Date Confirmed for My 'Who FAQ' Interview on WFDU

Update: I just received confirmation that my interview about The Who FAQ on WFDU's Vintage Rock & Pop Shop will be airing on Sunday, May 11. Once again, the show airs at 11am and you can either hear it on your radio dial at 89.1 if you live in the NJ area or you can stream it live at www.wfdu.fm here.

Review: 'Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of The Beatles’ Solo Careers'

Perhaps no artist has an output as consistent as that of The Beatles. With the exception of Yellow Submarine, which is really an EP of new Beatles material tucked inside of a George Martin soundtrack album, all of their LPs are essential. When they split in the seventies and stopped prodding each other to keep that quality level moon-high, there was a lot more filler. That put them in a most unfortunate position, since few bands can be reasonably compared to The Beatles, and now the ex-Beatles were being compared to their former selves. Consequently, the solo years have increasingly been painted as a wash out by certain fans and critics.

This isn’t true. In fact, John, Paul, George, and Ringo made a lot of great music after they ceased to be a unit. You just have to weed through their output a bit. In his new book Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of The Beatles’ Solo Careers, Andrew Grant Jackson does most of the work for you. The writer cherry picks 182 songs out of that mass of albums and singles released from McCartney in 1970 right up to Ringo’s Y Not from 2011. The structure is cute: Jackson arranges the songs as pseudo-post-Beatles-Beatles LPs. For music made before Lennon’s death, he generally uses the Revolver ratio: five each by Lennon and McCartney, three by Harrison, one by Starr. He really does end up covering the mass of the guys’ best post-Beatles songs even though a selection of their albums (Plastic Ono Band, All Things Must Pass, RAM, Imagine, Band on the Run, Ringo) still fully deserve to be heard in their entireties. However, the bulk of Jackson’s commentary has more to do with the history of those years than the selected songs, making it quite similar in approach to Bill Janovitz’s recent Rocks Off: 50 Tracks That Tell the Story of The Rolling Stones. For the most part, I liked the telling too, though Jackson does make some missteps along the way. I’m all for using a bit of irreverence to juice up the storytelling, but he goes way too far when he says that Lennon’s “big mouth got him killed.” Actually, it was an insane man with a gun who got Lennon killed, and it’s pretty sick to suggest he was responsible for his own death in any way.

20 Things You May Not Have Known About 'Dawn of the Dead'

A decade after dropping the first, full-blown zombie apocalypse on our heads with Night of the Living Dead, George Romero got around to showing us what happened next. This time the thrills were more graphic, thanks to makeup legend Tom Savini and a full-color presentation, and the satire was sharper. But you already knew that. In celebration of the 35^th anniversary of its U.S. release, here are 20 Things You May Not Have Known About Dawn of the Dead!

1. A tour of the Monroeville Mall by his friend Mark Mason, who managed the establishment, was most inspirational to George Romero. When Mason mentioned that his mall would be a good place to hole up during a disaster, Romero started formulating the plot of his second Living Dead picture. He also ended up filming Dawn of the Dead in the Monroeville Mall. Other movies with scenes shot there include Flashdance and Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

2. The mall scenes in Dawn of the Dead had to be shot between 2 and 5 AM. 2 AM is when the mall’s final establishment, a tavern, closed for the night. 5 AM is when cardiac patients were admitted to exercise.

3. The Monroeville Mall would once again serve as a horrific setting in Stephen King’s Christine in 1983. A year before that novel was published, Romero and King collaborated on the portmanteau Creepshow with Romero directing and King writing and acting. The two horror icons would also meld minds on Romero’s big screen adaptation of King’s The Dark Half, though the original plan for Romero to direct King’s It for the small-screen as a seven-hour miniseries fell apart because of scheduling problems (Tommy Lee Wallace directed the half-as-long version in 1990 instead). From a Buick 6 was another Romero/King union that withered on the vine, though Romero adaptations of The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon and Gerald’s Game might still happen. Romero has already completed scripts for both possible films.

4. While the political implications of Night of the Living Dead were essentially an unintended factor caused by the casting of a black actor, Duane Jones, in the lead, Romero was fully conscious of the anti-consumerism message of Dawn of the Dead and continued to infuse all subsequent Living Dead movies with political themes.

Review: 'Capturing Archetypes: Twenty Years of Sideshow Collectibles Art'

Sideshow Collectibles are strangely multifaceted for models of characters from comics and genre movies. Sure, they’re basically scaled down representations of Darth Vader and Batman and the Alien and Bride of Frankenstein and The Creature from the Black Lagoon, progeny of the Aurora models adored by the monster kids of the fifties and sixties. But they are also exemplars of how seriously the geeks of today take their obsessions. The jocks can have their cheap plastic football trophies. Sideshow Collectibles are lovingly, intricately sculpted from assorted materials—resin, polystone, real cloth and leather, fiberglass. They may depict the icons of alleged low culture, but they are genuine art pieces, and they’re affixed with big art piece price tags, which also yokes them with the dubious distinction of being status symbols too (as of this writing, the most inexpensive item on Sideshow’s official site is a $69.99 vinyl doll of a character that looks like a licorice jelly bean called Dolly Colorway; the most expensive are lifesize busts of similar looking guys called War Machine and Iron Patriot, both running $8999.99). This means that they are only available to the wealthiest nerds, guys like Guillermo Del Toro, who pens the introduction to the new coffee table tribute Capturing Archetypes: Twenty Years of Sideshow Collectibles Art. This book is a far more economical way to collect these pieces than actually collecting them.

Del Toro offhandedly but insightfully mentions the “fetishistic” impulses of the collector, and Capturing Archetypes is nothing if not fetishistic. Instead of depicting the sculptures in flat full view, the book presents them in alluring shadows, lighting, and smoke, often zooming in on a particular feature or contour. There is an unabashed gaze on body parts, most obviously in the leering sculptures and photographs of curvaceous female characters, such as Catwoman, Molotov Cocktease, Lady Death, Vampira, Elvira, and Jessica Rabbit—who actually receives her own centerfold!—but also the absurd, veiny musculature of male characters like Dare Devil, the Hulk, and even Darth Maul. Capturing Geek Porn might have been a more accurate title for this book, but only the most blinkered critic would deny the true artistry of the pieces it depicts. And besides, Psychobabble Reader, whose body would you rather ogle: David’s or Boba Fett’s?

That’s what I thought.

A Note on Dave Davies, Jimmy Page, Shel Talmy, and 'The Who FAQ'

Hello, Psychobabble readers. I just want to take a moment to clarify a detail in my new book, The Who FAQ. In my chapter on musicians who guest-starred on Who recordings, I mentioned a much repeated and false claim by producer Shel Talmy that Jimmy Page played rhythm guitar on The Kinks' "You Really Got Me". I indicated that this was merely Talmy's claim and never intended to present it as definitive fact. As the player of the unforgettable riff and astounding lead guitar on that classic song, Dave Davies feels great ownership over it and rightly so. There are few songs in the Rock & Roll pantheon with more iconic guitar playing. 

Nevertheless, I may not have made it sufficiently clear that this was not a fact and that it was merely Talmy's version of what really happened. My source was the producer's interview with Richie Unterberger in his book Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers. In fact, Jimmy Page himself denies playing on the song, which you can in this piece on soundonsound.com here, and in this same piece, Talmy says he does not remember whether or not Page played on the track, further revealing his own shaky grasp on the history of the creation of "You Really Got Me". Once again, the truth is that Page did not play any guitar on "You Really Got Me" whatsoever, nor did he have anything to do with the sound or tone of Dave's guitar. I hope that readers of The Who FAQ will understand that I never intended to indicate otherwise. Talmy's false memory will not appear in future editions of The Who FAQ, including the upcoming Kindle edition.

Obviously, Dave continues to be one of my top Rock & Roll heroes and The Kinks continue to be one of my very favorite bands.

Review: The Criterion Edition of 'Breaking the Waves'

After starting his career with a series of highly stylized films, Lars von Trier made Breaking the Waves, his first after co-founding the Dogma 95 movement, which preached absolute austerity: only location and handheld shooting, only contemporary settings, no non-diegetic sound or optical manipulation, no superficial action, no credit for the director, etc. Typically, he had trouble even playing by his own rules, and von Trier’s break-through film arrived without Dogma 95-certification, largely because of the hyper-stylized, digitally-colored chapter titles accompanied by non-diegetic pop songs by the likes of Jethro Tull, David Bowie, and Elton John to establish the seventies time period.

Review: Mono Vinyl Reissues of Harry Nilsson's 'Pandemonium Shadow Show' and 'Aerial Ballet'

At the very, very end of the hallucinogenic year of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Rock’s Pied Piper released an album so radical it inspired all of his underlings to abandon their sitars and Mellotrons and get back to Rock & Roll’s rustic roots. Dylan’s John Wesley Harding actually wasn’t that radical considering that Rock & Roll had always been cyclical and always would be. It was inevitable that someone would eventually lead the pack away from psychedelic fads (in fact, Dylan’s album wasn’t really even the first back-to-the roots record of late ’67; The Beach Boys’ Wild Honey was).

For a truly radical late-1967 album, check out Harry Nilsson’s RCA debut, Pandemonium Shadow Show. It’s as psychedelic and as rootsy as a Stephen Sondheim musical, yet it houses trappings of both pre-and-post John Wesley Harding pop. Nilsson’s cover of The Beatles’ “You Can’t Do That” encapsulates this perfectly by quoting a dozen tracks by the kings of psychedelia to a back porch rhythm section of acoustic guitar and bongos. Nilsson mapped out a totally individual pop approach by tarting up such unfashionable styles as jazz, lounge, olde tyme brass band, and Broadway with wiseass humor. He made it more than mere novelty by interpreting this material with a truly gorgeous voice, often laid down in blankets of flawless overdubbed harmony. Even tarter, he undercuts all the offhand satire with “1941”, a stark, breath-snatching piece about the daddy issues that haunted his life and work.

           

This topic plops down at the very start of Nilsson’s second RCA album, 1968’s Aerial Ballet, as “Daddy’s Song” (later made famous by The Monkees in their movie Head, leading him from cutting the track from second pressings of Aerial Ballet). Despite the ironically light approach of this track, the rest of the album is less comic than Pandemonium Shadow Show and more of a personal artistic statement. The previous album had been evenly divided between covers and Nilsson originals. The new one only contained a single cover, a version of Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” that ended up being its most well-known track when John Schlesinger used it in Midnight Cowboy. Nilsson’s own composition “One” would be an even bigger hit when covered by Three Dog Night the following year.

Pandemonium Shadow Show and Aerial Ballet are both lovely, melancholically funny, and emotionally tender records, and both were released just as mono was falling out of favor, leaving the stereo mixes far more common. Sundazed Records has unearthed the mono versions for new 180 gram vinyl reissues produced with all due love, respect, and authenticity (even the RCA label’s are retained). Two of the most unique records of the late sixties are now more unique than ever.

Review: 'The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters'

You know you’re not reading a typical encyclopedia when it starts with a quote from Bugs Bunny. Nevertheless, The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters earns its name, covering an array of fantastic creatures in a single, monstrous 625-page volume. Editor Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock whittled his initial list of 1,000 monsters down to about 200, but because some of those entries are very wide-ranging (Animals, Monstrous; Bible, Monsters in The; Women, Monstrous) Weinstock’s contributors check a lot more than 200 off the list. With that multitude of contributors comes a multitude of approaches, some more successful than others, to studying creatures from Angel to Zombie. Some of the most pervasive monsters— Demon, Extraterrestrial, Ghost, Witch/Wizard—comprise a sizeable chunk of the book with multiple contributors exhaustively detailing how they have been portrayed in books, films, TV shows, comics,  and games throughout world history. Some get more attention than they deserve (Brownie is a slightly longer entry than Devil, The, Dracula, or Frankenstein’s Monster). At least one of the most essential and influential monsters—Hyde, Edward—is absurdly short-changed, the most essential and influential of his films—Rouben Mamoulian’s 1931 adaptation— not receiving any mention at all. Some entries are little more than lists of books and films with microscopic synopses and little in the way of historical background or analysis (Death, Personified, for example).

Most entries, however, strike a strong balance between the histories, insightful analyses, and lists of examples we expect of an authoritative encyclopedia. There are no significant absences and plenty to discover in the way of relatively unfamiliar creatures, such as Devil-Bug, the monster doorman from George Lippard’s The Monks of Monk Hall, the soothsaying Donestre of the Middle Ages, the child-killing Empousa of ancient Greek folklore, the world-creating ocean goddess Tiamat, a big Kosher bird called Ziz, and Kappa, a goofy-looking Japanese swamp monster that pulls kids’ internal organs out through their butts.

Review: 'Batman: The Silver Age Dailies and Sundays 1966-1967'

Batman has existed in a swarm of guises. He’s been a comic book and a campy live-action TV series and a Saturday morning cartoon and a Mego action figure and more than one movie franchise. One of the guy’s lesser-discussed incarnations is his turn as a newspaper comic strip. Batman first popped up in your local paper in 1943, only lasting there a few years before flapping back to the funny books. He had more success during his return run from 1966 to 1970 thanks to Adam West and Burt Ward.

Review: 'Steven Spielberg and Duel: The Making of a Film Career'

By the fourth quarter of the twentieth century, TV had overtaken movies as America’s number one entertainment for good, so it is fitting that the number one moviemaker of that period got his start on the little screen. Steven Spielberg was a TV junkie who’d made his name directing episodes of “Marcus Welby, M.D.”, “Columbo”, and most famously, “Rod Serling’s Night Gallery” when he was still barely old enough to drink. In 1971, he got his first break into feature-length movie making, though Duel was consigned to his usual living room-based medium. Spielberg’s ABC movie-of-the-week adaptation of Richard Matheson’s short story, however, revealed a big screen talent. This brutally minimalistic showdown between a suburban schlub and a literal monster truck was filmed with all the consideration and imagination of a major motion picture. That may not sound like a big deal in the day of “Mad Men” and “Game of Thrones”, but it was completely revolutionary in an age when TV movies were low-budget, disposable filler between episodes of “The Brady Bunch” and “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father”. In fact, Duel was so high quality that it earned a critically smashing feature run in Europe. Spielberg’s career as a TV director was coming to an end.

Duel is not generally mentioned among Spielberg’s signature films, but based on this above brief history, I’m sure you’ll understand its significance. If you need any further convincing, check out Steven Awalt’s excellent new book Steven Spielberg and Duel: The Making of a Film Career. Awalt gets deep into this film’s creation, from the inspiration for and publication of Matheson’s story to the film’s eventual American theatrical run in 1983 in the wake of Spielberg’s domination of cinemas with E.T. The history is complete, amusing (the “casting” of the automobiles is documented here, as is the Incredible Hulk’s theft of Duel footage), critical (though mostly of Awalt’s fellow Duel theorists), and often just as thrilling as the film it details. The author relates Matheson’s near-death experience that inspired his tale and Spielberg’s boyhood short movie about a head-on collision between model trains with a master storyteller’s grasp of suspense. He also really emphasizes the importance of master storyteller Richard Matheson in this history. Because Duel is so significant a milestone in Spielberg’s career, Matheson’s major role in its creation is often minimized. Not so in this book, which also contains that writer’s complete teleplay for his and Spielberg’s film. So this book functions as both an informative—and very entertaining—resource for students of Spielberg and a nice tribute to the recently deceased Richard Matheson.