Friday, March 30, 2012

Various Points Of Interest!

BRUCE: Springsteen enjoys a beer in the middle of singing "Raise Your Hand"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UTx19ljx50I#!

PAT DiNIZIO: My pal Pat, lead singer of "The Smithereens," released a very cool solo album a few years ago called "This Is Pat DiNizio." Fuel 2000 has just reissued the commercial CD as a 2cd set with a bunch more tracks, along with the original CD's worth of music. Pat covers his own Smithereens work as well as a panoply of songs ranging from the Beatles' "For No One" to "Wichita Lineman" to the James Bond theme "You Only Live Twice." It's great stuff and now there's more of it! And buy all the Smithereens albums while you're at it -- all great stuff.

DAVID MYHR: ...who was one half of the highly recommended and sadly defunct Swedish power pop outfit "The Merrymakers", has just released a solo CD that captures the Merrymaker's style to a "tee." "Soundshine" is just a great record, 12 glorious upbeat tracks. Available from http://www.koolkatmusik.com/. My copy came autographed and there may be more available, just ask Ray at Koolkat, the best one stop-shopping outlet for power pop fans.

REPRINTS: Between the Marvel/DC "Essentials"/"Showcase" series, reprinting giant wads of comics in 500 page chunks (in B/W), plus their hardcover Masterworks and Archives series, there is an astonishing amount of old comics back in print. Some good, some... "interesting." I was plowing through a Rawhide Kid "Essential" last night and enjoying the great Jack Kirby and Jack Davis art, then a DC "Young Love" Showcase that falls more on the "interesting" scale. It's getting impossible to keep up with everything, but I'm really loving Marvel's Golden Age and "Atlas Age" Masterworks books... and looking forward to Dark Horse's comprehensive reprinting of the old Lev Gleason "Crime And Punishment" books. It's probably killing comic book back issue dealers, but I love the affordability...

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