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'A well-told, powerful story. Backderf is quite skilled in using comics to tell this tale of a truly weird and sinister 1970s adolescent world.' 'Stunning. Horrifying. 'An exemplary demonstration of 'A visceral, ambitious graphic novel. Backderf's writing is impeccably honest. A small, dark classic.'
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'Hysterically funny!' –Boston Globe "Brilliant!" –Newsarama 'An incredibly likeable book.' CBG Fan Award winner 152 pages, SLG Publishing, $15.95 ...................................
'The funniest book of the year.' The original Eisner-nominated memoir of my memorable (and smelly) career as a garbageman. 52 pages. SLG Publishing, $6.95 ...................................
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Friday, Mar. 2, 6-9pm Weds., April 4, 7pm Weds., April 18, 7pm Thurs. Apr. 26, 7pm Sat., Apr. 28, 11am - 6pm Sat. May 5 & Sun. May 6 Tues. May 8, 7pm Tues. May 15, 7pm Book signing to follow Sat-Sun., Sept 15 & 16
BLOG ARCHIVE
INTERESTING SITES: APE indy comix expo in San Fran
AWESOME COMIX SHOPS: Laughing Ogre - Columbus OH Atomic Books - Baltimore Quimby's - Chicago Copacetic Comics- Pittsburgh Green Brain Comics - Deerborn MI Jim Hanley's Universe - NYC Astound Comics- Cleveland Comic Relief - Berkeley CA The Beguiling - Toronto Big Planet Comics - DC area Million Year Picnic - Cambridge MA Big Brain Comics - Minneapolis Zanadu Comics - Seattle Lucky's - Vancouver BC Monkey's Retreat - Columbus, OH Starclipper Comics - St. Louie Comix Experience - San Fran Last Gasp - San Fran Comikaze - San Diego, CA Meltdown Comics -LA, CA Dark Star Books - Dayton, OH Austin Comics - Austin, TX Pitka mies - Helsinki |
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Hey, feel free to friend me on Facebook. I'm a social media slut. I friend anyone who asks. Of course, you'll read nothing but lies on my page. February 2, 2012 Punk Rock & Trailer Parks Item of the Month For those of you who followed my advice to see mysterious proto-punk legends Rocket From the Tombs if they came anywhere near, congrats. For those of you who didn't, I'm sorry to report that the group has once again disbanded. Shortly after I saw them here in Cleveland, in fact. A couple days later, just as the band left the stage following a show in New York, guitarist Cheetah Chrome announced to the others that he was through touring, effective immediately. I am so grateful I got to see them one last time. A pity if you didn't. I was going to write about enigmatic frontman David Thomas this month. Found some great clips. But that will have to wait.
Above: Cheetah Chrome sings the classic punk ballad Ain't It Fun. I love the otherworldly lighting of this clip. Very much in keeping with the band's status as a mythic unknown. As a bonus you also get the nihilistic anthem, Life Stinks. RFTT may or may not continue to record new music, but obviously a 5-piece group that is now down to two original members, out of the original cast of nine (Stiv Bators and Peter Laughner being long dead), and losing a living legend like Chrome, makes any future gigs a lot less attractive. This was reported in the Sound of the City blog in the Village Voice. (an excellent source btw for the muzak underground). It wasn't reported AT ALL in the "alternative" press here in Cleveland. Hell, the local weekly rag wrote but a single paragraph promoting the show! This blows my mind. RFTT and its offshoots (Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys) are the most important musical offspring to ever crawl out of the otherwise overrated Cleveland music scene! Sadly, ignoring RFTT is something of a tradition here in Cleveland. The daily paper wasn't writing about underground music in 1974, of course. It's coverage of rock music was limited to the Bay City Rollers and other sugary, non-threatening acts, and certainly NOT a terrifying collective of combative and strung-out lunatics like the cacophonous Tombs. As for the then embryonic alt-press, Frontman David Thomas first came to local "fame" as a writer for this very weekly fishwrap, which started as a lowbrow rock-n-roll tabloid for stoner hippies. He penned articles under the nom-de-plume Crocus Behemoth. But he was famously difficult even then, and his departure from the paper was so rancorous that there was an in-house ban on ever writing about any band with which he was later associated! A brilliant move by the paper's decision-makers, since those bands were RFTT and Pere Ubu! There's a similar vibe to the messy end of my career at this same paper. So I'm in illustrious company! January 31, 2012 My Friend Dahmer Book Tour Yep, it's about to kick off. Check the list in the column to the right periodically, as this will be growing as the launch approaches. January 30, 2012
Joe the Fucking Plumber Joe Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, is running for Congress here in the Lawless Tribal Regions of Ohio. As a Tea Party Republican, of course, despite being painted as a "reg'lar" guy by the FoxNews crowd when he seized his 15 minutes of fame by confronting Obama at a meet-and-greet back in 2008 just as the Great Teabagger Hissy Fit was getting underway. But who knows? It's a crafty move by the GOP. Throw a famous Teabagger to the wolves, which both sets teeth a-grinding at Dem Party HQ and also likely eliminates once and for all a guy the Republican elite have no more use for (wink-wink, nudge-nudge). The last thing GOP bigshots in DC want is more of these nutball Tea Party rubes crapping in the country club lawn! Joe is getting so little from the Republican war chest he actually has to pay himself a salary out of his campaign fund to keep from starving at home. It's legal, but damn unusual. Normally, GOP congressional candidates are awash in cash! You can bet the Teabagger hordes will turn out in droves at Joe's rallies, making for great tv footage.
Jan. 21, 2012 My Friend Dahmer Item of the Month Five weeks and counting until the March 1 release of My Friend Dahmer! The pop-culture mavens at Flavorwire list MFD as the No. 1 most-anticipated graphic novel of 2012! Which brings us to the latest Item of the Month, and it's epic! This comes from friend Neil, one of the small group of band nerds who befriended Dahmer in high school and formed the Dahmer Fan Club to egg him on in his various acts of weirdness. You'll read all in the book. Neil contributed much material, through many emails and conversations, as I was putting together this book over the past several years. But he dropped this tale on me just last week, a painfully tardy contribution, since the book is already printed and steaming across the Pacific from the printing plant in China! Too late to add it now, alas, so you readers get it as an added treat. In the Summer of 1975, between freshman and sophomore years, Neil and Dahmer went to a concert together. The Cleveland area, which our town was on the far edge of, was known at that time as the Rock Capital of the World, due to several powerful FM stations and a huge, rabid rock fandom. There were many venues in the area where legendary concerts were held, but none was more beloved than Blossom Music Center.
Blossom was WAY out in the boonies, in the rolling countryside far south of Cleveland (it's now the Cuyahoga Valley National Park). It was an outdoor amphitheater, surrounded by a vast, sloping lawn where concert-goers could spread out with blankets and picnic dinners and enjoy a live performance. It opened in 1968 to serve as the summer home of the Cleveland Orchestra (which it still is). Looking for extra revenue, the following year Blossom began booking rock acts and immediately became THE place to see live music. The official capacity was 8,000. But because of its rural setting, fans would simply abandon their cars on the berms of the surrounding, gridlocked country roads and hike through the woods to crash the gates. There was no fence or barrier, the local police force was comprised of Goober and Barney, and Blossom security was totally overwhelmed as kids poured in from every direction. A Blood, Sweat & Tears concert in 1969 drew a crowd of over 80,000! It was Woodstock every weekend! Concert-goers drank wine out of sheepskin jugs and passed joints and bongs. A giant fog of pot smoke hung over the throng, at times obliterating the amphitheater itself. Couples frolicked naked in the nearby woods. All over the lawn, lovers crawled into sleeping bags to hump, the bags moving in time to the beat, like giant caterpillars. I saw my first live music (and my first naked woman!) here. Tickets were so cheap, $4 a head, and it was so easy to sneak into a show, that it really didn't even matter who was playing. You went for the experience and to try to meet girls. Never had any success there, despite the frequent naked nymphs dancing through the crowd. So in the Summer of 1975, Neil and Dahmer decided to attend a Blossom concert. Neil suspects it was Dahmer's first show. It may well have been his ONLY concert. Neither was driving yet, so Dahmer's dad drove them as close as he could to the Blossom entrance, until the traffic gridlocked and then the boys walked the rest of the way, probably a couple miles. Heck, the driveway into the grounds was a couple miles long, so it was likely a four-or-five-mile hike! Made a few of those myself. He picked them up at the same spot at a designated time after the show. Traffic leaving Blossom shows was just as bottlenecked as it was before events. Many kids just slept in their cars until the following day! The headliner for this show? Neil Sedaka!!!!! That's right, the chubby, little schlockmeister who penned some of the most vile Top 40 hits of the Seventies!!! Friend Neil recalls that Dahmer was quite taken with Sedaka's music at the time. I had MY young guilty pleasures, too, before I discovered punk rock later in the Seventies and my tastes refined, but NEVER something THIS godawful!!
Hee-hee. Aren't serial killers supposed to be driven by heavy metal? That's what the bible-thumping, FoxNews crowd always insists. I've read elsewhere that Dahmer was supposed to be a huge fan of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, which I don't remember at all and is something I have always viewed with skepticism. Like I have much of the urban legend that the Death Metal/ Serial Killer sub-culture has constructed out of Dahmer's life, it's bullshit. And now friend Neil confirms it. This is especially hilarious considering how Death Metal has embraced Dahmer's story. The band Macabre released Dahmer back in 2000, a concept album devoted entirely to Jeff's life and killing spree. Here's a song from the album about our high school antics, Do the Dahmer.
There's others. Apartment 213 (named after Dahmer's pad in Milwaukee) has released a number of albums, all featuring various photos of Dahmer on the cover. A Canadian metal band simply calls itself Dahmer and most of its discography is inspired by various aspects of his life and crimes. There's a Brit metal band called Trophies of Dahmer, referring, of course, to the heads and skulls he kept as "trophies." The metal community is fascinated with the guy, and views his miserable life as a mirror of the metal philosophy. Picked on and shunned as a kid, wallowed in misery and drink, and then snapped and got his "revenge." Blah blah blah. It's all total crap, of course. And now (chortle) it turns out Dahmer was, in fact, a Neil Sedaka fan!!!! Snort! Cackle!
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