down" thing developed. These guys didn't exactly live juicy lives, but it is interesting reading about their early careers, especially when getting more details about Ebert's fleeting yet still-surprising partnerships with The Sex Pistols and fellow breast-enthusiast Russ Meyer. The passages about Siskel's pranks on Ebert and an ill-fated co-star spot for a skunk on their show are amusing enough. The conclusions of both mens' lives are sincerely sad. But the real core of this story is how two rival Chicago film critics came together to insult each other on the air and learned to develop a friendship that transcended the drastic differences in their personalities. That facet of Opposable Thumbs gets a sincere thumbs up from me.

Review: 'Nazz' Vinyl Reissue

In a post-John Wesley Harding/post-Music from Big Pink environment, most rock bands were leaving behind the potent influence of the British Invasion to embrace a more staunchly American, borderline rural sound.  Even British bands were following Dylan and The Band's leads, as The Beatles made the New Orleans-influenced "Lady Madonna" and the Stones channelled Delta country and blues into Beggars Banquet. 

Review: 'The Amplified Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana'

In late 1993, Nirvana was just two years into their global fame and had just three albums under their belts, but they'd already done and experienced enough for young journalist Michael Azerrad to fill a full and eventful biography. Ads for Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana were all over MTV, and for rock geeks of my generation, it became an immediate must read, especially after Kurt Cobain took his own life just a few months after publication. I guess we were a bit desperate to make some sense of what had happened.

After the author added an extra chapter acknowledging what had happened, my friend Phil bought the revised edition and loaned it to me. I devoured it in a couple of days and have not forgotten much of what was in there. Nevertheless, when I saw a copy of it at my local library about six months ago, I snatched it up and reread it for the first time since '94.

Soon after, when I discovered that Azerrad was once again expanding his book with additional material and insights to be republished as The Amplified Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana for its thirtieth anniversary, I almost didn't request a review copy since I'd reread the original text so recently. But since that edition was published so long ago and at such a crucial crossroads in Nirvana's career and Cobain's life, I was very curious to see what Azerrad had added, so I went ahead and submitted my request to HarperOne.

I'm very glad I did, because there is literally another complete book in The Amplified Come As You Are. Azerrad has nearly doubled the original's 335 pages to a whopping 609. There is additional material on every single page of this new edition. Occasionally it's no more than a short sentence, but more often, it's a block of text that outweighs the old passage it illuminates. 

Some of it involves facts and figures Azerrad has gleaned over the past 30 years, but mostly we get additional insights into the band's personalities; little details about their routines and behavior that might have been awkward to slip into a traditional rock-bio narrative but work well as annotations; personal stories about the writer's interactions with Cobain, Krist Noveselic, Dave Grohl, Courtney Love, Chad Channing, and the book's other major players; and revised attitudes and regrets. 

One thing is very clear in the original book: Azerrad takes much of what Cobain says at face value, which is not something a biographer should do with any subject, especially not when that subject is a heroin addict, like Cobain was, or a guy who wanted nothing more than to remodel his past, as Cobain did. Azerrad expresses regret for mirroring Cobain's disdain for his own hometown of Aberdeen, Washington, and his own father, who apparently wasn't as bad as Kurt always made him out to be. Azerrad clears up some of Cobain's tall tales, such as his claims that the things he sings about in "Something in the Way" were directly autobiographical. Essentially, Azerrad vastly improves Come As You Are by bringing a middle-aged man's perspective to a story written by a guy in his early thirties. One can't help but wonder how Cobain might have similarly reconsidered his own story if he were still with us today.

Review: 'Withnail and I: From Cult to Classic '

If you've ever found you've gone on holiday by mistake, drank a bottle of lighter fluid, or recited Hamlet's soliloquy in the rain while your only friend in the world drifted off to a successful acting career, you can relate to Withnail. If you've ever had to endure the madness of someone like that, you can relate to I (not I as in Mike Segretto; I as in Marwood). 

If you have any idea what I'm talking about, you may now or ever have been a member of the Withnail and I cult. Bruce Robinson's 1987 film is famously a comedy without jokes, yet as Toby Benjamin's new book on the film accurately observes, "every single line of the screenplay is superb," which I'd slightly amend to "every single line of the screenplay is superbly funny." Vulgarly funny ("I fuck arses"? Who fucks arses? Maybe he fucks arses!"), demandingly funny ("We want the finest wines available to humanity, we want them here, and we want them now!"), pathetically funny ("We've gone on holiday by mistake!"), insightfully funny ("They're selling hippie wigs in Woolworth's, man."), ominously funny ("If I medicined you, you'd think a brain tumor was a birthday present."), economically funny ("Scrubbers!").