Someone said, "a picture is worth a thousand words." They probably were not an illustrator. If you have ever examined the comic pages from the days of yore, you just know those drawings took an enormous amount of time. Hand-drawn from scratch. Then colored and outlined. Finally, revised. If only to acknowledge the amount of work they took to make, we should really hold them in higher regard today.
Travel all the way back to the ancient Lascaux cave drawings, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and patterns on the friezes of Greece, one can see a society that knew its best chance to communicate and enthrall its people was through art. However, not all art is about self-expression. Perhaps it originated from those figures above the Greek columns, but once these artistic endeavors were sequenced - they could actually cover the progression of a story. At 230 feet long and 20 inches tall, the world-famous Bayeux Tapestry remains a collection of 70(!) scenes that give you all you need to know about what led to the Norman Conquest of 1066.
The Bayeux Tapestry survives even today because it was printed on some tough fabric. Other important works were written on papyrus. By the ninth century, papyrus was traded for parchment. While parchment would hold words and illustrations better, it was estimated it took the skin of 300 goats to make a single Bible. Handwritten too. So in 1440, when Johannes Gutenberg invented a printing press with moveable type and paper was used as its medium - the written word finally found its modern home.
Rodolphe Topfler was a writer and a teacher at a boarding school. A skilled caricature artist, Topfler could easily entertain his students with his drawings. Topfler created his first series of drawings to tell a story in 1827. By captioning his pictures, he was able to insert dialogue and other information. Creating a place for these words, Topfler then decided to frame every image. When it was finally published in book form as "Mr. Vieux Bois' Dream" in 1837, those who could not read could enjoy a book almost as much as those who could.
As mass-production brought more paper and ease with printing (including the addition of color), the Americans entered Comics history in 1895. William Randolph Hearst, the premiere newspaper publisher of his day, gave the world its first true comic strip with "Hogan's Alley" in 1895. Its creator Richard Outcault had already published four black & white strips in "Truth" magazine in 1894-1895. The last proved to be so popular that Hearst snapped Outcault and his comic up for his New York World. In "Hogan's Alley," these kids hung around and generally got into trouble, all of which was illustrated and captioned in dialect. Once brought to color, one character who was largely in the background now stood out.
"The Yellow Kid" was a true outcast but largely emblematic of the times. With his shaven head, probably from surviving having lice, The Yellow Kid existed in the cramped tenements where the impoverished lived in the big cities. His giant shirt, most likely a hand-me-down from an older sister - once blue or pink - now draped the kid from neck to his barefeet in vivid yellow. In 1902, Outcault would explain that he drew The Yellow Kid because he always saw these poor kids playing in the street and admired their "sunny disposition." Needless to say "The Yellow Kid" became so popular that it became the first Sunday comic. In 1896, Outcault and Pulitzer fell out over salary negotiations. So from 1896-1898, "The Yellow Kid" actually appeared in two newspapers. In May 1898, Outcault drew the last strip where a grizzled old bald man in a deep green shirt uttered the words "Gosh, I've growed old in making dis collection."
By balancing social commentary and light humor, "The Yellow Kid" paved the way for more comic strips in the 20th Century. In the end, it proved to be so popular that Hearst's New York World was called the "yellow kid paper." With Hearst's penchant for the sensational in that same publication, that type of journalism would then inherit the color and be known as "yellow journalism."
Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg.
New This Week
NEIL YOUNG AND CRAZY HORSE - Toast [2LP/CD](NYA/Reprise)
Lost Neil Young and Crazy Horse albums are always going to be the kind of releases to stop traffic over. Beginning with 1969's "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," this is the band that not only brings the best out of Neil - but quite often brings him back down to Earth. 1975's "Zuma" trades polish (everyone else's indulgence at the time) for electricity, Side Two of 1979's "Rust Never Sleeps" refines it into a tangible sound that will be borrowed for years to come. When Neil survives the Eighties, it's the blazing trails he cuts with Crazy Horse that lead to his comeback (1990's "Ragged Glory") and deification by another generation (1991's "Arc/Weld" recorded on the road with Sonic Youth). After this, of course, they record more often and with more hits and misses. However, "Toast" is more interesting because it emerges from a period when Neil was using a very different band (studio legends Spooner Oldham, Jim Keltner, and Donald "Duck" Dunn). Apparently, when Neil was trying to prove he had Soul - he needed a jolt of Crazy Horse. At the end of a relationship, Neil wrote a handful of songs that could only spring to life with the buzz of his old friends. They decamped to Toast Studios in San Francisco and laid down these seven songs. "Standing In The Light of Love" is almost as crunchy as Deep Purple, but Young's yowl definitely feels like a relic from the second side of "Rust Never Sleeps." While "Timberline" revisits the hollow buzzy ramble of "Tonight's The Night/Zuma" really catching fire on as the pained Young sings the chorus. While it does sound like the Crazy Horse of old, "Timberline" is a little more ragged than usual. Our best guess is Neil was happy to get this out of his system, reunite with old friends and then shelve it because it did not fit how he felt musically in 2001. Twenty years later, "Standing In The Light of Love" could not sound better and more welcome. Like so many of his Neil Young Archives releases, "Toast" is all about putting the pieces of the puzzle together and following the lines to their points of convergence in a legendary career.
YVES JARVIS - The Zug [LP/CD](ANTI/Epitaph/AMPED)
Sometimes the best way to couch your proverbial weirdness is to drench it in harmonies that make it pleasing to the ear. Montreal's Yves Jarvis is quite the experimenter with Pop/Folk/R&B blended together. To step back a moment, his most "pleasing" song so far is the mellow warm Folk of "For Props" from 2020's "Sundry Rock Song Stock." While it was definitely coming from that Panda Bear/Animal Collective hallucinatory brand of Indie Rock, his lyrics pushed the melody neatly along. That seems to be his follow-up's central idea, which comes out like a muted Richie Havens record. The passion is still there, but no matter how feverishly (or even repetitive) Jarvis gets ("On The Line”), or how well-pronounced his choruses are (the slinky bass-driven "At The Whims”), "The Zug" cannot actually alienate you. Lyrically, his new standout with the vocal fun/wordplay of "Bootstrap Jubilee," While its core is overtly similar to "For Props," its simplicity (and familiarity) allow Jarvis to weave some truly dada-esque lines ("patterns emerge naturally/narratives and paradigms will interweave") into spun gold.
MUSH - Down Tools [LP](Memphis Industries/Redeye)
With their weird wavy-but-angular guitars and hiccupy bellowing vocals, Mush comes on like red-eyed Pavement/Parquet Courts slacker Rock. Underneath the wonky grooves, there is a beautifully designed chaos taking shape. “Get On Yer Soapbox” spits out Dylanesque lyrical shards (“it’s the spoken word Olympics”) but flaunts a flashy rager of a Television-like guitar solo. While three minutes of “Northern Safari” is as tense and dense as an early XTC deep cut but with a Fall-like barking chorus. “Down Tools” will likely not be immediately catchy but once you give it time, these parts are really starting to come together.
JEAN-PIERRE MASSIERA - Midnight Massiera [LP](Finders Keepers UK)
European film music in the Sixties and Seventies is a treasure trove of stylistic endeavors from their composers. Ennio Morricone set the standard - which was to let your compositions know no bounds. Jean-Pierre Massiera (known as JPM) took in a lot of influences from his past as a beat musician and Joe Meek-like producer. So it is only fitting that “Midnight Massiera” is a psychedelic swinging voyage into the great unknown. These singles are filled to the brim with sound effects, whistling, bubbling, gurgling and then there is an actual song. “Iveress de Profondeurs” is both haunting and whimsical. “L’Electrocute” outside of its Uber-cool organ dissonance and Zappa-esque horns is like Sonny & Cher’s “The Beat Goes On” played in front of a funhouse mirror. That is probably the main point of JPM’s music. To use everything at his disposal to make a song that is supposed to sound familiar yet still remain an experience. Later works like Chico Magnetic Band seem to be completely composed to accommodate the latest battery of sound effects and tape tricks. Basile’s remake of Napoleon XIV’s “They’re Comin’ To Take Me Away (Haa Haa)” is somehow so normal and yet strange as JPM pulls the voice in multiple directions and pitches but keeps the backdrop minimal. His Seventies cuts actually get even more stripped-down as “Space Woman” approaches Disco but clearly wants to avoid being seen as campy. In the end, JPM's music neatly changes with the times and technology, but hidden under this laundry list of names would have made one fantastic soundtrack.
