As we've recently seen right here on Psychobabble, the Star Wars universe continues to pump out more and more stuff, often at the expense of the original trilogy's sense of whimsy and fun. That's why S.T. Bende and Iris Compiet's new book Star Wars Bestiary Vol. 1 is such a breath of fresh, Endor-scented air. This book is all fun and whimsy, a pseudo-space zoologist's (plus robot buddy) star-field book logging all the weird beasties populating Tattooine, Hoth, Dagobah, Jakku, Mandalore, and all those other far-flung locales.
It has been 90 years since writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster adapted their bald, hyphenated super villain Super-Man from an illustrated sci-fi pulp mag prose story into the spit-curled, milk-wholesome, unhyphenated superhero who is now more recognizable than Santa and Jesus put together, and a thousand times more powerful than either of those guys.
Once nothing more than a single extremely, extremely popular space-fantasy flick, Star Wars soon expanded into a line of Marvel comics, then a funky TV holiday special, then a sequel, and then another sequel. Read-along records and Dixie cups aside, that basically brings us to 1983. Over the following four decades, what it means to be Star Wars would continue to swell, ultimately encompassing eight more feature films, numerous cartoons and live-action TV series, countless comics, novel series, and games, and pretty much anything else you could possibly think of. It's only a matter of time before Guerra de las Galaxias: La Telenovela debuts.
A big archival release from The Beatles is something that Beatlemaniacs have come to anticipate around this time each year, although what exactly the release might be has become harder to predict. For several seasons, we could count on big box sets devoted to specific albums. Then, last year, when fans were certain a multi-disc box set focused on Rubber Soul would be the thing, Universal Music zagged with expanded editions of the "Red" and "Blue" compilations. This year brings another somewhat unexpected release: vinyl reissues of The Beatles' first six American albums for the first time since the eighties.
I was actually expecting such a release for a while, ever since all of the Capitol albums (plus that one on United Artists) were put out as a CD box set in 2014 for the fiftieth anniversary of the boys' first trip to America. I'm a little surprised it took a decade to get the first half of those albums back out on vinyl, although this year does make sense as we've now hit the sixtieth anniversary of that first U.S. visit.
After Brian Jones died, and a somewhat shaky stage-restart at his memorial concert in Hyde Park, The Rolling Stones properly mounted their first tour in nearly three years in November of 1969. These shows would not be without their problems, the infamous Altamont disaster being among them, but the Stones' U.S. tour was at least a triumph of performance. Culling fiery tracks from Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, and the surrounding singles, as well as a few choice Chuck Berries and occasional side trips to earlier originals like "Under My Thumb" and "I'm Free", the Stones kept the material simple with the focus on Mick Jagger's cavorting and new-boy Mick Taylor's biting leads.
As the bringer of shuddering waves of viola and a general avant-garde spirit to the first two Velvet Underground records, John Cale may have seemed like the Velvet least likely to be poised for a solo pop career. Cale almost immediately confounded any such expectations with his debut solo album. Despite its disturbing cover shot of Cale in a clear mask fit only for the least convivial serial killer, Vintage Violence was a tribute to The Band's rustic yet tuneful Americana-as-seen-by-an-outsider slant. His subsequent sometimes lovely, sometimes cacophonous collaboration with experimental composer Terry Riley, The Church of Anthrax, reminded those listening to not get too comfortable.
By the mid-eighties, there was trouble in the Attractions, although Elvis Costello wasn't quite ready to lop "and the Attractions" from his album covers just yet. So he put out King of America, which could rightfully be deemed his first solo album since My Aim Is True, as The Costello Show, even though the Attractions do back him on "Suit of Lights". Elsewhere his support is the American studio-group he unfortunately christened the Confederates.
Zoot Money's Big Roll band is one of those group's you read about a bit if you're into sixties British rock, but outside of the ephemeral live scene, their biggest contribution to rock was a certain young guitar-whiz named Andy Summers. Their music was fairly generic big-band British soul and blues in the vein of Manfred Mann, although Money's mildly hoarse soul shout was full of personality and Summers, of course, is no slouch when wielding an axe.
As we reach the penultimate month of Elemental Music's year of Motown vinyl reissues we receive three rather different records. The earliest of these is one of Motown's courting-the-old-folks discs, although unlike the label's stodgier efforts in this arena, which tended to force The Four Tops or The Supremes to croon show tunes or corny standards, Marvin Gaye's When I'm Alone I Cry is something else entirely. In fact, Gaye had greater ambitions to be the next Nat King Cole than to be the next Smokey Robinson, so his heart was completely in this album. It's a genuine class act, marrying Gaye's classically fine voice with beautiful big band arrangements. This is a record that actually deserved to win over an older audience of discerning listeners. Moody and gorgeous.
"This is a book that's designed to start arguments." That's the way editor Gary Graff begins 501 Essential Albums of the 90s: The Music Fan's Definitive Guide, and really, it's the only way it could begin. Graff knows as well as anyone who has yet to even crack the cover of a book of this sort that there are going to be painful omissions and a fair share of painful inclusions. Even though I've written a book along these lines and know the pitfalls of doing such a thing all too well, I still allowed my teeth to grind at the absence of anything by Grant Lee Buffalo, Suzanne Vega, Throwing Muses, Belly, Juliana Hatfield, Shudder to Think, and quite a few other artists that I feel any guide that calls itself "definitive" can't do without. I also gagged at the inclusions of objectively crappy artifacts from the likes of Brian Adams, Meatloaf, Sponge, Bush, Britney Spears, Korn, and...well...I can really go on and on and on on that account.
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I was actually expecting such a release for a while, ever since all of the Capitol albums (plus that one on United Artists) were put out as a CD box set in 2014 for the fiftieth anniversary of the boys' first trip to America. I'm a little surprised it took a decade to get the first half of those albums back out on vinyl, although this year does make sense as we've now hit the sixtieth anniversary of that first U.S. visit.
