Popeye Vol. 1: “I Yam What I Yamâ€Â by E.C. Segar

Popeye Vol. 1: “I Yam What I Yamâ€Â by E.C. Segar
Art Out Of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries 1900-1969, edited by Dan Nadel
Review by Robert Dayton

Two thousand and six was a profoundly great year in comics for initiates and novices alike and let’s hope, as our eyes gaze heavenward, that this is a signifier of what is to come in 2007 and beyond. One needn’t be bound and shackled by the mires of comic geekdom to appreciate these fine objets d’art. Proof of this pudding can be found in Popeye Vol. 1: “I Yam What I Yamâ€Â by E.C. Segar.

What many of us know of Popeye is a mere bastardization faded through Xerox visions. Possibly the closest anyone got to the original template was Robert Altman’s Popeye movie (a box office bomb and near career destroyer) with its’ sprawling seaside ruddiness and great songs by Nilsson and Van Dyke Parks! Natch that this book’s intro is by Jules Feiffer, cartooning legend and screenplay writer of that movie. The original Popeye was crusty and, at first, only incidental. This volume starts at the beginning of Popeye but the real beginning was years before. When E.C. Segar began his Thimble Theatre newspaper strip in 1919 it was little more than a comic take on adventure serials, damsel in distress kinda stuff. Eventually genre parody gave way to propelled flights of whimsy, stereotypes dissolved as Segar developed true characters and archetypes to propel these continuing misadventures, such as Olive Oyl and her brother Castor Oyl One day in early 1929 Popeye just plunked down into frame unforgettably. Then after a few months Popeye disappeared back into the ether. He wasn’t gone for long. Readers wrote in, they needed Popeye, a spark was struck, something had stuck, a comic anti-hero that caught permanent fancy in the publics’ twinkling craw.

The strip was brilliant and Popeye just fit. Segar already honed the slang and jargon of the day but with Popeye it was even further skewed mutterings of verbiage. Thimble Theatre was like ergot laced barnacles, comedic character interaction with a beating bandaged heart, rough and tumble gags laced with depth, and elements of the fantastique with such wild characters as the wish granting Whiffle Hen and the eerily menacing Sea Hag. Most importantly, Thimble Theatre was funny.

By the time of Segar’s death in 1938, the Fleischer studios had already been producing a few very impressive Popeye cartoons in their own right, where fleeting moments from the strip (spinach, Brutus nee Bluto) became permanent mainstays. Outside of the creator’s vision these tropes landed on the screen and into other merchandising friendly elements of popular culture.
With this new volume from Fantagraphics, gregariously steel yourself for the real Popeye, the original ancient scrolls that stem right from just before his first appearance and continuing onwards chronologically. This Popeye defied the conventions that were later to be thrust upon him by the non-Segars, the lesser lights. This big bound collection is a pure antidote for depression, especially if one veers towards surliness or cynicism though wide-eyed naivetes can easily enjoy it as well. And this is just Volume One of a proposed six volume set (Volume Two, due next year, introduces Wimpy!)!

Designed by Jacob Covey, the hardcover package features a cut out word balloon title-it is literally cut out of the hard bound cover. It’s just stunningly put together. Fantagraphics have utilized computer technology to render these strips in crisp glory; the full page colour newspaper strips are lush, soft washes. As such an integral part of comics history, these strips should always be in print. Before this, one had to desperately seek out Fantagraphics’ previous reprintings from the early 90’s, those unassuming volumes –even in soft cover- were less economical and not as advanced in design and lay out. This book is a steal at approximately thirty dollars, an investment of joy.
A few years back when I was seeking those earlier inferior volumes, my travels led me to Olympia, Wa- known also by its’ other name as Indie Rock Hell- where there exists a great comic shop called The Danger Room. The two proprietors would often argue about which was the greatest newspaper strip of all time: Thimble Theatre or George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, both are on their Top Two lists anyways so it is a microscopic yet enjoyable argument. If you want to add fuel to that hierarchical debating fire there are some wonderful reprints of Krazy Kat also available. I still pledge allegiance to Thimble Theatre. This volume does not reprint too many of the strips before Popeye’s arrival on the scene but if one is curious issue 271 of the Comics Journal reprints a terrific fifty page Thimble Theatre adventure.

Before I take leave of you I should mention another must have book that had me giddy as a schoolgirl’s first ride on a pony. Entitled Art Out Of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries 1900-1969 and edited by Dan Nadel, this book pleases the palates of both comic know-it-alls and future junior initiates as well with overlooked works by those who slipped through the cracks whilst expanding the form. And absolutely no super heroes to speak of. Just sweet delirium tremors. Seek it out. It will cause you to float in space.

Yellow Balloon

I have read the lengthy booklet that comes with Sundazed’s reissue of The Yellow Balloon’s self-titled album two times now, and I’m still not really sure I understand the band’s story. But here’s what I think it is:

Gary Zekley, – a songwriter, producer and sometimes band member on the West Coast pop circuit of the 1960s – wrote a song, called “The Yellow Balloon,” and handed it off to Jan and Dean. Knowing the song was going to be a hit, Zekley threw together a band and recorded a version of his own, hoping to beat Jan and Dean to the studio finish line. One member of the band Zekley assembled was Don Grady, who played Robbie Douglas on the hit TV show “My Three Sons,” and who had already been moonlighting as a rock ‘n’ rooler, most recently in a folk-rock band called The Palace Guard. Zekley’s motley band wound up naming itself after the song they were assembled to record, scored a minor hit with their version of “Balloon,” and went on to make a full-length album.

I may or may not have all of that right, and I may have missed some important points of the band’s brief story. But here’s the real gist of what I want to say in this space: the album, The Yellow Balloon, is a minor treasure of sun-soaked California psychedelic pop. Part Byrds, part Beach Boys, part Turtles, part Left Banke . . . but the 60s band the Balloon most sounds like is the good-timey Lovin’ Spoonful. The songs are happy and bouncy, they boast excellent melodies and just enough acid flavor to let you know what era they were recorded in. That studio pros like Jim Gordon and Carole Kaye played many of the instruments on the record is something we’ll overlook for the moment – the band The Yellow Balloon (with Grady wearing a wig and shades so as not to be recognized) did tour to support the record, and played some of the instruments on the album, and their lead singer, Alex Valdez, sang most of the songs (Grady sings others).

The bonus tracks Sundazed added to the set include some songs Grady recorded as a solo artist and as leader of an outfit called The Windupwatchband. There is also an interview with Zekley, who died in the late 90s. Some of Grady’s solo stuff is as good as, maybe better than, the material on the main album.

The Yellow Balloon were not a great band. But they managed to make one record which nicely captures the time and place of California in the mid-to-late 1960s. The Gary Zekley mystique and the Don “Robbie Douglas” connection only add to their allure.

The Rockin’ Vickers – The Complete: It’s Alright! CD (RPM)

Active from 1964-1967, this North English combo deserve more than its ” Lemmy Kilmeister’s first band” footnote. With their taut 40-minute sets and clerical airs, they were favorites of the Northern dance club scene, though the lack of original material limited their options. A late move to London to record for Shel Talmy didn’t change the world, though theirs’ surely turned more moddish and they found hipper writers to cover. The band’s appealing confidence shows in the title track, a startling rearrangement of the Who’s then-unreleased “The Kids Are Alright” replete with tinkling keys and falsetto call-and-response vocals, and on the irresistibly twitchy “Say Mama.” Stay tuned till the closer, “Little Rosy,” an unreleased Ray Davies tune performed with properly Kinksy abandon.

“SHAKEDOWN: ORIGINAL BRISBANE PUNK 1979-83”

I’ll admit, I thought the Australian 70s/80s punk goldmine had long been tapped. Ever since I bought the “Bloodstains Across Australia” comp LP & then sold it back (because I thought at the time that it had nothing in the league of The Victims, Razar, Rocks, Psycho Surgeons et al), I counted myself fortunate to have ingested & mentally tagged every great Aussie punk 45 of the golden era. But that’s before I heard this great new compilation from Dropkick Records – and specifically, the band the YOUNG IDENTITIES. Their “Positive Thinking” 45 from 1979 is one of the most raw, crazed & wacked-out punk rock singles of any era, totally in league with the MENTALLY ILL and sharing many of the same fine traits (like an unglued singer with a whiney. nasally voice + a bass player who seems content to hit the same chord over & over as fast as possible). You get all three tracks from that and their other single too, plus some great stuff from JUST URBAIN (“Burning” is fantastic), the BODYSNATCHERS and SECTION URBAIN. Ironically, several tracks were on the “Bloodstains” comp I didn’t like, which proves again the wisdom of age. For some reason there’s the nearly-hideous Bauhuas ripoff band called KICKS on here too, 8 of the 26 tracks in fact, but you know how to use the skip button, dont ya? Here’s what Dropkick has to say about this compilation, just so you know:

Shake Records and Savage Music (essentially the same thing) was the label run in Brisbane during the late ’70s by David Holiday and Peter Miller from Just Urbain, and Rod McLeod from the Young Identities. The first release orchestrated by this brains trust was the Cigarettes and Alcohol” 7″ from local heroes The Leftovers. With no-one within earshot waving chequebooks at them, and having caught the DIY bug, they had nine releases in all, eight 7″s and a live cassette. Roll call: Just Urbain, Young Identities, Bodysnatchers and Kicks.

The bands here are among the most primitive, inept and snotty DIY noise to be found in Australia at the time. The singles sold out their tiny hand made pressings (usually 100 to 200) within months and quickly became highly sought-after. These days they are next to impossible to find. Almost the entire label’s output is compiled here (save a few songs from the Kicks cassette), complete with plenty of band photos, flyers, artwork and lengthy recollections from Messrs Holiday and Miller.

I say it’s a great one, and seriously, if you don’t hear that Young Identities stuff you’re going to the grave with only a life half lived.

Victor Bravo – Shut Out The Sky CD-EP

Victor Bravo is a stripped-down garage rock juggernaut of Collin Frendz on fuzzy guitar and echoey howl-at-the-moon vocals and Dan Collins on twitchy drums. Tracks 1-3 are terrific, swaggering snot-nosed anthems in the tradition of rural pissed-off teens from 1966 on. “Binge” is an irresistibly Dionysian release, though “Sarbanes-Oxley” (named for the 2002 corporate accounting reform act) is hardly a typical lowbrow theme. Closes with the throwaway sneer of “Toxic Tornado,” weakening the effect of the rest of the EP. The band is now based in NYC, but has roots in Maine that I hope they keep watered.

More info
www.victorbravo.com

Even Smaller Crumbs

All I seem to have to do is to save up a few tiny items for one of these collections of trivia and the very next day I find a bunch more. Almost immediately after pushing the “publish” button on the last batch, I was walking around the ‘hood and found a new Nike painting. But that’ll have to wait…

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Meanwhile, it’s that time again, and for the first year in recent memory the Potsdamer Platz public transportation is open for the Berlinale, Berlin’s once-mighty film festival. Two things I never do is go to the Berlinale and read the pitiful excuse for an English-language magazine here, the Ex-Berliner, but I do get a kick out of their sadsack music editor, David Strauss, and he’s gotten the no doubt unpaid job of blogging the Berlinale for them. It could be fun to read, and so if you’re interested, I suggest you click here.

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Last year, out of nowhere, I got a two-Euro coin that looked like this:

The building is the Holstentor in Lübeck, pretty much the symbol of that city, and seeing it on the back of these special coins was, in fact, the only way to see it during much of last year, because the real thing was covered by scaffolding. Just why Germany would choose to change its coinage design only a few years into introducing it I had no idea, but last night I was in some seedy dive or another, and got this in change:

It took me a bit of surfing around to find out that this is Schwerin Castle, representing the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and to find an explanation, rendered in the stiffest possible English translation. Basically, the various Federal states of Germany take over the annual presidency of the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, and get their own coins as a perk. Germany’s the only country doing this, which is further proof that a lot of the Euro system was designed by them. Why else would we have a 20-cent, instead of a 25-cent, coin, not to mention the tiny, confusing 2-centers?

Of course, what they’re really really good for, these special €2 coins, is making cashiers — especially outside of Germany — hand you your change back and tell you it’s not good.

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Has anyone else noticed the proliferation of “French” cafes around town? There must be a dozen of them which’ve sprung up in the past six months, particularly around trendy areas like Weinbergsweg, Kollwitzplatz, and so on. What’s really weird, though, is that there’s nothing particularly French about anything but the wine they offer (and that’s usually not so hot), and the ones that pretend to have a little deli section don’t seem to have a clue what French food is. One I’ve got my eye on, though, is just down the street from me on Torstr. In the former Döner Kebap joint that had the weird poem about children being the future of the world on its wall, someone’s opening something called Bandol, and they’ve been installing vintage meat lockers and a blackboard wall for writing the menu, plus diner-y chrome stools — and two huge TV monitors above the door. Or that’s what it looks like from the street. We’ll see (if “we” can afford it, that is) what it turns out to be. Meanwhile, though, to date it looks like “French” is the new “Mexican.”

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Places We Won’t Be Dining: Spotted on Marienburger Str.: Pizza Pimp.

THE REVILLOS’ “MOTORBIKE BEAT”

(Note: I wrote the following on my old blog AGONY SHORTHAND in April 2003. Had mp3 blogs existed then, I would have uploaded the track for you. Now that they do, I am “repurposingâ€Â this original content):

I was 12 years old in 1980, and had had some limited exposure to what was then known as “new wave”. Punk was still something I wasn’t ready to fully tackle, given that the bands & audience actually spit on each other — or so TIME magazine said — but I was definitely extremely curious. Anything that might sound “punk” or “new wave” sounded it might be really fucking cool, so armed with a rudimentary knowledge of what it actually might sound like (having heard Devo and the B-52s, I was certainly an expert), I would tune in to various FM dinosaur rock stations and see if I could find any. These stations, which at the time normally played a mix of horrible AOR like Journey, Styx and the Eagles, were being forced by program directors to play some of this new shit, because everyone said it was “about to break”. So you’d often hear some crap power pop trotted out as punk/new wave or my favorite, “modern music”. And believe me — and many others who’ve testified to this fact — kids in my suburb, at least, used “punk” and “new wave” interchangeably and almost always as a negative, and the main epithet hurled at kids who dressed like funny new wavers or hardcore punks was ALWAYS “Hey, Devo!!”.

So my plan was to write down the names of the performers and songs that sounded new wave or punk, and then I’d go look for the records at the mall. The first thing I heard that was definitely new wave to my 12-year-old ears was LOU REED’s “Vicious”, from the “Transformer” LP, but when I saw the cover at the Wherehouse or the Record Factory or whatever, I decided it probably wouldn’t be any good. The wisdom of youth! It was a blast, though — this was how I discovered ROXY MUSIC (“Virginia Plain” — totally new wave), among others. But the big eye-opener was finding college radio. In the area south of San Francisco was (and still is) a great college station, KFJC. It was there that I heard new wave song after punk song after new wave song, but I’ll definitely remember the first one I ever heard and loved: “Motorbike Beat” by the REVILLOS. Trouble was, I didn’t write it down — but the song stuck with me, and stuck with me, for years.

Once I found out it was the Revillos, sometime in the 1990s, their comedic image as “wacky space people with ray guns” totally turned me off (even though I like the REZILLOS first LP, and it’s essentially the same band), so I never tracked the 45 down. An ill wind of nostalgia swept over me recently, though, and I bid for the 45 on eBay — and won. And you know what? It holds up. It’s a top-flight corker, this song — ultra-frantic, rockabilly-tinged punk with dueling male & female vocals, squealing motorcycle sounds, and just a can’t-beat-it FUN vibe that’s not contrived or too loony to listen to. It was really nice to have it back, 23 years later, since I hadn’t heard it since 1980. The flip “No Such Luck” isn’t half bad, either! What about the rest of their stuff? That goofball space thing still has me pretty wary…..

(Here we are back in 2007 again…) I since learned that most of their stuff was OK, but that this is still their crown jewel. Understand and accept that it’s probably closer to the B-52s themselves than it is to, say, The Cramps, and if you’re cool with that, then here’s the song for your listening pleasure.

Download THE REVILLOS – “Motorbike Beatâ€Â 45

Thorinshield – “S/T” CD (Fallout)

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Steve Douglas produced and Perry Botkin arranged the sole, baroque 1968 album by this obscure L.A. trio whose lush harmonies and folk-rock jangle suggest they were paying close attention to Love and Buffalo Springfield. Too sing-song earnest in spots, on “The Best of It,” Thorinshield come off as clueless dopes in the face of a bad girl’s attitude. But on a spaced-out fantasia like “Prelude to a Postlude,” the romantic observations only get more charming as they’re repeated ad infinitum, while the backwards guitar and glee-club vocals on “One Girl” sound like a cool lost Merry-Go-Round track. Overall, a sweet and summery discovery. Bassist Bobby Ray would go on to record the cult fave “Initiation of a Mystic” in 1970.

Bobbie Gentry – The Delta Sweete/ Local Gentry CD (Raven)

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In compiling Bobbie Gentry’s two hard-to-find 1968 LPs, the Australian Raven label has done a service to the American south and its slim yet significant feminist swamp rock scene. Fresh from the breakout success of the strange, symbolic “Ode to Billy Joe,” Miz Gentry crafted in “The Delta Sweete” a fascinating song cycle about the discordant strands that tied the new south to the old. Although recorded in Hollywood, the mood is pure Delta, with colloquial spoken asides, steamy arrangements and big mama Bobbie’s tough, soulful and sometimes sleepy voice central to the proceedings. But while the disc starts off in a rich and funky groove, it soon veers into a distinctly personal brand of psychedelic pop that’s among the most original and lovely sounds crafted in that fertile year. Several of the originals rely on dream and sleep imagery to conjure an otherworldly, haunting air that’s just unforgettable. As good as “The Delta Sweete” was, it flopped, and the consummate pro rushed back into the studio in London to remake herself anew. The more modest “Local Gentry” unfortunately drops the sexy blues standards for maudlin Beatles covers, a minor misstep along the path to duet success with Glen Campbell. But there are still some great moments, with the gently sociopathic “Recollection” and the dark humored “Casket Vignette” especially effective, so fans won’t mind having it slotted onto the single CD. Also included are covers of “Stormy” and an interesting take on Donovan’s “Skip Along Sam” that riffs off the “Casket Vignette” arrangement.

SHIT-FI DOT COM

I’ve only had a second or two to look over this new website called SHIT-FI.COM, but they’ve captured a slice of the microscenia zeitgeist that warms the cockles of my heart. That is – off-putting, poorly-recorded accidents of history that in themselves became influential musical masterpieces. Think MIKE REP & THE QUOTAS, the ELECTRIC EELS, the first GERMS single. I think it’s important to read both their manifesto and their shit list of worthy recordings, many of which I’d count among the greatest sounds of all time. And as you can see on their home page, they have a very classy logo. Hear hear!