This is one of those days when we had a HUUUUGE Kibbles ‘n’ Bits post we’d been working on all weekend that just got eaten by the browser, so screw it. Moving on, since we’re on a musical comedy kick, we’ll reiterate our love for the films of Busby Berkeley — we had a long post about the surreal, disturbing madness of Berkeley’s choreography back on the Old Beat, but to summarize: If Berkeley were still around, he’d be David Lynch. (We also fretted that Berkeley was the kind of cult interest that the Internet wasn’t much bothered with, but thank God, YouTube has come along since then, to keep the spirit alive.)

Anyway we had the chance to share our Busby-holism this weekend at Lincoln Center when choreographer Kriota Willberg presented a program called “Under The Influence of Busby Berkeley,” which showed videos over the years that exemplified such traits as aerial patterns, multiple girls, and of course, focus on the female anatomy. Under Kriota’s lively. erudite guidance it was a too-brief spin through Bollywood, cartoons, The Big Lebowski, dancing cigarette ads, birth control, hip hop, and much more. Since Kriota is married to cartoonist R. Sikoryak, there were a few cartoon types in the audience, but we shan’t out them so we can keep it a secret club.

This presentation needs to be either taken on the road or put on the Internet or something. The show started with an analysis of Berkeley’s fetishization of Ruby Keeler’s floating face seen above in “I Only Have Eyes for You” from DAMES, and ended with Michel Gondry and the Chemical Brothers, below. Let’s get this Monday started right.

Readers may recall that underground legend S. Clay Wilson suffered a severe brain injury back in November. Although he’s making progress towards a recovery, he needs much therapy — expensive therapy. Tomorrow, Sunday, a benefit for Wilson will be held at the Hemlock Tavern in San Francisco with a raucous assemblage that Wilson would be proud of. Details below:

Sunday 11 January 2009 at 6:00pm
Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk Street
San Francisco CA 94109
United States

Anvil Encephalopathy, Liz Albee and Agnes Azelag, Skullcaster, Loachfillet, Heartworm, Heule/Dryer, Headboggle, Horaflora, Arachnid Arcade, Fognozzle, Amphibious Gestures, Bullshit Detector, Slusser, and Terror Apart

The SF Weekly has more:

Tonight more than a dozen avant-noise iconoclasts raise benefit funds by doing with sound what a Wilson comic does on the page, i.e., create a dense mess of transgressive weirdness. Sonics range from shivering liquid phantasms (Amphibious Gestures) and fractal-smashing loop fabrications (Skullcaster) to double-bass-and-percussion improvs (Tony Dryer/Jacob Felix Heule duo) and beyond. The odditorium opens at 6 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 11, at the Hemlock Tavern, with a donation between $7 and $20 required for entry.

We’ve devoted many items to the eventual Spider-Man musical, and we expect to devote more to it, because the damned thing doesn’t open for months and months. However, there’s one thing we haven’t linked to yet: what songwriter BONO THINKS OF SPIDER-MAN. Luckily, a fact-filled update from The Times UK, delivers the goods:

Bono has promised that the show will be “something the likes of which no-one has seen or heard”. He said the music will be part punk rock and part opera. “It should be a hallucinogenic experience for theatregoers,” he said. “You have the visual energy brings. The myth of the arachnid and the elasticity of these characters — you can turn theatre upside down.”

Oh, boy.

A video of Peter Bagge’s new band, Can You Imagine?, from the Fantagraphics store party.

December 10th was the centennial of the birth of Olivier Messiaen, one of the 20th century’s greatest composers, and one of our favorites. Last night, we got to see a performance of his Turangalîla-Symphonie at Carnegie Hall, which was an unbearably thrilling and rhapsodic experience. Which doesn’t have anything to do with a comics blog, but we’ll try desperately to find a connection.

• Messiaen was a real life Hogan’s Hero: as a prisoner of war in a Nazi prison camp, he composed his “Quartet for the End of Time” using the only available instruments: a violin, a cello, a clarinet, and an upright piano. The piece, recognized as a masterpiece of the 20th century, was first performed for an audience of 5000 guards and prisoners on a frigid night in January, 1941.

• The symphony — comprising 10 movements of slashing, percussive and soaring themes performed by a full orchestra aided by vibraphone, piano, cowbell, and the theramin-like ondes Martenot — is taken from two Sanskrit words and inspired the name of a popular character on Futurama. (Matt Groening is a fellow Messiaen fan.)

The venue was perhaps two-thirds full, and we were curious to see who my other fellow admirers were…a mix of folks, many young, and all, we got the impression, extremely knowledgeable about classical music. No one made a move to clap between movements, although the performance — by the Yale Philharmonia, and conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw — was so very inspiring. De Leeuw was a friend of Messiaen’s and is known as one of his most important interpreters, and we would say the reputation was earned, as de Leeuw kept the abruptly changing moods and tempos of the piece together, and the often exotic (one might say sci-fi) orchestral registers clear and in service to the extreme sensuality of the music.

All in all, it was quite remarkable, an experience we would recommend to all.

Painter/cartoonist Dave Cooper and animator Nick Cross have created an animated video for Danko Jones for the song King Of Magazines. The act is on Bad Taste Records.

News that this or that “famous person” reads comics isn’t exactly a headline-maker (unless you’re running for president, of course). With all the success of comics-based media in the last few years, it’s more newsworthy when some actress or sports figure proclaims they DON’T like comics. However, there are still a few nerdlebrities whose involvement with graphic literature goes above and beyond a few trips to the comics shop.

Such a figure is Eddie Argos, (above, far right) lead singer of Art Brut, an energetic British “Art Wave” band much beloved by The Beat’s music-listening pals. Argos is a sometime-painter and a huge DC Comics fan. Even further, buried in the news that Pixies legend Frank Black will produce their new album, is the title of one of their songs: “D.C. Comics and Chocolate Milkshake.” Could this be a new anthem? A chocolate milkshake goes well with anything, including comics!

Now, we know what you are thinking: What does Argos think of UMBRELLA ACADEMY, penned by fellow music/comics crossover star Gerard Way? Well, it turns out that Argos pens an occasional column for the St Louis Playback, and in one, he gives us the skinny:

I’m not really a fan of My Chemical Romance, and Grant Morrison’s pretentious ramblings in the introduction to the book claiming that the band is spearheading some sort of “necrodelic” counter-culture revolution makes me dislike them even more. Personally, I’m more into Fall-Out Boy. Also, as a singer in a band myself who also maintains fantasies of one day writing a comic of my own, there was probably a little bit of jealousy sneaking into my psyche as I started to read this book. I am, after all, a Scorpio with a rampant ego who sees himself in competition with absolutely everybody, so consequently, I was pre-disposed to dislike this book from the start. The cover to the collected Umbrella Academy by Gabriel Ba. I was wrong though. The Umbrella Academy is a pretty decent book. Most new books take a while to set the scene, and this book being no exception is a bit of a muddle at the beginning. Actually, thinking about it now, I started reading it the morning after my birthday, so it’s possible that it was my mind that was a bit of a muddle and the book is actually pretty straight-forward. Anyway, whoever was at fault - me or the book — I was really into it by the second chapter.

Call it a forced — but powerful — endorsement.

We’re sure all of this is old news to Brian Heater, and indeed, he recently interviewed Argos, who proves that his comics reading is not just a flash in the pan:

This time next year, I hope to be working on the soundtrack to major motion picture adaptation of which comic:

All three Essex County books by Jeff Lemire. They are a trilogy of books about the same small Canadian town. It’s a real place, but they’re fictional stories. Really, totally amazing. I can’t recommend these books enough. There on an independent called Top Shelf. I might write the songs anyway and release some sort of concept album so when it does inevitably turn into a film, I have a head start on everybody else.

Can you sing? Can you dance? Can you sing and dance at the same time while flying through the air and fighting Doc Ock? Director Julie Taymor is looking for you as the much-anticipated Spider-Man musical finally begins getting underway:

Ensemble Dancers:
Males and Females 20s – 40s, all ethnicities. Strong technically trained dancers who have a strong contemporary and modern background. Looking for all types; with a quirky sense of movement and style. Knowledge of gymnastics, aerial flying and stunts a plus. Looking for dancers who sing very well.

Salary 1558/week min

Amidst celebrations, some sadness, as Yma Sumac has died. The Peruvian songstress had a near five-octave vocal range and remains an icon of the “exotic music movement.”

LCD Soundsystem remix via Sean Collins:

Every great book by Jack Kirby.
All the underground hits.
All of the Boody Rogers strips.
I heard you have a hardcover of every Tintin album on Belgian import.
I heard that you have a mini of every seminal Bill Sienkiewicz book - 1985, ‘86, ‘87.
I heard that you have a TPB compilation of every good ’60s strip and another HC from the ’70s.
I hear you’re buying a P.O. Box and a Kinko’s card and throwing your Diamond deal out the window because you want to make something real.
You want to make a King-Cat comic.

(Stolen from Douglas)

We know it is wrong to steal pictures from Facebook, but this photo from Tim Leong’s photo gallery from the event sheds much light on our previous karaoke woes. It also elicited this response from one Chip Zdarsky:

It’s weird that by simply looking at a photo of people singing I can tell that it sounds terrible.

In our defense, we’d like to note that this photo does much to prove the little-known “photo tracing” charge against both Eiichiro Oda and Akira Toriyama.

Adult Swim and Ubisoft are spotlighting the emerging African hip hop scene for some reason, but you can find out why by downloading a free MP3 album called African Swim. The release ties in with Ubisoft’s release of Far Cry® 2, a video game set in Afrca. The album features South African artists including Jozi, Gumshev, and Maggz face to face.

He may have worked with Count Basie and Frank Sinatra, but jazz composer Neal Hefti will likely be best remembered for a piece of music: The Batman Theme. Hefti passed away last week at the age of 85. You can find his obit in the Washington Post here.

Not only did Hefti create The Batman Theme, but he also was responsible for another classic TV tune, The Odd Couple Theme.

(Sadly, we spent like a half-hour looking for the “nanananana fishing” clip from The Simpsons, but couldn’t find it. Shame.)

FYI: The above album is actually still available from Amazon.

UPDATE:

Posted by Mark Coale.

A few stories of note that ran while we were away:

The upcoming SHERLOCK HOLMES movie directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson is TOTALLY A COMIC BOOK MOVIE, because, you see , screenwriter Lionel Wigram wrote a comic book “re-imagining” of the character to get the movie made. In that spirit, we proudly present a link to the first set of photos of RDJ in costume as Holmes whilst drinking Starbucks.

§ Casting call: Josh Brolin is talking about playing Jonah Hex, extending his run of Western-themed characters. In addition, Ryan Gosling is rumored as Green Lantern, extending the run of Oscar®-nominated actors who feel it is a boon to their careers to add a superhero to their resumes. (Seriously, did you ever see Gosling in HALF-NELSON? What a performance.)

THE INCREDIBLE HULK DVD will include a new opening scene set in the Arctic, and if you look real close, you will see a frozen star-spangled Avenger!

I underlined the one thing I didn’t realize I should look for, Captain America is under the ice, and wouldn’t yah know it… there he is. I have taken eleven screen captures of the sequence and so as not to put any arrows or anything on the pics just look in the lower left hand corner and you will initially notice a red, white and dark blue circle. I have done a little color work on the pic to adjust the contrast and saturation a bit to make it stand out a little more, but by the end you should see a faint body under the ice and the shield can be seen clear as day.

Note: we think it’s kinda cool that the Marvel folks made this Forensic Files tough and not a big obvious frozen shield in the background.

§ The costs of our all-time favorite musical that we haven’t seen yet, SPIDER-MAN, are spiraling our of control!

If - and it’s a big “if” where Julie The Lion Taymor is concerned - they do bring it in for $35 million, “Spider-Man,” with a weekly running cost of $1 million, will have to run about 8,000 years in a Broadway theater just to break even.

“It’s off the charts,” one source says. “Off the charts.”

The musical has a rock score by Bono (quite a good score, I’m told; the messy book is another matter) and is being produced by Sony, Marvel Comics and David Garfinkle, a lawyer who managed to get control of the musical after its original producer, the much-missed Tony Adams, died of a heart attack three years ago.

This crowd has very little theatrical experience, which is apparent since nobody seems to have the wherewithal to say: “$40 million, Julie? Are you out of your f - - - ing mind??”

In all the pre-election excitement at SBM, we weren’t able to blog fully about our Wednesday activity: a concert by Jean-Jacques Perrey and Dana Countryman.

Perrey, in case you don’t know, is a pioneer of electronic music, whose Moog-flavored The In Sound from Way Out (written with Gershon Kingsley) introduced tape loops and cheerful bleeping and blooping to popular music and led the way for much to come. Perrey is perhaps best known for writing “Electric Hoedown,” used as the theme to the Disney Electrical Parade for all these years, but don’t let the kitsch connection fool you. He’s a true musical innovator and pioneer.

At age 79, the French-born Perrey came out in a silver sparkling coat and energetically led the way through a set of his hits with him and Countryman locked behind banks of vintage synths. While I wouldn’t swear in front of Congress as to how much was played live, it was nonetheless an engaging performance, as Perrey introduced each song, danced with a little stuffed elephant and was, in general, charming as heck.

Perhaps just as excitingly, in the audience was an amazingly still-living Kingsley (who composed “Popcorn”) and guitarist Vinnie Bell, who is to adherents of Space-Age Pop what Yngwie Malmsteen is to shredding. It was a thrill just to be in the same room as all these wonderful gentlemen.

For a fan of both esoteric and electronic music, this was a night to remember. It was the equivalent of seeing Raymond Scott, Carl Stalling, or Juan Esquivel, or meeting Akira Ifukube.

To give it a comics analogy, at the Baltimore Comic-Con just passed, people remarked on how lucky it was to be able to meet icons like Ramona Fradon, Nick Cardy, and Herb Trimpe. We got the same kind of kick out of seeing Perrey — if you have a chance to encounter a legend, don’t pass it up!

We never expected to write that headline either. But it’s happening. It is real. And nothing can stop it. Artist Andrew Pepoy (THE ADVENTURES OF SIMONE & AJAX, LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE) writes to give us the astonishing details:

Last year I co-wrote a superhero tapdance opera, “The Hourglass”, which ran at the Chicago Tap Theatre last summer and returned in a revised and expanded version for another run this summer. It’s now coming to New York as one of the few non-local shows invited to the New York Musical Theatre Festival at the end of this month, and, being in the New York area, I thought you might be intersted.

No, I’m not in it, so you won’t see me doing the actual dancing, but I co-wrote the plot the show is based on and designed many of the costumes, plus a few other contributions. And when I say “opera”, a tap opera is all tap with music, no spoken word, so there’s no singing, but we do have word balloons. It’s a fun show with lots of dancing, action, adventure and romance.

Here’s a link to the show’s NYC website where you can get times and buy tickets.

Here’s a link to the Chicago Tap Theatre’s own website where you can find more info, reviews, and photos:

This LJ writer got a sneak peak at the upcoming Spider-Man musical, which is directed by Julie Taymor with music by Bono and The Edge. We’ve heard a few whisperings ourselves, but this sounds like a must-see:

It’s fairly well-documented that Julie Taymor is a genius, but I was dubious when I first heard about this project. It’s Peter Parker plus Arachne (you know, from the myths about spiders) and it’s Green Goblin and Mary Jane and a greek chorus of geeks (geek chorus, snort snort) and, of course, J.J. Jameson. Glen was kind enough to show us all of the set design sketches and they are amazing - stylish and graphic with forced perspective and vertigo-inducing angles. Lots of LED stuff, also. We also got to see test footage from the swinging and flying and a short video of the team figuring out how to shoot webs. As Glen said, obviously there are going to be a lot of wires in this show. If it bothers you to see them, this is not the show for you.

We also got to hear some music from the workshop they did recently and, you know, it rocks. It’s undeniably U2 in the very best way. There’s a beautiful duet between Peter and MJ that I’m sure we’ll all see at the 2010 Tonys.

One of these days, the Spider-Man musical is going to open and it’s going to be pretty incredible. With theatre genius Julie Taymor on board and songs by Bono and the Edge, people will be talking. That day won’t be for MORE than a year yet, but there is movement, Vulture reports. It looks like James Sturgess and Evan Rachel Wood, the stars of Taymor’s ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, won’t be playing Spidey and MJ, but a casting call has gone out:

In addition to Spidey and MJ, the show is also casting a third part, with this description:

Female, 25-35 years old [with] amazing rock vocals. Think Sinead O’Connor with a Middle Eastern/Bulgarian/Greek twist. Foreign, world music types are great, foreign accents are great.

This part seems likely to be the role of Arachne, described in a much earlier casting notice as a kind of chorus/spider spirit/dark goddess of vengeance, and easily the most Taymorian aspect of the show so far.

Fanboys will love it!

Low Key Comics will be premiering Snug Comics #1 at their rock show/party party Saturday at heroes Con: Details below but more info here.

Low Key Comics presents: Snug Comics
featuring Calabi Yau, Young Tom Fury, Battle Beasts, and the Lights, Fluorescent
Saturday, June 21st 9PM
Snug Harbor
1228 Gordon St.
Charlotte, NC 28205
www.snugrock.com

18+ $7 – 21+ $5; free minicomic with admission!

Calabi Yau: http://www.myspace.com/calabiyau
Young Tom Fury: http://www.myspace.com/youngtomfury
Battle Beasts: http://www.myspace.com/battlebeaste
The Lights, Fluorescent: http://www.myspace.com/thelightsfluorescent

They’ll also be premiering two comics at the show:

Everyman #2: Justin Crouse’s satiric look at superheroes continues when James Johnson, our garbageman-turned-superhero, tries to turn his luck around by using his newfound powers for fun and profit…but first, he’ll have to tangle with the town’s protector, Titan. Check out the book that PLAYBACK:stl’s Byron Kerman says is “not just LOL-funny…it’s gloriously subversive.”

Journal Sanders: Kentucky Fried Sketchbook vol. 1: Juan Ruvalcaba left behind his hometown of Chicago for a career in Hollywood, and this daily sketch-diary is the result. This first 100-page collection is a look at a Spring packed with the pangs of Hollywood corporate politics and general boredom in the big city. Think American Elf for the sarcasm generation.

EW spotlights the new Method Man graphic novel and finds out what the rapper thinks of comics:

All the miniseries and things of that nature, like Crisis on Infinite Earths, Secret Wars part I and II. That was when comic books were big events. It was real. They didn’t have a bunch of variant covers. But I think it’s getting back to its core now. You got writers like Mark Millar with this new book, Kick-Ass, which is so hard to find right now. But it’s a dope book, and it’s penciled by John Romita Jr., who’s also a dope artist. I liked when he did his stints on Daredevil and Iron Man — when Iron Man had to go shut down all of his technology. Sort of like the storyline they had in the movie, but a little different. He was attacking people like the Crimson Dynamo and the Titanium Man, anybody who had his armor. One of the last people he went after was War Machine, who was actually his friend, James Rhodes.

MEANWHILE, at the NY MAgazine blog, Dash Shaw imagines a Ghost Rider revamp:

“I think Ghost Rider should really be drawn as if the target audience is people in motorcycle gangs,” Shaw told us. “Totally badass tattoo imagery. Because right now, it just feels like he’s a superhero who rides a motorcycle. So I really see that as having a crazy oddball aesthetic, culled from tattoo art.”

We didn’t have time to memorialize the late, great Stan Winston, but we couldn’t let Cyd Charisse no unnoticed:

This CNN profile of singer Aimee Mann reveals yet another celebrity comics fan, but the source is an unlikely one!

Mann was approached about a year ago about doing a graphic novel, an idea she at first dismissed out of hand. “And then I ran into this guy named Joe Matt, who’s one of my favorite graphic novelists,” she recalls.

Matt, the “Peepshow” cartoonist, lives nearby and encouraged Mann to maintain a sketchbook and practice, practice, practice. So Mann has diligently worked toward that end.

“I take a sketchbook and I bring it out at dinner … and I’ve got this one friend who always says something ridiculous, so I’ll try to write it down and put it in [graphic] form, and it kind of amuses everyone at the dinner table,” she says, while saying it’s “kind of a long-term project.”

We’d like to hear Matt’s side of this story, except that it probably involves a lot of jerking off.