Thank You, Greg Dulli

Posted on November 17, 2003 at 10:28 am | No Comments

So my brain is still buzzing from the Twilight Singers show last night… I’m still on some sort of Greg Dulli-induced high, and it’s erasing the memory of anything I did before it. I mean, I know I did other stuff over the weekend, but right now I just can’t seem to recall what. It’s all about Dulli and the rock he and his band whipped out last night. Mid-November and he gives us the show of the year.

At last, the Afghan Whigs gig I never got to see, and it was better than I ever thought it would be. I’d missed them too many times… up in Vermont there weren’t many (read: any) chances to see ’em, and they sadly disappeared before I moved to Boston. After last night, I feel like something that was missing has been finally found. Reading and hearing for so many years what a performer Dulli is, how great the Whigs were live, Amie telling me about the times she’d seen them … and how this time was even better. She was ready to hop on the Fung Wah just to see them play again tonight in NYC, and she’d be on her way if that show wasn’t already sold out.

I mean, what a performance. I’ve never heard a sound so huge inside TTs before. The guys he’s got on the road with him are so right on, they helped him exceed any expectations I had for the night. The Twilight Singers songs were fleshed out, more rockin’, brighter, fuller, and more powerful than the new album. A few Afghan songs made surprising, intoxicating appearances, either in full or in part. Covers and mini-medleys worked their way in, reinterpretations or straightforward versions of a wide variety of stuff. Prince (Dulli spoke of seeing the movie “Purple Rain” in 1984, then broke into that song), Outkast (They actually covered “Hey Ya”, which transformed itself into the Whigs “66” from “1965”), Derek & the Dominos (They perfectly played the whole piano outro from “Layla”), Marvin Gaye (“I only wish I could sing like Marvin”, Dulli said.), John Coltrane (covering “A Love Supreme”). After some very touching words, he dedicated “Martin Eden” (the first song from “Blackberry Belle”) to Elliott Smith, whom he called a friend (“When I heard the news, I didn’t think of his music, or his life… I thought about his last, lonely five minutes… “), and dedicated another song to departed director Ted Demme. He spoke of Steve McQueen, The Darkness (Dulli sez : “My favorite new band…”), Apollonia, and even broke into a spontaneous mockery of Jim Morrison. He was all over the map… emotional, dirty, empathetic, and irreverant all at once.

He said they’d be back “in a couple months”. Wherever it is, and it will no doubt be in a bigger club, it’s gonna sell out again. Every person in the place will be back, and so will every single friend they can drag. Amie just called me to ask where our new Twilight Singers disc is … she can’t stop thinking about last night either, and is loading her car’s cd changer with “Blackberry Belle” and four Whigs albums. It’s gonna be a Dulli kind of day, for the both of us …

Teenage Comic Kicks : Unearthing the F.N.C.P.

Posted on November 13, 2003 at 11:06 am | No Comments

I was 14 years old, and neck deep in a comic-book obsession, in the summer of 1984.� Free time was wasted in the mall video arcade, or just across the street at Earth Prime, our Burlington, Vermont comic shop.� I spent many of these days with my friend Mike Barrett, and in a fit of summer-boredom / comics-enthusiasm, we started up a bi-weekly fanzine called The Friendly Neighborhood Comic Paper.� Almost 20 years ago.� Don’t hold it against us. It was pre-computers, of course… we had an old typewriter, no design experience, some barely-there writing ability, and Mike’s formative drawing skills.� I remember hours of sitting on my bedroom floor, going through comic publisher press releases, coming up with stories, pecking at typewriter keys, putting together each issue with scissors and rubber cement.� Our headlines were horribly handwritten (no font size on typewriters), our borders were crooked, our photocopies were spotty and misaligned. � But hey, we were 14 and having fun.� (well, until I tried to transcribe a tape-recorded panel discussion from the Albany-Con comic convention … that nearly cost me a hand). Looking back through these, after I stop laughing, I’m struck how much we learned as we went.� More content, better layout, bringing in friends to help, covering broader subjects (videogames included, of course).� I love the first time we got reader mail (two letters from our biggest fan, David Parker). I love how excited we were when we used a dot-matrix printer for the first time (asking our readers “So, what do you think?!”). I love that we traced comic illustrations but always made sure to put the copyright info next to ’em.� I love that we begged local business to buy ads that hardly anyone would ever see.� I love that we had ‘competition’ with Noel Lawrence’s “Comicers Report” ‘zine.� I love that our last issue had a huge ‘preview’ of a comic by our friends Greg Giordano and Mark Amidon, a comic that never even came out.� I love seeing the shift in my personal tastes from mainstream Marvel and DC books to stuff from “direct sales” publishers like Eclipse and Comico (“I have seen the light!” I shouted in one issue).� We’re talking about the onset of hardcore early-stage geekery here, folks. After nine issues, the FNCP became “The Comics Informer” (copies of which seem to have been lost to the ages), which only lasted a couple of issues.� I don’t think we ever did finish transcribing those Albany-Con recordings, though.� I’m sure our readership was devastated. So here they are… 8 issues (issue #6 is MIA) of The Friendly Neighborhood Comic Paper, digitized for your amusement.� Laugh with us, or laugh at us.� Either way, enjoy.� (let me know if any of the links are messed up. oh, and, sorry about this, Mike)