AaronPoehler.com

June 5, 2007: I'm reading Rucka's Detective with Brubaker & Cooke's Slam Bradley "On the Trail of the Catwoman" backup and it rocks. No writer today is doing anything in 22 pages they couldn't do in 16 pages, and the discipline required to write anything significant in 6 pages would serve many current writers well. Too many pages today are wasted on empty posturing and meaningless dialogue that serves no purpose whatsoever in either moving the plot or defining character. Backup features also provide space to develop up-and-comers, both in terms of talent and in terms of secondary characters with potential. Remember, Wolverine was just a shitty one-off Hulk foe once, and Green Arrow never appeared in his own book until he'd been around as a backup feature for around forty years. Finally, it would cut down on books delayed because of slow artists--a lot of people fell out of the industry when the monthly pagecount went up from 17 to 25 and there are a lot more people that can reliably produce 16 pages than a full 22.

Comics need more backup features.

May 13, 2007: Two brand-new songs are up on my myspace profile now, "Home To You" and "It's Coming". I think of them like a vinyl single where "Home To You" is the A-side and "It's Coming" is on the flip.

These were the first tracks I've done entirely in Cubase, which I've been working with for awhile. It's fairly intuitive and allows me much greater freedom in multitrack recording and editing than my previous setup did--basically, on both of these songs I'm playing everything.

Like much in life, this is both a blessing and a curse: while it's great to have the flexibility to work with the tracks this way, there's temptation to keep fiddling with them, endlessly tinkering with minute details. And in the end, it's difficult to say with any real certainty how many of these changes make the music noticeably better or different. Where just sitting down in front of a couple of mics and banging out a song on the acoustic guitar is like photography, creating in this way is much more like painting.

Regardless, at some point you've just got to call it done and move on--otherwise you end up like Axl Rose, twiddling with the same twelve tracks for an equal number of years. I heard a leaked version of a new "Guns 'N Roses" track called "Better" and it sounded like the ultimate example of this syndrome: a basically decent song buried under dozens of edits, bizarre arrangements, layer upon layer of overdubs, and odd production choices.

At least if I end up doing that it's costing me nothing but my own time and effort, rather than thousands and thousands of dollars worth of studio time.

Anyway, check out the new songs. Hope you dig 'em.

In retrospect, Infinite Crisis feels a lot more like Zero Hour than it does Crisis On Infinite Earths. IC obviously picked up a few loose plot threads from COIE, but everything outside of that was much more reminiscent of Zero Hour: length, pacing, art, quality, central conceit. COIE is far from perfect but casually acheives a sprawling epic feel that both IC and ZH can be felt to strive for but fall far short.

As one-dimensional a character as the Anti-Monitor is (single defining characteristic: he wants to destroy everything) as the Big Bad of COIE, the central plot shared by IC and ZH of 'rogue hero wants to destroy everything...so he can fix it' was equally rote. ZH was consistently mediocre, IC not even consistent. Some of the art was fanatastic, some of it wasn't. But when a series degenerates to the point you rarely have four pages in a row drawn by the same team, it breaks the spell of disbelief required on the part of the reader.

COIE really did make major changes in what had been set in stone at DC for over 25 years at the time of its issue, and most of the major changes it wrought stayed more or less undone for nearly another 20 years. ZH and IC both just tidied up some minor sticking points from the past five, maybe ten years or so. And hey, it's not like anyone couldn't sleep at night not knowing exactly where Power Girl came from.

In the end, what can one say about Infinite Crisis? It seemed well-intentioned on Geoff Johns' part. I thought it seemed like he was trying hard. In the end the series just didn't deliver, that's all.

Fortunately, 52 delivers in every way Infinite Crisis did not. Perhaps that's the real value of IC: it gave us an environment that allowed 52 to exist.

May 3, 2007: I have something like 115 different CDs up for auction on ebay right now, ending in the next couple of days. Check 'em out.

Also: beginning today I am serializing my novel Formerly Chelsea Trash right here at aaronpoehler.com. Currently available is the prologue, with future installments to appear soon.

April 28, 2007: Admittedly, I loathe the current leadership of the United States and in the next Presidential election I will almost certainly vote against the Republican Party no matter what. I will vote for whoever is not continuing on from the incompetent, destructive, idiotic path the United States has been led down in the last seven years.

We need to be careful not to fool ourselves that 'so-and-so couldn't possibly do a worse job'--there are always further depths to which a country can fall. And while right now--well over a year and half away from election time--Hilary Clinton seems far and away to have the highest degree of electability, anything can happen in a year's time. We don't know who's running now--any judgments are somewhat preliminary when considering a potential candidate divorced of the context they'll eventually run in. And all things considered, if you asked me right now if I would vote Hilary Clinton for US President or an unnamed Republican opponent, I would have to admit I'd vote for Hilary.

There's something of Maggie Thatcher about her, isn't there? Something about Hilary smacks of the egotist. And the problem with the pseudo-monarchist, anti-democratic current arrangement of the US governnment is that it can be too easily usurped. What I want--what we all want--is a return to the democratic ideals that are the strength of this country. We're tired of being led by a blind, bullheaded twat who won't listen to reason, who doesn't care that 80 percent of the country says he's fucking wrong and wants him to fucking stop.

The right person for president is the person who will dismantle this royalist yes-man administration and return us to democracy. The wrong person will usurp it for their own ends--which no doubt they will think are the right ends, as George W. Bush no doubt believes he is doing.

Awhile ago, a couple of acquaintances of mine were assembling a comics anthology project and asked for submissions. I knew going in that chances the project would actually be carried through to completion were less than perfect, but I wanted to try working in comic script form--if nothing else, I figured it would be an interesting exercise.

I wrote a nine-page script, “Dry Eye Syndrome,” and submitted it to the editors. It was accepted and slated for inclusion in the anthology, and then…nothing. Months later I happened to ask one of the organizers about it and sure enough, the project had fallen apart due to several factors (none of which quite explained why they hadn’t informed the contributors of the anthology’s defunct status, however). So it goes.

I have posted “Dry Eye Syndrome" (with a couple of minor tweaks and edits) here on this site. Obviously, it wasn’t really intended to be read in this form—ideally it would have been drawn per the art cues given in the script--so use your imagination and try to picture this story the way it should have appeared.

Actually, half the time one has to do that even with comics that actually are completed and drawn, so maybe it’s fine this way in the end.

I actually thought this week's World War III minievent tied to 52 was a fairly elegant solution to a potentially knotty problem. At the inception of 52, concurrent with the DC Universe's One Year Later event, most of the main DCU books jumped a year with some changes in between, and 52 promised to tell the stories of how they got there along the way. As it turned out, that was a piss-poor idea: those books naturally had to fill in a lot of that backstory themselves just to move forward, and for 52 to be a story on its own it necessarily focused on its own cast of characters. This left little room for pointless side-trips for no reason other than to say "Oh yeah this is how Firestorm and Cyborg got unfused...um, Mr Terrific fixed it. Or Dr. Mid-Nite, one of them." Essentially, while 52 started off as an editorially-mandated project it developed into a writer-led one, and as a result, it became a success on the strength of the writing and as it turned out, answering the questions of why Martian Manhunter got angsty or when Supergirl got back from the future didn't turn out to be particularly enticing story hooks for the writers in question.

But now here we are nearly a year later and the One Year Later label has lost any luster it might have had due to the line being bogged down in late books (Action, Batman, Wonder Woman), sagging sales (pretty much all the other OYL books), and cancellations, and few readers are really asking the questions anymore of how the characters got to where they were at the beginning of the One Year Later jump. Still, some people did still want the answers--and the answers were promised, after all. What to do? The obvious thing to do would be to bring down the heavy hand of editorial and force the 52 writers to cram in the answers, almost certainly to the detriment of 52's quality and therefore its longterm sales in collected form.

Concurrently in 52, in classic over-the-top grandiose comic style they decided to term a standard "All the other superheroes versus Black Adam" fight 'World War III' and are selling it as a huge event. (You know, in the middle of all the other huge events.) But come on, it's one week, one issue, of one book. That's not a World War, that's just a comic book fight scene.

So by releasing four standalone World War III specials the same week as 52 week 50, they expand the scope of the 'War' and make it seem like something that actually has repercussions beyond 52 (though at this point all the other DCU books are a year past WWIII) while at the same time providing a catchall place to throw all the other One Year Later explanations that became irrelevant to 52--and really, to anyone who wasn't reading all the One Year Later books eleven months ago and still wants minor plot points from them explained. After reading them, all four WWIII books are in fact completely unnecessary to 52, and the manner of the One Year Later explanations contained within are hilariously obvious examples of just how uninteresting most of the unexplained story points were and why the 52 writers never bothered to follow up on them, as they're dispatched one by one in obvious asides and perfunctory scenes: "Hey Hawkgirl, you were real big for some reason, weren't you?" "Uh yeah they shrank me down...right before WWIII." "Hey why and when did Amanda Waller reactivate the Suicide Squad?" "Oh uh, during World War III. Because it was such a big deal and all." "Why was it again the Teen Titans broke up for awhile?" "They got beat up bad in World War III." "Why was Donna Troy acting as Wonder Woman back in the beginning of the Allan Heinberg series? Actually why was anything in his series happening?" "Um, well, Donna picked up the costume during WWIII. As for the rest, even we don't know and probably no one ever will, so forget it and move on." "Why was Jason Todd dressed as Nightwing for awhile?" "Oh, cause we were gonna kill Dick Grayson and replace him as Nightwing with Jason. But then we didn't kill Dick. So...I guess Jason put on the costume during World War III!" Okay, the Aquaman thing legitimately needed to be explained, but the rest was pretty inconsequential and almost certainly incomprehensible to anyone but total DCU fans. (And as it turns out they may have screwed up the Aquaman thing entirely anyway.)

The end result is something you should almost certainly skip unless you already give a shit about this stuff, but in relieving 52 of the burden of explaining this mundane bullshit the WWIII specials perform the greater service of making sure 52 is something an average reader (i.e. someone who doesn't necessarily know or care about when Deathstroke started turning Batgirl evil) will be able to pick up and read without being utterly confused by seeing a bunch of totally random DCU continuity crap stuck in the story for no good reason. As it stands I don't think 52 is any more confusing than say, Lord Of The Rings anyway.

I will say this: while I think many of decisions Marvel has made recently as far as Spider-Man revealing his identity, the end of Civil War, and killing Cap have been wrong, badly executed, or just dumb, I respect the fact that they're out there trying to do something different, take chances, and go where they think the story's going even if I disagree with it. They may not be selling those comics to me, but hey, as long as they're selling comics.

On Captain America: The only time I ever bought Cap's solo book during the Gruenwald years was when Cap was hunting down Scourge, the guy who was killing all these minor supervillains--basically exactly what Punisher War Journal is now, ironically. Then Cap caught Scourge and I didn't really see any reason to keep buying the series.

I always liked Cap as an Avenger, but oh man it's boring when it's Steve Rogers' personal life. All he ever did was ride around on his motorcycle and draw comic pages (yeah, what? Who thought making Cap's secret identity a comic book artist was a good idea?)

Which side of Marvel's Civil War did Jarvis align with? Let's see: lifelong employment with the most powerful dude in the USA vs. a chance to sleep with Aunt May. Hm, that is a real thinker.

Oh, and really Marvel, Frontlines: World War Hulk? No. This Frontlines shit needs to stop. If a subplot isn't good enough to make the cut into the core book then farm it out to a legitimate crossover so those tie-ins have some actual content related to the main book other than "This is how they feel about it when they're talking with their families and friends." Otherwise just cut it, because based on CW Frontlines, chances are it's fucking retarded.

The thing about Frontlines is you can't have it both ways. The idea of having all the side plots confined to one book is good (eliminating the problems of collecting the Crisis On Infinite Earths/Secret Wars tie-ins)--as long as that means you eliminate crossovers into books like FF and Black Panther, but the big events are essentially meant to promote those books so they won't cut crossovers. So we get crossovers AND the side book AND these weird hybrid series like X-Men: Civil War, which is just ridiculous, and every single issue is promoted on the basis that SOMETHING IMPORTANT MIGHT HAPPEN. That kind of shit works too. I mean, I'm cynical as shit and burned out on crossover-itis and mega-events and LAST PAGE DRAMA but I am still curious about just what is on the last page of the New Avengers issue solicited yesterday. AND HOW IT WILL AFFECT WHAT IS TO COME!

And really, I'm basically a DC guy so chances are small it'll make me freak out or affect any characters I really care about. I mean, my reaction to the death of Cap was "Huh, so they actually did it" and then I went on with my day.

Why doesn't Marvel really have any traditional "kid sidekicks" like Robin or Kid Flash, per se? Really, the main reason is Spider-Man. Marvel hit on something big when they realized a teenager doesn't want to be the mini-version of an adult hero, they want to be their own person--hence Peter wasn't "Spider-Boy," he was Spider-MAN even though he was aged about the same as a teenaged sidekick. After that, all the Marvel teen characters were pretty much their own--Nova, Cloak & Dagger, and so on. The only ones you could even remotely call sidekicks in the classic "older heroes training younger heroes" mold were the various teen X-Men from Kitty Pryde on.

Oh Eighties headband Supergirl. You meant the headband to honor your Kryptonian heritage, but instead you just honored Flashdance. Evidently all you need for a Supergirl costume design is 1. An 'S' emblem and 2. breasts, because they've changed everything else at one point or another. The Cir-El iteration even ditched the blonde hair. It isn't surprising really, she's a derivative character, so if you slap any Superman-looking costume on any female form you're going to read it and say "Well this is either Supergirl or Superwoman" no matter what.

I have to imagine DC will get around to doing Absolute Starman volumes sometime, only because they fucked up the trades so badly. Alternately, they could do new trades which they do all the damn time on Sandman but maybe with something different other than new covers and standardized trade dress to offer as extra content. LIKE THE REST OF THE STORY.

Aquaman just changed to the new creative team with the new issue, #50. I liked the Sword of Atlantis direction okay, and the new ish wasn't quite as good as the Kurt Busiek & Jackson/Butch Guice stuff, but seemed like a decent transition to whatever's next. It was awkward, no question, and felt like the new writer was trying to wrap up some of Busiek's stuff too quickly to get on to his own thing, but I liked Shawn McManus' art. It was a bit blatant considering Busiek's big changes were bringing on the 'sword of Atlantis' bit and no one knowing who the Dweller was, and in the new guy's first ish he 1. Reveals to everyone who the Dweller is and 2. Breaks the sword in half.

It's too bad we didn't get a nice long Busiek/Guice run though, Kurt barely got into it before leaving and Guice's underwater scenes actually 'felt' underwater. I kind of feel like Busiek started something interesting with this whole new "Arthur Curry and who is he and what happened to the old Aquaman" thing and now it'll be left to newcomers to cobble something together to explain it, unfortunately. I just know it's not going to make one bit of sense. Oh well, I have no big attachment to Aquaman as a character (either one) so I won't feel bad about dropping it if it doesn't improve.

I love both Warren Ellis & Darick Robertson's Transmetropolitan & Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, and recommend them both highly to anyone open to reading comics but not necessarily into the capes and such. But honestly? Transmet is nowhere near the quality of Watchmen. It's good, but nowhere near as tightly constructed or impressive, nor in the same ballpark in terms of influence. The art is a bit shit in spots too. Don't get me wrong, I like Transmet a lot--but let's not get crazy.

Watchmen is a gateway drug, bringing comics to the mainstream. Ever since the first trade collection made it into bookstores, people read it and it's the same "Wow, comics arent for kids this is actually good" thing. It's a literary deconstruction of the entire superhero genre.

Transmet is heroic fantasy for English majors, envisioning a world in which an out-of-shape bald dude who smokes too much and takes random drugs attracts hot women to his side by the power of his writing alone and shakes the foundations of government by posting on the internet. It's a morality play writ large.

I do wonder how these things will be seen in the future, like another hundred years or so. "Graphic literature" (bleh) is still in its infancy in terms of respectability, really only penetrating the academic circles with the publication of Maus & Watchmen. Still, it wasn't so long ago the novel itself was seen as an inferior, populist form that could never produce 'quality literature.' Will the mere fact of the comic form itself preclude comics from being absorbed into the literary body, or will the artificial divisions between literature with pictures and without just dissolve over time?

Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics got into this, unsurprisingly. It all depends on how one defines comics--if you take the wide view that comics are merely a sequence of pictures with accompanying text, virtually every instruction manual made is done in comic form. Most textbooks cannot fully convey their ideas without some accompanying illustrations, though this doesn't make them 'comics' per se.

I see the artificial divisions between 'text-only' literature and 'comics' as mainly a byproduct of the fact that until recently it was very difficult to incorporate images as part of text manuscripts and much more expensive to produce books with illustrations than books without. Now that that's all changed in the last couple decades, more and more learning materials will incorporate comics-like techniques.

March 24, 2007: I have signed up with Snocap, a relatively new (to me anyway) service for selling mp3s online, as evidenced by the media player that should appear at the top of this page. They seem to have some sort of deal with Myspace, as that's the only place I've really seen anything about Snocap, but their terms seem nonproblematic and their interface is pretty user-friendly, as far as my experience anyway.. I'll be interested to see how it works out in the long term--the experience of signing up, uploading songs, etc. reminded me of doing the exact same thing in probably late 2000/early 2001 with Daisy Glaze tracks and mp3.com and IUMA, neither of which lasted more than a few more years with the business models they were using. But hey, the digital music landscape has changed a lot since then, and a lot more people buy music online now, so who knows. Anyway, check it out.

February 28, 2007: I'm listing a whole load of CDs over on ebay, all with no minimum bid and no reserve. So check out my current listings on ebay and you could potentially pick up some great deals on some great CDs, especially considering I offer a discount on shipping for multiple wins.

February 26, 2007: New track "February Rainstorm" posted. So the other week was Presidents' Day here in the US, which meant a day off. I got up and it was pouring down rain. Of course, my first instinct was to throw up the condenser mic and record it.

Then I was itching to play with my new Cry Baby wah, so I did. "February Rainstorm" is the product of that day. I uploaded it on my Myspace page that night and now, a week later, it has over 2000 listens! So now I'm making it available here as a higher-quality mp3 download--simply hie thee hence to this site's music page for the link.

My name is Rod Crosby. I'm writing you from my office here in El Paso, Texas. I just finished reading your extremely well done article "Strange Case" about Bobby Fuller. I know it's probably been there for some time, but I just found it, and couldn't stop reading it once I started. My compliments!!! You nailed it!!!! Just had to let you know, how much I enjoyed the article, and also who I am.

I'm 61, and am self-employed, running my two businesses out of my home here in EP, an audio-video-backline rental-production company, Crosby Sound-Lighting-Video, and my backyard, world class recording facility, Rosewood Studio. "At The Drive In" recorded their first three self-financed CD's here, developing and promoting themselves locally before their fast rise to success. They then split off, of course, into Sparta and Mars Volta.

I was about 2 1/2 years younger than Bobby, and was playing, back then, in my group, Rod Crosby and The Intruders. I played alongside his band here in El Paso, recorded a little bit in his home studio, and was asked by him once to play in his group after one of the break-ups. That was the very first, and so far, the greatest compliment I have ever received since I have been involved in music. I declined more out of loyalty to my own group than a lack of confidence, but that did exist, because they were so advanced for their time. I was never jealous of him or his success. As a matter of fact, it was quite the opposite. He set the standard for everything that I wanted, and loved, to do, which was just playing professionally, live, for a living, as oppossed to recording. I always looked up to him, and he became as big an influence, if not bigger, eventually, than Johnny Cash and Buddy Holly, my early heros.

I was destroyed upon hearing of his death, and not having an abundance of self-confidence at that time, and not writing, performing or recording original songs, any future pipe-dreams I had about going deeper, or farther away, in the music business, disappeared into thin air. It was also for me just as Randy said, "And then it's gone, just like that."

In '78, I did build, in my backyard, a 20' X 40' rehearsal space (Teac 8-tr. demo studio) for the 6-piece band "Windfall" I created in '77. That building has since evolved into a little jewel of a recording studio, that, believe it or not, even at my age, I intend to finally record the few originals I've written, some covers, and last, but not least, "A New Shade Of Blue". I have been performing that song live for years, and people come unglued over it, whether I present the usual monologue prior to the song, or not. All taste, age, and ethnic groups absolutely love it.

You might find this interesting. Annette Powell, Dalton's wife at that time, told me a story about the song that added, for me, a completely different dimension to the song's impact. She was at Bobby's apartment waiting to meet Dalton and Bobby there. Bobby arrived early, and played for her a demo of "Blue" he had just recorded in the studio. He wanted to know what she thought, and, of course, she was ecstatic over it. He told her he thought, for some reason, it was somehow the best thing he had done so far, which seemed a little unusual even to him, as it was a sad, slow, ballad. She noticed, after he told her that, his mood had changed, and he seemed distant and sad. She asked him what was the matter, and he said, he "thought the song was about his life", as he was losing hope, and having trouble envisioning the future with so much discension in the band and just the way things were going overall, everything you mentioned in your article. That certainly didn't come under the heading of "suicidal". Some people just get strong feelings about their life, and where it's headed.

Over the years, I became intensly interested in what actually happened to Bobby. The main thing that prompted that, other than being a BF4 fan, was a unique experience I had here in El Paso with the world reknowned psychic, Peter Hurkos. About a month after Bobby died, my band mate, Les, came up with two extra tickets to Hurkos' floor show at a club close by. I went with him, and what I saw couldn't have been a scam. I found out later he was tested by Scotland Yard, the FBI, and was proven to be no less than 90% accurate, up to 100%. At the end of the show, his assistant offered private sessions for a very high 1/2 hourly fee. Les leaned over and said, "I bet he could tell us what happened to Bobby". I lost it. Had to know. Made an appointment, scrapped up the money, and went for it.

Too long to tell here, but it was so disturbing and informative, I was compelled to call Lawson, Bobby's dad, in LA and tell him about it. He was stunned as well, because I told him things that were, by no means, common knowledge. I certainly had no contact or connection with anyone out there before the show, and everyone who came back, was to afraid to talk about it, as they knew something was very wrong. Hurkos even went so far as to give me the first names of the two scumbags who probably did Bobby in, and a third name that implicates a person no one was too aware of, that actually provoked and engineered the whole incident. He told me things also that no one would even have thought possible, but as the years have gone by, everything he told me eventually made more and more sense as I picked up more information about the incident.

As a former musician and music history/trivia buff, I am quite intrigued by the story of Bobby's life and death. The interest is only increased by the fact that I lived in Los Angeles for 4 years, and was in the neighborhood many times where Bobby Fuller lived and died--but didn't realize the connection at that time.(1978-1981)

This young man had tremendous musical talent and stage presence. Everyone knows "I Fought the Law", but I almost like "Love's Made a Fool of You" even better. (High school friends of mine in Indiana did a near-perfect cover of that one.)

Do you know why Bobby's death case file is sealed according to State of California regulations? What would it take to open the file? Does it include police and emergency team reports? (I could not help but flash back to the movie "Chinatown" when researching the circumstances of Fuller's demise.)

This story is certainly worthy of a movie. The only reason I can think of that one has not been produced is that filmmakers may fear that too many musician pix have been made already what with the likes of films about Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, The Doors, The Temptations, and fiction flix like "Eddie and The Cruisers" and "The Commitments" and others.

I don't know the legalities surrounding sealed cases, I'm afraid that's out of my area of expertise. It sounds more than a little fishy to me though.

I believe a reward was offered in conjunction with the Unsolved Mysteries program, but I don't think it yielded much in the way of significant new info.

I imagine a movie project would hinge on a well-done, comprehensive book about Bobby from the true-crime angle being published and optioned, frankly. Since the case remains unsolved at this time, I imagine we may have to wait for the remaining figures to die off before any major studio will invest their cash in a movie, so as to minimize the chance of libel suits. Who knows though, strange things happen every day in the entertainment industry, especially when someone gets it in their head there's money to be made.

Jeb at Musicalfamilytree tallied up their yearly downloading stats for 2006 recently and sent out the results. I was pleasantly surprised to note a lot more Daisy Glaze downloads than I would have expected. Of course, all that material is available of the music page of this site in higher quality, but it's good to see the Musicalfamilytree community flourishing.

January 8, 2007: Right this instant I pretty much think Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division is the best-produced album ever. Nothing else comes to mind that so perfectly straddles rawness and sheen, a live rock band sound filtered through the pop-oriented recording machinery.

The band isn't bad either. Technically their debut, Unknown Pleasures was actually Joy Division's second album (their first still unreleased in its entirety due to the band's dissatisfaction with the recordings, but widely available in bootleg form--including some believed to be officially-sourced) but as history records it as a debut, it strikes with not only the band's raison d'etre fully-formed but also an entire world of context along with it. This is one of the albums that gave name to 'alternative' music, in that it points the way to another alternate world--a world subsequently inhabited by bands including Interpol, Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, the Sleepers, and of course New Order. The Ian Curtis-less version of the band managed the nigh-impossible task of creating yet another parallel world--this one a dancier, slightly more optimistic world, one that was somewhat more realistic, and built to last.

Still, the beauty of Joy Division's music always laid in the fact that it was an ice sculpture--it was never meant to last, and it shows. Their last album, Closer shows few signs of the typical sophomore, where-do-we-go-from-here syndrome, but it doesn't really improve on the debut other than progressing even further into uncharted territory--and barring the brilliant "Love Will Tear Us Apart" single, that's pretty much where the story ends.

Postscript: fucking-a, someone wrote a whole book about Unknown Pleasures. I'm sure that gig paid decently and I probably wouldn't have turned it down but it's got to be a bit difficult to reach book-length writing about any one album. After you've gone through the album track by track and covered the circumstances of its recording and properly placed it in its sociological context you're still not at novella length, and that's for albums which have been covered enough to produce some research material--which most albums probably haven't.

Granted, I assume these books are likely a bit flimsy, but still, it sounds like an interesting challenge. A bit marketing-driven obviously, and I have to wonder who the target market is--much as I love music and music journalism both, I can't see spending my own money for what's essentially liner notes writ long---but hey, whatever sells books these days.

Post-postscript: Hey Google Ads, I haven't written about comics in like five months so not every linked ad has to be about comics. God. I thought these things were supposed to spider the site daily or at least weekly. I may have to archive some of the older stuff from the frontpage to a linked page soon, but I hate to add unnecessary clicks.

Don't worry, "soon" will be "whenever I get around to it." Which means whenever.

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