I have all of Astro City as floppies, so I'll be pasing on this. But no doubt it'll be a handsome volume.

I'm not overly familiar with Trina Robbins' work, but obviously know of her impact on comics. Shame to hear of her passing.

TIL that she was a friend of several rock bands from the '60s L.A./Laurel Canyon scene, including The Byrds and The Doors. Joni Mitchell even mentions her in her 1970 song "Ladies of the Canyon" (in the first and fourth verses)...



Ladies of the Canyon

Trina wears her wampum beads
She fills her drawing book with line
Sewing lace on widows' weeds
And filigree on leaf and vine
Vine and leaf are filigree
And her coat's a secondhand one
Trimmed with antique luxury
She is a lady of the canyon

Annie sits you down to eat
She always makes you welcome in
Cats and babies 'round her feet
And all are fat and none are thin
None are thin and all are fat
She may bake some brownies today
Saying, you are welcome back
She is another canyon lady

Estrella, circus girl
Comes wrapped in songs and gypsy shawls
Songs like tiny hammers hurled
At beveled mirrors in empty halls
Empty halls and beveled mirrors
Sailing seas and climbing banyans
Come out for a visit here
To be a lady of the canyon

Trina takes her paints and her threads
And she weaves a pattern all her own
Annie bakes her cakes and her breads
And she gathers flowers for her home
For her home she gathers flowers
And Estrella, dear companion
Colors up the sunshine hours
Pouring music down the canyon
Coloring the sunshine hours
They are the ladies of the canyon

Just venting and moaning for a bit...

I've come down with a real stinker of a cold and have almost completely lost my voice (not good for a singer!). I had a really important gig with my band The Kynd tonight in London, supporting a group called Apollo Junction, who have been getting some decent press in this country of late. It was a chance for us to play in front of 250-300 people who'd likely never heard us before and to hopefully win over some new fans and sell some LPs, CDs and T-Shirts. In addition, a good friend of mine, who I've not seen since Christmas, was coming up from Worthing on the south coast to watch us, so I was looking forward to having a few beers with him afterwards.

Unfortunately, we've had to cancel the gig because I just can't sing at the moment and because today I'm running a temperature, with sweats and shivering. I've been in bed all day. I feel f*cking wretched and completely p*ssed off that I've been forced to cancel such an important gig. It absolutely sucks!

I am not a happy camper right now.

The mid-to-late 80s DC run by a country mile! It really captured the the "voices" and personalities of the main cast in a way that earlier comic series hadn't. I also appreciated that the Enterprise crew were dressed in the red naval-style uniforms they wore in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, which of course was the era in which the stories were set.

#8 - The Unforgettable Fire by U2




I'm not a massive U2 fan, by any means, but they had a run of three albums between 1984 and 1988 that I really enjoy. Prior to that, I find the band a bit too self-consciously political and over-earnest, and afterwards I find them insufferably post-ironic (not that there weren't occasional good singles from both of those eras). But the period of U2's recording career that I really enjoy listening to begins with The Unforgettable Fire.

It's a very atmospheric record, with a murky, experimental vagueness to tracks like "Promenade", "The Unforgettable Fire" and "Elvis Presley and America", courtesy of producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Even the rockier songs like "A Sort of Homecoming" and "Wire" seem shrouded in a misty, not-quite-there ambience. It's an album driven more by emotion than by intellect; an artsy record, for sure, but one that doesn't ever sound deliberately artsy. Really, it's only the rock anthem and big hit "Pride (In the Name of Love)" – which is easily one of my favourite U2 songs ever – that sounds like the U2 of earlier albums.

Rather than post that big hit though, I'm gonna offer up "A Sort of Homecoming" instead. Partly because it's a good example of the murky, experimental sound I mentioned earlier, but mostly because it's an intensely personal song for me. Every time I hear its sweeping guitar textures, propulsive drum shuffle, and Bono's heartfelt and breathlessly romantic mystic/mythic lyrics, I am instantly transported back to a certain place, a certain time, with a certain person, walking home in the chilly pre-dawn towards the lights of my home town.

Shame to hear of this. That's a fun record.

Yeah, that's probably not a bad comparison to make, though at their root, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions had a retro, jangle pop indie aesthetic behind the major label production gloss, where as Simple Minds were much more indebted to post-punk and new wave, at least initially. But I agree that there probably isn't much between the two bands really, though personally I prefer Lloyd Cole.