T-shirt #332 - CBLDF - Frank Miller - Fight Censorship

T-shirt #332 - CBLDF - Frank Miller - Fight Censorship

This is a weird cheat. Hello from the future. When I originally posted this blog entry on February 16th, 2014, all I had were pictures. See here the shirt from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. In one picture, you can see the matching signed print, by Frank Miller, over my left shoulder. Then another two shots shows the print on my office wall, both close up, and among the other art work hung there.


I created this blog entry during a busy time in my work schedule (teaching classes) and my class schedule (taking classes). And so I just posted the pictures and a note about the incomplete nature of the entry.

However, since then, I have ended the blog year, as I did on March 21, 2014, and though I plan to finish all incomplete entries on the blog and write new ones, this is the first finishing since I closed down the daily transmissions in March.

Since then, I have read and reviewed The Ten Cent Plague and posted the review to my other blog, which, seems to me, to be the perfect content for this blog entry.

ENJOY.

- chris from the future

The Ten Cent Plague book review

I have owned The Ten Cent Plague for six years, having bought it when it was originally published. It's one of those books that I have wanted to read very much, and so it has held a place in various "to read" book stacks for several years. You know the ones. At first, it's in the newly purchased books to read stack. And then it gets shuffled out of the stack of the recently purchased and yet continues to find its place in the entire book case I have devoted to "books I want to read." Not that I have confined all of my unread books to one book case (three shelves), I have several other "to read" areas in my home, which, if you are reading, this blog, then you surely understand as you probably have such devoted places, too.

Okay, smart aleck. Yes, some of you have quite given up your "to read" stacks of actual, physical books printed on paper. But I bet you have a digital book wish list or a "to read" folder on your reading device. Since I consider myself a comic book maven, a serious student and appreciator of the art form, I had to purchase The Ten Cent Plague. I still like actual books on paper, and though I consume a few in digital form, I still prefer the heft of a book, especially a hardcover edition, and the smell and feel of paper. But my reading of actual books, in the old method of scanning words on the page with my eyes, has been substantially reduced. For one thing, my reading time is limited, even though I carve out just as much of it as possible. Comic books, sports writing, game materials, and other assorted interests further reduce my available time to read actual books on actual paper with my actual eyes.

(SIDENOTE: In fact, I am just about to take about three hours for Baseball and reading, one of my favorite activities on a Sunday afternoon.)

And though I try to apply myself to a few nonfiction books per year by "reading reading" them, my term for actual reading in the old fashioned sense, I never manage to get through as many as I wish. But when I see a book on Audible or Amazon as available as an unabridged audio book, it's likely that such a book will rocket closer to the top of my "books to read" stack. I "read" about 90-95% of the books I consume per year in audio form. Or rather, listening to audio books has increased my books read per year by almost ten times. Even so, I have a back log of "books to read" in my audio folder, and like the actual stack, The Ten Cent Plague sat in the virtual stack for quite some time as well.

Whichever kind of reader you are, I am sure you understand how a book can orbit your attention span and your active reading habit for several years, caught in the gravity of your interest but just out of reach of being snared and brought to earth, your reading pulpit. Such is the case with The Ten Cent Plague by David Hadju.

I just finished this one the other day, and I have to give it my highest recommendation. Because of its focus on the content of comics in the late 1940s and 1950s, the cultural war waged against them, and the emergence of Mad Magazine, with deft writing and strong research, David Hadju has written an impeccable and riveting examination of this time period with The Ten Cent Plague. Comparisons to World War Two abound, and though some extra information about what followed this tumultuous time period would have improved the content, overall, this is an excellent book. Most reviews seemed to concur. I checked Amazon, as I usually do, to see the reviews, and I was pleased to see that the five star reviews (33) far out-number the others: four star (19), three (5), two (four), and one (3). As always, there are some idiotic reviews that could send me into a tail spin if I let them. There are idiots who cannot understand how this well-written, well-researched book has so many positive reviews (while even admitting that the book is well written and researched), but I can ignore these, especially if I do no more than glance at them as I did.

Since I listened to this one, it played on my iPod player in my house off and on for weeks. One time, overhearing the narration concerning some civic action groups motivating against comic books, my wife said "is this for real?" That the crazy, fascist-like activities of the post-World War Two do-gooders, who had recently helped to free the country of the potential tyranny of the Third Reich, would pursue the same blinded, fear-driven crushing of freedom and support of censorship seems completely insane, and yet it happened, even though the story of what happened seems almost fictional today. Chalk this one up in the "how soon we forget" category along with the flu pandemic of 1918 and other horrors.

"I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic book industry," wrote psychiatrist Frederic Wertham, famous for the the 1950s exposé The Seduction of the Innocent, which "indicted comic books as a leading cause of juvenile delinquency" (Hadju pg. 6). "The time has come to legislate these books off the newsstands and out of the candy stores."

Looking back, the comparison between Nazi Germany and comic books seems absurd as it and the whole witch hunt of the comic book industry seemed to my wife when she overheard me listening to David Hadju's The Ten Cent Plague. But these were serious allegations in the post-World War II era of the late 1940s and 1950s as Americans had to step lightly around accusations of Communist infiltration and influence as well as the mounting hysteria over the stalemate of the Cold War. The new Hitler was entirely invisible and far more insidious, and yet Americans wanted the same easy fix. Removing the Nazis and Hitler (as well as the fascist regime of Italy and Japan) from Europe healed the world. But there were threats that were not just camped on the borders, they were invading and attacking. Hitler had swept through Europe, and the Nazis were bombing England, before they were defeated. The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and threatened the American Way from the other direction. With these threats eliminated, the protectors of the good, decent, and true spirit of freedom wanted another tangible and invading enemy to stamp out of existence. Like the "Communist Party," comic books became one of those enemies. And though comic books were not as crushed into defeat as the Nazis, the industry shrunk dramatically and one company, EC Comics, basically ceased all production.

The battle became the young versus the old. As television and rock and roll became more prominent and popular, comic books became the first big battle for young people versus their parents with class, money, taste, religious dogma, political agendas, and these new art forms as the battleground and ammunition.

At the height of their original heydays (starting in the post WWII 1940s), comic books led the pack in America as the most popular form of entertainment, selling an astounding 80 to 100 million copies each week. Some 650 titles were released each month, and the industry employed around 1,000 writers, artists, and editors (Hadju, pg. 5).

After the original volleys of superhero books spewed forth from publishers, comic books took a turn, striving to attract older audiences, those who devoured the old pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s and the many dime novels with their lurid covers and "adult" themes. Leading the way in this new wave of comic books was EC, Entertaining Comics, headed by the genius William Gaines.

Soon, the shelves were filled with comics devoted to crime, horror, science fiction, and romance. By the end of 1952, nearly one-third of the comic books on stands were devoted to horror and the "macabre" (Hadju, pg.189). Most others were romance and crime-related as the taste for super hero titles waned. Leading the way, EC published the most extreme material, which is still some of the best comic book work in the history of the genre to this day. But in during the "Happy Days" era of the 1950s, the subject matter proved disturbing to the old school establishment adults who had lived through the Depression-era followed by the Second World War. Focused on horror and crime, EC's comic book were gruesome, featuring severed heads, unremitting killers with no remorse, and plenty of blood. The stories also emphasized sex, displaying women in diaphanous negligées, visible cleavage or tight clothing with art work that focused closely on the bust, and overall realistic drawing of women rendered beautifully. The artwork depicting the women were suitable for pinning up. In addition to romance, there plenty of "jungle girls," such as Matt Baker's Tiger Girl and Jerry Iger's Sheena (Hadju, pgs. 157-58).

Publishers competed for readership with increasingly more shocking and extreme imagery and story lines. Stan Lee, then working for Timely, described the problem best: "the horror craze was a challenge for the average publisher because you had to come up with new ideas for every story... not everybody could do it...book came and went because they petered out. The editors couldn't sustain the interest, so they used a lot of tricks to get the reader's attention" (Lee as quoted in Hadju, pg.190).

At the time, under Lee's stewardship, Timely was the most successful publisher in 1952 with sales half again as great as next competitor Dell and double that of National/DC. Still, publishers scrambled to outdo each other, gain readers, and match EC's success.

If a character had his neck slashed in February, in the March issue a character would be decapitated. In another issue, a human head would be used as a bowling ball, and in another, a woman would roasting her husband's body parts (head, a leg, hands, feet) on a barbecue grill.

Such content sparked a national campaign against comic books, the biggest loser of which was EC, who was driven virtually out of business except for one publication, Mad Magazine (more on that one in a minute). Like millions were massacred in WWII, comic books suffered a gutting in a cultural war that left hundreds of talented artists scared off or even blacklisted. The national crusade against the "corrupting" influence of comic books led to bonfires of comic books sponsored by churches and schools and eventually a Senate hearing that most abused William Gaines and EC.

Scrambling to stay in business, the comic industry chose to self-regulate and created the Comics Magazine Association of America in 1954, watchdogging its product by promoting "wholesomeness and virtue" (Hadju, p. 319). In the CMAA Code, the police were never to be depicted with "disrespect," no comic book could use the words "horror" or "terror" in its title, and all "lurid, unsavory, or gruesome illustrations" were forbidden. The depiction of the "walking dead, vampires, ghouls, werewolfs, and cannibals" and "words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings" (whatever that means) were forbidden (Hadju pp. 291-292). Many comic book companies turned to "cute" books to survive the backlash against its more popular and adult titles. Harvey came to prominence in this era with Casper the ghost among others and oddly "Hot Stuff," even though the main character was an actual little devil, complete with horns, a tail, and a pitchfork (Hadju, pg. 315)

Between 1954 and 1956, more than half the comic books on the newsstand had disappeared (Hadju, pg. 326). The number of titles dropped from 650 to 250. By the end of 1955, EC discontinued all its comic books, keeping only Mad, which became Mad Magazine, since magazines were not subjected to the same regulations as comic books by the CMAA.  Five other publishers went out of business completely: Star, Sterling, Toby Press, United Features Syndicate, and Eastern Color.



"Everybody was punished," said Carmine Infantino (who died last year as I featured in my T-shirt blog in shirt #20 devoted to the Flash). "It was like the plague. The work dried up, and you had nowhere to go because comic were a dirty word, You couldn't say you were a comics artist, and you had nothing to put in your portfolio. If you said you drew comic books, it was like saying you were a child molester. It was a nightmare, especially for a lot of people who got into comic in the first place because, you know, that was where we could go" (as quoted in Hadju, pg. 326).

And yet, Mad Magazine survived the tumult and even thrived as the few comics that remained held their ground awaiting the resurgence that would start in 1961 with The Fantastic Four. Robert Crumb expressed the power of Mad well: "it was really the coming together of everything that was great in EC and some of the other comics before the Code... Here was a publication making fun of highly respected American institutions in the square, military, post-World War II environment and doing so in a crude, weird way... It countered all the stifling, goody-two-shoes fifties-propaganda totalitarian vision that was put forth in the media, the schools, and everything. A big of its appeal is that it was so strange and esoteric and outside of this mainstream" (as quoted in Hadju pg.333).

Mad debuted before the national crusade decimated the comic industry and stayed on to thrive. The first issue of Mad debuted in August of 1952. From the beginning, Mad was "giddy adolescent fun" (Hadju, pg. 199). However, Mad was not an instant hit. At first, the first four issues, lost money. And then, it all clicked.
"Mad became a forum to mock all of American culture; ... it took aim at adult society with the weaponry of the schoolyard: funny faces, cat-calls, relentless silliness, rudeness, and cruelty" (Hadju, pg. 215). The defining artistic force that helped Mad  out of the red and into the black was Will Elder. He called the element he brought to Mad "chicken fat. Gaines maintained that Elder "defined Mad's approach to humor as pure mayhem. Idiosyncratic, indulgent, digressive, and uneven but uniquely potent in its accretive effect, Elder's work was wholly American art, a rough counterpart to the majestic, overstuffed improvisations of Walt Whitman or Charlie Parker, transferred to the literature of the playground" (Hadju, pg. 217).

EC also produced a companion humor comic to cash in on  the success of Mad like so many other publishers who aped it with their own knock-offs in 1953.

If there's a negative to Hadju's book, and I hesitate to give it one, it's that the take ends abruptly with the death of EC (except for Mad Magazine), and Hadju spends very little text on what happens next. The follow-up to the success that Mad Magazine has is cursory and filtered through an interview with Robert Crumb, which is all well and good as a start but fails to do justice to the place of Mad Magazine as a cultural paradigm shift and defining force. Likewise, Hadju devotes very little text to the recovery of comics in the 1960s. Granted, neither of these follow-ups convey the story he wished to tell, but more epilogue follow up and some well-reported facts would have capped off The Ten Cent Plague in a better way.
Nevertheless, I give The Ten Cent Plague five stars without hesitation. It is an excellent book, and even well narrated as an audio edition.

As a final note on the cultural war against comics in the 1950s, there an ironic connection that can be made between the war on comic books and an immensely popular science fiction novel. Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 came out in 1955 showing a frightening future in which books were outlawed and large bonfires were set ablaze to destroy the illegal "thought-crime" texts. Three types of publications were so beneath contempt by this future government as to escape the fires: trade journals, pornography, and comic books (Hadju, pg. 303-304). Coincidence or Bradbury's parting shot after years of working in comic books, providing stories for adaptations by EC Comics? Whatever the case, the bonfires of comic books in the 1950s now seems like fiction, as my wife asked while over-hearing this book: "did that really happen?"

MY OTHER BLOG WORK ON THIS AND RELATED SUBJECTS

I have a few blog posts over on my t-shirt blog about censorship as listed here:

T-shirt #63: Comics Code Authority

T-shirt #159: Save smut! CBLDF shirt one

T-shirt #254 - Fight Censorship: Chester Brown

T-shirt #332 - CBLDF - Frank Miller - Fight Censorship (this one is incomplete)

Maybe I should also post this text there back in the past. :-)

I devoted a single post to EC Comics on the t-shirt blog (though more to come):

T-shirt #156: EC Comics

I also wrote about  Mad Magazine twice on my t-shirt blog:

T-shirt #92 - Mad Magazine (first Weekly Comics List post!)

T-shirt #264 - Alfred E. Neuman Faces

To conclude, a cover gallery of some EC gems, some Matt Baker art (romance and Phantom Lady), and assorted others, including a bunch of Mad Magazine covers not featured on my t-shirt blog.

COVER GALLERY

 

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1407.06 - 11:39

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 33 shirts remaining

- chris tower - first published - 1402.16 - 20:15
updated - 1402.17 - 19:42
final publication - 1407.08 - 10:21

T-shirt #331 - Winnie the Pooh - Mornings

T-shirt #331 - Winnie the Pooh - "Mornings are BEARable when they smell like chocolate."


I am leaving in the original text I posted with new text following.

ORIGINAL TEXT: Still running behind. Even on a partial day off, there do not seem to be enough hours in the day.

In a conversation with my therapist, I admitted that the only putting pressure on me to maintain a feverish pace with this blog is me. I have not had a single comment from readers asking what gives with the incomplete posts or with falling behind. In fact, I may be the only who knows how many incomplete posts are on the blog now. (It's four, counting this one, and one I wanted to update, which would make five if I counted that fifth one as unfinished, and I don't.)


UPDATED AND FINISHED 1403.13: I have decided that some posts do not need a lot of text. Isn't it enough to see this cute shirt and see that I still have my Winnie the Pooh bear? This is actually the second Winnie the Pooh. If I get a chance, I may update with the original Pooh Bear from my childhood. This one was given to me by my first college girlfriend when I was 19, though she also sewed a shirt for the original as his original shirt was completely deteriorated.

I do not think that growing up and being an adult means that I cannot own a teddy bear or ten of them.

I also do not feel that I am less of a man for owning a bear.

The floor mats in my car feature HELLO KITTY.

I also carry a purse. I stopped calling it a "man bag" or a "man purse" years ago. It's a purse. No reason to be ashamed.

Feminism is just another way to say humanism.

HIATUS TEXT: I am taking a short hiatus. A "hiatus" for the 365 T-shirts Blog does not mean that there will not be shirts or that I will skip posting on any forthcoming day. There will be shirts. But the shirts will not be exciting or the featured shirts will not require me to write a small novel to properly generate the content I feel is sufficient. I created a category for my hiatus so as to group together those "easy" shirts that I consider to be "hiatus shirts." The goal of the hiatus is to fill in many blog days with easy shirts in order to complete longer love letters to beloved popular culture icons on more special shirts and to write more complex entries AHEAD OF TIME. The daily grind is becoming too much and causing me to fall behind and to be forced to post incomplete entries. I am hoping that a series of hiatus shirts will allow me to catch up, get ahead, and stay ahead. Ideally, I would like to be writing the bulk of each entry three days ahead while always working on at least one other. I have a lot of great shirts to share before the end of my blog year (after all I was just given SIXTEEN shirts for my birthday). Stay tuned. I promise to post the more interesting and longer T-shirt entries as I finish them. Thanks for reading. BTW, this is the standard HIATUS TEXT that I will include in every "hiatus shirt" entry.

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 34 shirts remaining

- chris tower - first published - 1402.15 - 16:15
final publication - 1403.13 - 9:40

T-shirt #330 - Gotham City Athletic Department

T-shirt #330 -Gotham City Athletic Department

I am not engaging in any special content for Valentine's Day. Okay, that's a lie. My shirt is not Valentine's Day themed, and there is not much in the way of Valentine's content. But I will post a lovely Warren Ellis and his wife created last year about the true meaning of Valentine's Day. It's at the end of today's blog entry.

Okay, I am such a huge liar. One other thing. I wrote a story many years ago about a couple having an argument about Valentine's Day. The wrong-headed husband did not want to buy into the commercialism and insanity. He felt that he showed his wife that he loved her in many ways all the time, and he did not need to do anything unusual on Valentine's Day. She countered that the day is important to her, and so it should not matter if it's over commercialized because recognizing it is a sign that he truly loves her puts her wishes above his own highly debatable principles.

UPDATE 1403.13: This entry, like a few others, has gone long unfinished. When I fell behind in my pace to provide quality T-shirt-related content on the Internet, I eventually reached a stage in which I let go of the stress and pressure under which I was putting myself to provide substantial content each day. I mean, that's just crazy. So, now, almost a month later, I am finishing this post without too much excessive content.

ABOUT THE SHIRT

I was surprised as I went through my closet and discovered that I had not shared this shirt yet. Choosing this short provided a fortuitous occasion to both share another installment of WHY T-SHIRTS and this week's WEEKLY COMIC LIST. Plus, I had not yet shared my first comic book, which happened to feature Batman, and so that sharing follows.


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WHY T-SHIRTS EXPLANATORY BLURB
I am doing a series of snippets that will add up to a larger whole answering the "Why T-shirts?" or "What's with all the T-shirts?" question. I have also decided to include the previous items in an ever growing list, hence the "previous items" section next.
PREVIOUS ITEMS
#1: T-SHIRTS ARE COOL
#2: I BE BRANDED - CHOOSING TO ADVERTISE
#3: It's my tattoo
#4 PRIDE AND STATUS - "It's my thing."
#5 -  "LET ME GEEK FLAG FLY!!"
#6 - UNIFORM SHIRTS ARE COOL
#7. PROOF THAT I DID IT - SHIRTS FOR EVENTS
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TODAY'S ITEM - 

WHY T-SHIRTS #8. THE FICTIONAL REALITY - THIS T-SHIRT WOULD EXIST

I do not know who had the idea, but I love these shirts that look like a real product of the fictional world from which they draw their subject matter.

For example, "athletic department" shirts are common place in our world, and so they would be common place in a fictional world, such as Gotham City as well. I have featured shirts passing for Shield Agent, Smallville Athletics, Gotham Police Department SWAT, Daily Planet staffer, among many others.

This is the kind of branding I can get behind. There's a "cool" factor here, almost like an inside joke. Nudge, nudge: do you "get" my shirt? I like that feeling.

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MY FIRST COMIC BOOK

This is the comic book cover from the first comic book I ever owned, originally published in May of 1966. I was four years old and living in Traverse City.

I do not remember much about the story, and it would take me a long time to track down the actual issue in all the boxes; the issue itself is almost complete destroyed because it has been read so many times and handled by a small child (me).

It's a Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino issue. I wrote about Infantino during the earliest days of this blog (T-shirt #20) because he passed away. Since this is my first comic book, Infantino was the first comic book artist I knew.

I loved this issue to death, and the nature of this story with its tricky series of traps. A brilliant storyteller, Gardner Fox's work had a profound effect on my own sensibilities and ideas about story telling as a young person.

The Cluemaster is a very silly villain. I mean, why would you want to taunt the super hero trying to catch you by leaving CLUES. Well, unless you're crazy like a loon as most of Batman's villains are.

The again, what do you expect of a former GAME SHOW HOST turned villain.

I would keep an eye on Drew Carey if I were you.

MY FIRST COMIC BOOK - MY OLDEST BATMAN COMIC BOOK 

Detective Comics #351 - "The Cluemaster's Topsy-Turvy Crimes"

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WEEKLY COMICS LIST

It had to happen eventually. And maybe I decided to do it because I just wrote about it on Sunday February 9th. Or maybe it would have happened anyway. But The Walking Dead finally fell out of the top spot.

And it dropped TWO SLOTS?? Why you ask? It's funny that you would ask that because I am about to explain.

UPDATE 1403.13: Since I posted this entry a month ago, I have read most of these issues (all but the last three, which languish in the current back log). I just finished Fatale volume four two nights ago, but I had to re-read the first three volumes to make sense of the fourth (my memory is poor). I plan to review those books soon, though soon means sometimes past March 13th, which is the day I am writing these words and sending them back through time to this blog entry.

I am planning on a few very short comic book reviews after I share the list. Short so I can get this posted and get back to work. Actually, I am trying a new incentive to keep me working. Blog a little, grade a little, blog a little, grade a little. And so on.

These comics were all enjoyable. SHE-HULK  may be the greatest surprise in this list as I ranked it low and now, since I did not order it, I cannot get the second issue, which sold out.
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COMICS FOR 1402.12

Winter Soldier #001
Kick Ass 3 #6
The Walking Dead #121
Avengers #026
All New X-Men #23 (The Trial of Jean Grey part 3 of 5)
(From two weeks ago week) Thor God of Thunder #018
- + - + - - + - + - - + -  reading virtual mark as of today 1402.14 - - + - + - - + - + - - + - + - - + - + - - +
Thor God of Thunder #019.NOW (The Last Days of Midgard #1)

Superman and Wonder Woman #5
Superior Spider-Man #027.NOW (Goblin Nation #1)
Nightwing #28
Batgirl #28
Batman #28
Secret Avengers #015
X-Force #001
Red Sonja Special #1 ($1.00)
Justice League of America #12
She- Hulk #001
Legenderry #2
Astro City #9
Suicide Squad #28

BACK LOG

There's back log and then there's deep back log. I won't even try to tell you about the chasm, the deepest back log. Okay, maybe I will tell.
Anyway...

Great Pacific #13
Ten Grand #7

SPECIAL PURCHASE

Fatale: Book Four: Pray For Rain


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COMIC BOOK REVIEWS




COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR -35 shirts remaining

- chris tower - first published - 1402.14 - 15:00

T-shirt #329 - The Pixies

T-shirt #329 - 

The Pixies

On Saturday the 8th, just five days ago, my step-daughter Piper and her boyfriend Adam went to see the Pixies in Detroit.

When I listed my top ten favorite bands (which was actually a top thirteen) in T-shirt #273, I did not list the Pixies. But they were in my secondary list.

Here's what I wrote in T-shirt #273, which was dedicated to U2 and the Vertigo Tour and I think it bears repeating because for some of you, this is the way you see it for the first time and for regular readers, it never hurts to see it again (because who am I kidding, how many people click ANY of my links):

TOP TEN FAVORITE BANDS
... okay, actually the top thirteen and a secondary list of many.

U2 is definitely a favorite band, but would it make my top ten? I don't think so. Here's a quick list of absolute top ten bands:

The Jam, Cocteau Twins, 10,000 Maniacs, The Indigo Girls, Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, Everything But the Girl, King Crimson, Radiohead, Stereolab, Spyro Gyra, Sigur Rós, The Clash.
Okay, that's thirteen. But I was going by iTunes playlists and most frequent listening stats. And there's a secondary list, and this is where you will find U2:

Kraftwerk, The Innocence Mission, Japan, Talking Heads, U2, REM, The Art of Noise, Genesis, Hooverphonic, DEVO, Simon and Garfunkel, Haircut 100, They Might Be Giants, New Order, Joy Division, The Style Council, Cabaret Voltaire, Lush, Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil, The Pixies.

And I am still leaving out many great bands and groups of artists who function like bands, such as Aphex Twin and most especially Machine Love(note the link to my entry on them in my other blog). I have given Machine Love some LOVE on my pages before, but in 273 posts, I am not sure where.

I would say this is a pretty good start to the favorite bands list. Though not a top ten, those thirteen bands are those I have listened to most often over the years. Though great and frequently in my rotation, U2 falls into a secondary category of favorites that I adore but for one reason or another were not as constantly played as first thirteen. I also think it's worth noting that of the thirteen "favorites," I have blog posts specifically dedicated to nine of those thirteen top bands, and I have plans for posts with three more of them.

All that said, though U2 is not in that top thirteen bands, I do love U2 and have a long history of loving them and listening to them.

I believe that when I made up my lists in T-shirt #273 that I had quite forgotten my list in T-shirt #46. Here's what I wrote in that post:

This list excludes childhood loves (the Partridge Family, the Osmonds, the Jackson Five), musical artists who are not bands even though they may be backed by a band, and newer bands that I have not loved long enough to consider placing in the top ten. I also do a little doubling up.
Though numbered, the bands are not ranked.

1. 10,000 Maniacs
2. Cocteau Twins
3. The Jam/ Style Council
4. Spyro Gyra
5. Steely Dan
6. Pink Floyd
7. Everything But The Girl
8. King Crimson
9. The Indigo Girls
10. Talking Heads

As much as I love Devo, they do not make this list. And other bands who I love with a great burning passion, like Joy Division (see T-shirt #35), Kraftwerk (T-shirt #36), and Sigur Rós (T-shirt #12); other great bands do not break the top ten but would be in my top twenty, such as Radiohead, Roxy Music, the Clash, Dead Can Dance, and the Police.

Even though DEVO is not in the top ten favorites, they are in the list of bands or musical artists that I want to see live. A list that also includes bands I cannot see live, such as Pink Floyd, Roxy Music, and the Jam.

So the lists are similar though not identical. For instance, the Clash is not on the earlier list. Neither is Sigur Rós, Radiohead, or Radiohead. I had Talking Heads originally in that early top ten list and then dropped them upon consideration to a secondary list.

The Pixies make that secondary list not because I am a huge Pixies fan gone berserk with Pixies adoration but because the Pixies are one of those bands that one is supped to like if you are someone like me given my other fandom focuses and general aesthetics. Now, don't get me wrong, I like the Pixies. I like them a lot. I think they are a GREAT band. But I am not as completely off my rocker nuts about them as other people in my orbit are and I resist the pressure I feel to be so nuts.

The next question is whether or not I would put the Pixies on a list of greatest bands in the history of modern music, and I think I can say without reservation that I would. Many of my favorite bands would not make that list, a more objective list, measuring greatness, impact, and some kind of seminal factor.

I featured the Pixies many semesters in my musical artists of the week and talked about the band's importance to modern music as we know it.

I had the pleasure of seeing the Pixies during their first reunion tour in 2004 11 years after their inexplicable break up in 1993.

I saw one of the shows at the Aragon and ran into many other Kalamazooans there.

It was a great show. The Pixies were dead on target with their music and their set. The distance and time from the original recordings and early years had given them a necessary perspective allowing them to play songs lovingly and without sounding forced.

Given my companion at the time, I did not dance but actually secured seats from which to sit and watch and listen. It was an unusual way to see a band that gets me dancing.

Before the concert, I ate at a nearby Vietnamese restaurant in Chicago.

I also bought the live recordings through a service that records the show and produces high quality CDs mixed from the sound directly from the concert's sound board.

 When I met the woman who is now my wife, Liesel, I discovered that she was also a Pixies fan. I had the word "huge" originally modifying "Pixies," and I took it out because I do not consider myself or Liesel a "HUGE" Pixies fan. I like the Pixies. I recognize how great they are. But there are many other bands I love more from a purely personal taste perspective.

One thing that has always struck me about my wife, Liesel, is that she has great taste. She has great taste in everything but especially in music. Our musical tastes do not align perfectly, but we're pretty closely synced.

We adopted "Velouria," the first song off the 1990 album Bossanova.

We used some of the lyrics in our wedding invitation: "We will wade in the shine of the ever."

Perfect.

Priceless.

More on this story in the entry for T-shirt #279: thirtysomething.

THE PIXIES OFFICIAL SITE

HERE'S MY TOP FIVE FAVORITE PIXIES SONGS. TOUGH CHOICE. BUT HERE YOU GO.

I have a few other goodies to share, also.

THE VIDEOS

A song with lyrics based on Un Chien Andalou, the 1929 silent surrealist short film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí, is going to be one of my favorites. But the song has such a great hook. I think it's one of the Pixies' best songs.

Pixies - Debaser (Official Video)

Girls playing the bass are super hot and awesome. Kim Deal happens to transcend this tawdry praise and achieves a hole new level. This is a fantastic song and proof that Frank does not have to be the front man on every song.

The Pixies - Gigantic

Yes, I am going with the best known Pixies song as a fave. What of it? But this video is so awesome. And I prefer the UK surf version of this song. I first heard it on the X-Files, which may be how I came to connect with the Pixies for the first time.

The Pixies - Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)

Since I leaving "Velouria" for last, my fourth choice is very tough because there's tons of great songs to choose from. A lot of people might choose "Where's My Mind?" or "Bone Machine" is popular. Though top tracks in You Tube are a bit puzzling. Check out this list.

• Top tracks
• Albums

Where Is My Mind?		3:56
Hey		3:32
Trompe le Monde		1:49
Cecilia Ann		2:06
Space		4:21
Debaser		2:57
Gigantic		3:57
Alec Eiffel		2:55
Here Comes Your Man		3:20
Bone Machine		3:04

My fourth is going to prove that Doolittle is my favorite album. But I also have to go with this clip from Letterman.

The Pixies- Monkey Gone to Heaven

And lastly "VELOURIA," one of the two songs that Liesel and I consider "our songs." I own recordings of the Brixton shows featured here, so a final Pixies treat. The lyrics of this song are capable of transporting me to the early days of my relationship with Liesel. It always kindles our love for each other.

"Velouria"

hold my head
we'll trampoline
finally through the roof
on to somewhere near
and far in time
velouria
her covering
travelling career
she can really move
oh velveteen!

my velouria, my velouria
even i'll adore you
my velouria

say to me
where have you been
finally through the roof
and how does lemur skin
reflect the sea?

we will wade in the shine of the ever
we will wade in the shine of the ever
we will wade in the tides of the summer
every summer
every summer
every
my velouria
my velouria

forevergreen
i know she's here
in California
i can see the tears
of shastasheen

my velouria, my velouria
even i'll adore your
my velouria

Pixies - Velouria (live)

And now for those treats that I mentioned...

bowie on Pixies

Great stuff by the masterful Mr. Bowie!! If you look at You Tube, you will also find a video of Radiohead talking about the influence of the Pixies.

Though not the Pixies, this next is from the Breeders, whom I may love more (at least The Last Splash) than the Pixies for the excellence of the Deal sisters.

Cannonball - The Breeders

Damn that's a great song.

Okay, Okay, I LOVE THE PIXIES. Damn you. Damn you all.

It's true.

Not put down the pipe.

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 36 shirts remaining

- chris tower - 1402.13 - 15:59