Tag Archives: 1996

Takin’ It Back: Ween

In 2018, two years from the time of this writing, Bands I Useta Like (the comic strip) will be twenty years old. In 1998, I drew the initial batch of strips for Mike The Pod Comix #4, and included them in the proposal that saw them properly published, starting in 2002. Among this early run were “the Oingo Boingo strip” and “the Ween strip”.

BIUL_Ween

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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Thousand Listen Club

Freedy Johnston

Freedy Johnston is a New York-based singer/songwriter who was born in Kansas. His lyrics are articulate and literary, and of a quality not heard since the days of Gordon Lightfoot and Laura Nyro. He has been called “a songwriter’s songwriter”, and his work has been featured in movie soundtracks, most notably Kingpin(1996).

Sweet merciful mother of god, his songs are sad.

Not pictured: Freedy Johnston.

Not pictured: Freedy Johnston.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Girls of BIUL, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee

Squirrel Nut Zippers

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Le temps détruit tout; time destroys all things. People, corporations, empires; everything eventually must yield to the Great Abyss. Immortality only exists within the perception of us mortals, meaning, there is no immortality for anything but mountains and tardigrades. We all die, alone and afraid.

Music is a celebration of the immediate present. Musicians agitate the air molecules and create “living” sound. Live audiences receive these vibrations, and are stimulated. This is why recordings seldom deliver the experience that live performances do, and why some dudes have to blast their music loud enough to drive everyone in earshot insane.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Girls of BIUL, Late To The Party, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club

They’re All Gonna Laugh At You!

I seldom forget a good paroxysm of laughter. For example, one of the best memories of my time working at the mall record store involves an album played after closing, one night in 1993. Myself and two other employees were doubled over, purple-faced, unable to breathe from laughing so hard. It felt like the skin at the base of my skull was going to split.

The album was They’re All Gonna Laugh At You!, and the man responsible was Adam Sandler.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club

Atlanta Is My Lady

You wanna know how to tell if a city is your home? When terrible things happen to you there, and it never occurs to you to leave. You don’t abandon your home. You stay and tough it out.

There was a night during my stay in Fulton County Jail where all of us were herded into the rec area, so that the guards could search the ward for contraband. Apparently some inmates had been smoking weed in their cell. Since that cell was mine, and one of the inmates was me, I spent my time in the rec room deep in contemplation. As time wore on no quicker than molasses, we all started to chat to break the tension.

The cement room was sweltering. The walls were nine feet high, rimmed with cyclone fencing. If I jumped vertically, I could catch a glimpse of the glimmering Atlanta skyline I missed so terribly. This was soothing. Some of the inmates I’d befriended took notice, and I eagerly explained myself. It was the first view of the city I’d had in a month.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Girls of BIUL

Tori Amos

Ladies and gentlemen, the strip that bought me that condo, in that dream I had once where I was actually a successful cartoonist.

BIUL_ToriAmos

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Filed under Comix Classic & Current