dogpoet

No. Dick's friends say he was full of shit. While he did do some experimenting with hallucinogens and amphetamines, he acted like he was highly experienced, when in fact, taking drugs was something Dick rarely did.

Wussy? DPT wussy? The Devil Drug? Have you never read Breaking Open The Head?

Apparently, he was so afraid that people were going to think he was schizophrenic, and he was so afraid of the thought that he was schizophrenic, that he made up tales about wild drug experimentation as a way to explain his psychosis.

Although I have serious doubts that a type of actual schizophrenia/schizophreniform disorder would be the proper diagnosis.

Later in life, Dick began to lose it, and just accepted that it was all real. His "Exegesis".

What? You never pretended to be stoned out of your mind on heroin to explain your mental illness in high school?

The main reason Dick developed the pancreatic cancer which eventually killed him was because he'd been taking huge doses of speed ever since he was a child, when they apparently handed out inhalers full of the stuff to asthmatics.

So, how do you highbrows and big brains consciously avoid that scourge of all writers: the cliché? I'm afraid for myself that I often catch it during an editing phase. Personally, I find clichés to be the number one most heinous offense a writer can commit--it's lazy and uncompelling. In music, the clichés are often that formulaic blues progression: I, IV, V, (like G, C, D or A, D, E--we knew Ade was cliché didn't we? :p ). Sometimes it's OK to slap one of those overdone progressions as a bridge or coda, but whenever I hear that progression as the meat of a song, I'm incredulous that someone is actually paying that band money--though, I am aware the lay music fan knows very little about formula.

 

But clichés also abound lyrically, even among those who should know better: rain means sad, girls love bad boys, we're gonna part-ee toni-tuh, love is pain, yadda yadda. I have not listened to aor/commercial radio since the (shudder) grunge epidemic of the '90s, thanks to Puwull Jam, Near Vana, Alice's Stone Temple Pearl Garden and the countless bands that totally aped the sounds of those bands, like Creeeeeeeed or Staaaaaaaindeded.

 

Now, I don't even know who the rock stars are, but ALL the singers sound the same. Now, singing like you have a mouth full of rocks is the modern vocal cliché (when I said I don't listen to radio, well, my wife still does, though she hates it pretty much like I do--it's kind of like a mystery to her that she is investigating--"How did it get so bad"). I mean, modern alt rock singers are now more cliché than cookie monster speed-metal singers or screech owl hair metal singers in spandex.

 

And this modern wave of "punk" bands? Christ, they're the WORST! Bands like Green Day, blink 182, and these bands that lift a punk riff off an old Germs album, while their gravel mouthed, crybaby singers sing like the last single from another band of that retread genre. It's insipid--and it's cliché. These assholes don't even realize they become self-parodies before anything else. And only a rare few of them are laughing all the way to the bank. Most bands you hear on the radio are at least $1 million in debt until their 3rd record--which means when most bands get dropped because their first album had promising returns but the second stunk, they are being dropped owing the record companies that $1 million. Rock star money is all in the shape of advances--loans against the potential of future sales of their record.

 

Remember the Toadies? That exact scenario engilfed and destroyed them. Rubberneck was a phenomenal success. They recorded that album 4 years (1990) before anyone outside of DFW heard Possum Kingdom or Away in 1994. Interscope signed them, rereleased Rubberneck with their label on it, and it went platinum in 1996. So, the Toadies, who had not written or recorded much new material in almost 6 years entered the studio for their first Interscope recording. In 6 years, musically, most artists change and it was no exception with the Toadies. Interscope wanted a carbon copy, by-the-numbers hit just like Rubberneck.

 

When the Toadies finished their new, more mature album, Interscope flatly rejected it. They even went so far as to say they didn't even want any of the songs they recorded for it reworked, they wanted a whole new album and the one they recorded would never see the light of day (though there are bootlegs of it because Todd plays some of those songs live). Interscope wanted the Toadies to follow their formula and become alt-rock clichés of themselves. They were in the studio almost 3 years recording stuff that the record company rejected. They broke up in 2001 but only after replacing two of their mainstays on guitar and bass, so the Toadies that broke up in 2001 really was gone by '99. Even though they hit platinum on their first record, they all had to get regular jobs again to support themselves while trying to record the followup. They got and continue to get OK royalties off Possum Kingdom, but not rock star money. Interscope officially dropped them after Hell Below / Stars Above, the lackluster effort to meet the demands of the record company flopped, but they had already broken up. The cost of spending 3 years in the recording studio was well over $1 million. The band owes the record company most of that money because that second album flopped (I had to look up the name because I barely remember it). So, I guess Interscope has a lien against any future money the members make as entertainers? I'm not sure how that works.

 

My point in all this is that record companies are bad for the industry they exploit. They award the copycats, the clichés and suppress true creativity. And they raise hell about filesharing because it's the only way we can test drive CDs so we don't get burned when there's only one good song on a CD we paid $15 for.

 

After all that, my real question remains how do you creative people avoid the stigma of the cliché? Or does the cliché work for you? I've known a few bands who couldn't make enough for a 6 pack of beer while remaining true to their musical integrity, but they write one sellout formula tune, and all of a sudden they're featured on SPIN's up & comers page. So, being an old fart who has had a very limited amount of success in farway lands but none here, I'm going to try and write one sellout, cliché formula tune. The lyrics will be an explanation of what I'm doing, even so far as singing which chords I'm playing as I'm playing them. It's kind of funny, but still a bit clever for the modern rock audience who "just wants you to know who I am..."

 

God that was a long fucking post! Cheers if you made it this far!

Write it, and then cut it when you're looking through your prose before printing it out and posting it.

Well said Mark. As usual you do a much better job at reviews than anyone I know. I am more of like it/don't like it fellow.

 

Since Dylan's version of 'Rollin' and Tumblin' is not a cover, how does that work in reagards to copyright issues? One person I know has been yelling plagiarism on Dylan's part. But, if I am not mistaken, the song was just made a hit by Waters and was not written by him and the song is non-copywritten work. True?

 

For me, Someday Baby stands out very much. Not sure why, something just clicks with me.

 

Funny you mention the other recent works by Dylan. I bought Time Out of Mind the other. I have listened all the way through once, and I am bit underwelmed. It's a bit too mellow.

 

I am working on getting more versed in the Dylan library. I am still getting through all those CDs you gave me.

 

I also recently picked up Bob Dylan Live: 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue. I have most of the songs in other forms. But who cares? Good price for, too. One of the great things about Dylan is he changes the way a song is played, providing a nice change up from time to time. It is just an awesome album that I can not get enough of.

Plagiarism is a big part of the blues: you do over some bugger else's song and shout a new verse or two over the top and that's a brand new song. You'd never get away with that sort of thing these days.

I could murder a hamburger, now I think about it, but just the burger and the bun, dig? I don't want any indigestible sugar laden goop slopped on top of it.

That Hamdog looks dangerous.

You could use it to chase off a mugger.

Then howd'you see that one, eh? Eh? EH?!?

 

My deductive prowess knows no bounds.

Play nicely, children.

Not to spoil your thread-creatin'-fun, but there's already 4 pages of discussion on this issue in the "Hellblazer #223" thread....

True that: I just fancied a new thread.

Eh, I like the fact that the two lead characters are "over-the-hill" cowboys fighting one final fight--- you didn't see too much of that in Clint's classic westerns.

That's because he was a lot younger when he was making them, and frankly John Wayne did a much better job of that one in The Shootist.

I may buy a DVD of Snakes On A Train, if only to spite Samuel Jackson.

The Outlaw Josey Wales.

The "Spaghetti Western Trilogy." [ADE SAYS: Use correct nomenclature when citing the holy tracts]

Dead Man.

Unforgiven.

Tombstone.

Tombstone I like a lot, but I'm not having Unforgiven: it's the best bits from a bunch of Eastwood's '70s westerns folded around a fat wad of pomposity and bullshit.

He was also exaggerating, as he stated in issue #40 that he doesn't do well on trips and isn't used to magic mushrooms.

He's like Philip K. Dick, master of hallucinogens, who only took halluciongenics a small handful of times in his life, yet made claims to the effect that he was freakin' Grant Morrison and Timothy Leary in one!

Dick's fiction was inspired by amphetamine psychosis rather than the wussier visions brought on by hallucinogens, but he was very open about having tried and enjoyed acid in a few interviews from the '70s.

(It appears his amphetamine psychosis led to him experiencing gnosis in the same manner as the chimp's coke habit did: Dick got a few decent books out of it, whereas the chimp just did his best to fuck up everybody else's fun over him being too much of a pussy to sustain a coke habit the average hard rock drummer could have taken before breakfast without noticing it any.)

It isn't bad, but I didn't feel the Earth move either.

(To poor oul' Ade:)

 

Sorry, buddy: the Cure's greatest love song is "In between days," not "just like Heaven".

I prefer Fascination Street, meself. In Between Days sounds like New Order.

He already does that via The Ultimates.

Yeah, but I don't think he's got to press flesh with the chimp in person, hence all this jingoistic bullshit he's spouting in there (does a fine impression of the ugly American for a Scottish lad, doesn't he?):

"Who's this Millar?"

"Pretend redneck from Scotland, sir."

"Scotland? They terr'ists there?"

If I give up my most prized comics do I get a wife in return or does it only work in the reverse fashion?

 

 

Tell ya what...You send me your most prized comics, I'll send you my wife. Deal?

 

Are you sure you want a bunch of Heavy Metals with the pages stuck together?

Swilling down cider at present. The first time I drank three litres of cider in one sitting I vomited blood (well, pink froth, actually) but I now know I shouldn't drink three litres of the stuff on an empty stomach.

However delicious it is.

Maybe I'll have to see it again, I've only seen it once, but I recall thinking The Wild Bunch was a pretty pedestrian Western notable only for its then-excessive violence and then-innovative use of slow-mo in action sequences (similar stuff you can say about Bonnie and Clyde sans the slow-mo). I'm not a huge Western fan, either, so that may have had something to do with it.

I'm in a minority about thinking Unforgiven is well overrated, but I'm inclined to find the Wild Bunch a very fine film, and even somewhat subversive. It's showing where the crude moralising of the John Ford westerns is liable to end up in practice. The whole last reel of the flick (where they can either walk off with the money or try to pull the hispanic kid's fat out of the fire, even if it kills them and they choose the morally defensible option, hanging the consequences) is pretty much a blast of ridicule aimed at all those westerns where the virtuous are rewarded for for their virtue simply because they were in ther right. I love that.

(I'm very fond of High Plains Drifter, though. Even if it is just Eastwood making a Sartanna film in between Don Siegel cop flicks.)

"I wish I spoke Latin so I could talk to these people in their native tongue," Dan Quayle, 1989.

"I pray for George Bush every night," whoever it was Dan Quayle was patronising, 1989.

Not Time! Just Lev Grossman!

 

Anyway, where was the tale from?

 

Millarworld.

 

It's a fantasy world where Mark Millar moves in the headiest social circles.

I occasionally get the impression of late that his fondest social fantasy involves a visit to the White House so that he can hail to the chimp.

I'm a bit puzzled by the Wild Bunch dissing myself. Never mind "one of the greatest westerns ever made", it's probably the single best film in that genre. Only High Noon and The Searchers even get close.

it didnt look like much besides ennis yelling out "I HATE CAPES!!!"

And it isn't like Ennis is capable of yelling that even half as loud as Pat Mills did back in 1988...

Yes: it's ace.

I'll go along with that.

This doesn't really belong in the "latest movies" thread, but I can't think where else to put it.

 

Malin and I have just been watching Superman II - her, for the first time, and me for the first time in ages. After watching the near-flawless Superman again last week, I was rather looking forward to it...

 

...but my God, it really is total ass. I remembered it being quite a lot worse than the original, but my memory had managed to block out most of the abysmal special effects, campy dialogue, piss-poor score (the theme itself remains ace, but the rest of the score is dismal, particularly in comparison with Williams' marvellous work for the original film) and, perhaps most significantly, the ABSOLUTELY, TOTALLY and UNFORGIVABLY NONSENSICAL PLOT. The thing which really hurts it above all else for me, however, is the embarrassingly "off" portrayal of Superman himself. Giving up his duties as protector of Earth without a second thought, for a quick shag? Pulling random new superpowers out of his ass (or, more accurately, off his chest) without comment or explanation? Being so childish and petty as to use his superpowers to beat the living shit out of a guy who made him look a bit silly in front of his girlfriend? Dick.

 

Sure, Terence "kneel before Zod!" Stamp's performance is cool, some of the superhuman-versus-superhuman fight scenes are fun (most are a little dull and awkwardly-staged, sadly), and Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder are every bit as perfectly-cast as they were in the first film. But that can't overcome the absolute shitness of...umm...almost everything else in the film. I'm hoping that the Richard Donner re-edit of the film, due out on DVD soon, is good, but to be honest, given how astonishingly poor the film itself is, I can't imagine even a totally-reworked version being able to attain much beyond "tolerably entertaining".

 

A major, major disappointment.

It's better than Superman 3 or Superman 4, at least.

Some inarresin' electronica here:

'80s computer game retro stuff...

Why is the big nosed sort in your avatar talking to his watch?

Thats Dick Tracy, his watch was a two way communicator.

How did he tell the time?