jim henson

Okay, it's not too often that I feel so completely aware of my status as a shill, but I do so quite happily in this case.

Many thanks to a favorite radio alumnus pal of mine, Laura In The Living Room, for sending along a note hipping me to this.

At the website for the new David Byrne & Brian Eno album, 'Everything That Happens Will Happen Today' you can listen to the entire record streaming on the nifty flash player thingie.



(If you're having any trouble with the nifty flash player thingie embedded here, you might follow the link above to the website.)

Pardon me, but even if it's a marketing tool to increase sales, it's a nice gesture.

It was just about 30 years ago that Eno started producing Talking Heads records, and it was in 1981 that Byrne and Eno's first official collaboration, the ground-breaking 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts' was released.

This new album bears ever so much more of a resemblance to the pretty pop records that both parties have been releasing in just the past few years.
Though I've found some of the recent efforts to be very different than some of the very familiar old favorites, I've found plenty to like about them.
After a first listen I feel the same here, and maybe you will too.

Personally I'd say its sound is leaning just a tad more towards the recent Eno spectrum of things, in that its instrumentation is perhaps less adventurous and eclectic than some recent Byrne ventures.

I think also that the impression I'm getting is that maybe Eno was responsible primarily for melody, and Byrne for lyrics, which makes sense, I suppose.

Regardless, enjoy!

Another nugget of news Laura sent along about Mr. Byrne made me smile; Perhaps you've seen the
New York Times article that ran a couple of days ago, about the newly-installed NYC bicycle racks designed by David Byrne?

Follow the link...

When this story made it's first appearance in 1964, the AM radio band in America was filled with the non-stop snappy patter of top 40 pop disc jockeys promoting the hits, promoting their show's sponsors, and promoting their persona.

Though it was not necessarily a new phenomenon, it had reached a fever pitch and was quite a novelty of the era, as was the resurgence of rock & roll radio.

This spoof ran in issue #36 of Archie's Mad House, dated October, '64. It was written by George Gladir and drawn by
Joe Edwards.

'Archie's Mad House' was a humor comic book published by the same Archie folks that gave us the adventures of the high school crowd in Riverdale.

It was a brazen attempt to try and cash in on the popularity of MAD magazine, right down to the visual style of its cover border and the separation of the word 'mad' from 'house' in its title.

- For detailed info on 'Archie's Mad House', its creators and
this issue in particular, please follow this link to an entry at Scott Shaw's Oddball Comics posted this past spring.



⬆ READ 'Tops in Pops':

⬅ (Click either on images or page numbers to open an ENLARGED page in a new window) ⬇

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(page 6)






- For a bit more reference on the spoofing of the 'deejay craze', please see either of my previous posts presenting vintage novelty records on the topic:

Arbogast & Ross' 'Chaos', Parts 1 & 2, from 1959,

and

Ted Randal's 'What Is A Disc Jockey?', from 1957.


- For just a tiny bit more on the subject of 'Archie's Mad House', please let me also refer you to a flickr page in the 'Archie comics of the 1960's as a mirror to fads, fashion and trends' set that accompanied my previous blog post on that topic.

1. On the subject of 'film', this week I am feeling very ready for:
A new Coen Brothers comedy on the horizon. Thank you very much.

Still under the heading of 'film', I personally am NOT yet feeling at all prepared to contemplate Russell Crowe playing the lead role in a possible future biopic about the late stand-up comedian Bill Hicks, thanks again all the same.

2. I'm very pleased to announce that I've been a semi-regular contributor to the Contrast Podcast for a few weeks now, and it's been great fun.

This past week the chosen theme of the program was 'Wrath'.

I was again pleased to discover that the selection I made, Happy Flowers displaying their typical ultrasonic histrionics on the 1989 track 'I said I Wanna Watch Cartoons' seemed to go over pretty well.

3. Earlier this week I found a link to a creepy and fun 'activity game' site called 'The Hospital' (via Frankenstein's Fun House).

In it you explore the rooms of a spooky abandoned medical facility and click your cursor around to find all the clever little amusements you can uncover.

The site reminded me a bit of Vectorpark's 'Feed The Head' ▶
(which I mentioned here
earlier this year), another perfect and addictive time-killer.









4. The 'Extending Album Art' gallery I found at Spyder's Random Things (by way of coisas do arco da velha) blends and warps familiar album cover art in fun and fascinating ways.

Most of this batch ▲ was originally part of one of the many photoshop challenges found at b3ta,
which is always worthy of a peek.













5. You don't have to be a comic-book geek to enjoy the provocatively-titled list and discussion, '10 Comics Creators We Wish Would Make Movies Instead Of Frank Miller' posted at io9
(found via IMDb), but it sure couldn't hurt.

There's some great folks on the list, and plenty of worthy omissions cited in the post's comments, but I think things perhaps go astray a bit if the expectation is for some of these great visual artists to direct a live-action film. Still, fanboy speculation is a large part of what keeps the internet ticking...

6. - - and finally, still under the heading of 'comics' and 'fanboy', a couple of new books that look quite promising to me:

◀ - 'Telling Stories:
The Classic Comic Art of Frank Frazetta'

There have been several career-spanning collections published of work by the legendary fantasy illustrator, but often the comics artwork he did primarily in the 1940's and '50's is overlooked or given short shrift in favor of his lavish, more famous book-jacket paintings and such.

From some of the reviews I've read, it sounds like this book does a better job of presenting Frazetta's vintage sci-fi, action and jungle adventure stories - - many of them previously uncollected - - than the scant other books that have focused on this facet of his work.

- And speaking of 'previously uncollected', there's
'Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan'. ▶

This large book celebrates vintage Japanese Batman toys and other items, but more importantly, it reprints for the first time the rare Batman manga that was produced in Japan in the 1960's, licensed from DC Comics during the height of the American 'Batman' TV show's popularity.

There were already some Japanese comics publishers at the time who were reprinting translated American comics, but for only about a year there was also an 'experiment' in newly-created stories that gave the character a decidedly different treatment.

- Follow the links to About.Com for both a Preview Gallery for the book, and an interview with the authors, graphic designer Chip Kidd and bat-memorabilia collector
Saul Ferris.

- There's also a pretty good article, 'It's Bat-Manga!' at the Comic Book Resources website, reporting on a presentation that Chip Kidd did at Comic-Con about the book and the material.