Credit where credit is due… my “editor” came up with today’s song title and damn, it fits perfectly. Bud will certainly need to be “shown the way” in today’s romp. But who’s place did they end up in? Hmmm? That’s on Monday. Stay tooned.
🙂
Peter Frampton left Humble Pie in 1973 to go solo and it wasn’t until his 1976 “Frampton Comes Alive” album that he made it big. I believe the story behind the album was that after four studio albums with little commercial success, Frampton was under the gun to recoup the record company’s investment in to the recordings and promotions up to that point. The album was recorded with an old (by 1976 standards) one-inch 8-track recorder (not to be confused with the consumer 8-track in most cars at the time). The older technology was used to help reduce the production costs (thus lessen the record company’s investment in the album). The album was a double record set, but cost only $1 more than a single album at the time! List price was $7.98! This also helped spur sales of the album. By the end of 1977, after being released in January of 1976, the album had sold 6 million units and was still #14 on the Billboard charts! I think the record company made their money back.
Trivia: Frampton plays a customize Gibson Les Paul “Black Beauty” which featured three pick ups instead of two. It has since gone on to be called the “Frampton”.
***************************
Discussion (51) ¬
Hahaha! I’ve never seen such a look of happy expectation before. Way ta go, Bud! I know he’s a happy camper.
Yes, at a certain point you just “go for it” and why not do it with gusto! Nice way to end a busy week…
🙂
He isn’t still telling this to his daughter in our time is he LoL.
Here is why book-ending with a future scene hurts, because we now know who he ends up with
and the current girl tryst isn’t going to last, a shame really.
Rhuen,
Now, now, you have to give me more creative credit than that! Many people have asked whether or not Bud is telling his daughter about the transformations. First, I have written that far ahead in draft form to know what/how that’s handled… no hints yet as that would be a true spoiler. Yes, we know Bud ends up with Lily, but not for another 10 years, and we are currently in the stage of Bud telling the story of HOW he and Lily met and some how did not get married for 10 years. Let’s put it this way, they do not date for 10 years. There’s a spoiler I think is obvious given how Bud seems to get around a bit.
I happen to think having Bud tell the story as a 50-something year old brings a nice element to 1977. A connection to the present that was lacking before. If I really have a commentary or joke to make about something that is going on today (economy, Internet, etc.) I can do so by dropping in on “old” Bud and his daughter.
For me, to keep 1977 “fresh” I have to have a very long story line to follow and eventual goals to meet. All these things that have happened in the past two years in the comics have happened (well not all) for a reason. They get tied together someday… you’ll see!
But, I appreciate where you’re coming from at present in the storyline. Keep on readin’, it’ll become clear later on!
Good tune Byron, I had somehow missed it, till I heard a band covering it at a local festival (they were very good – even dragged a Hammond into the field)
Couldn’t miss that damn song around here circa 1976/1977. It is one of those songs I truly like, but have developed the “change the station” routine when it comes on after hearing it Gazillion times over the last 33 years. I hate when radio drives a good song into the ground.
🙂
Nice little edition to a Friday!
I may have to come up with an occasional “sexy Friday” comic… helps end the week on a nice note!
🙂
YAY! Nice one lol
Thanks Andy!
I think it was comedian Paul Rieser who said “I love lesbians…I agree with both of them.”
LOL! Yeah, Paul can be funny.
🙂
Fampton Comes Alive. Wow. It’s hard to overstate how BIG that album was in it’s day in the UK.
“Show Me The Way” was a phenomenal hit, probably due to the weird tube-in-the-mouth modulator Frampton used to get that distinctive sound, which was the first time it had been heard on a single, at least in the UK. You literally heard this thing playing all the time.
As for She-bud, I’m reminded of th time they had that guy who had implants, er, implanted on a bet apprearing on The Man Show. The presenter (whose name I’ve forgotten so talented was he) said at one point: You’ve got a right hand and a rack. Whaddaya need women for?
The “talk-box” (or I’ve heard it called a Vocoder too) had been in use before Frampton, but he made it very popular. Joe Walsh used one on “Rock Mountain Way”. Nothing like sticking a tube in your mouth to play a guitar…
The image of a man with implants is a bit… well, not sexy on Sexy Friday, so I’ll daydream of something else!
🙂
Joe Walsh sans The Eagles had precisely one hit in the UK in the time I was there: “Life’s Been Good”. I said “been heard”, not “been recorded”. :o)
But I take your point.
Damn Bud is one lucky bastard.
Pretty much… but I think his “male ego” will eventually get the better of him…
🙂
I think we need a live re-enactment of this. I’m missing the nuance.
*looks down*
Nope, there it is.
LOL! Nice one! 🙂
LOL at everyone!
Wit, that was too obvious .. but funny! 😀
I reckon I must a lesbian coz I only like women! 😉
Nice one Byron and sexy Friday sounds like a winner in my book! 😉
I’m not sure you being a Lesbian is how that works, Bob…
Sexy Fridays can be the next big thing… okay pun NOT intended…
🙂
Depends how high your pain tolerance is and how much money you have to spend……..
There’s my problem. I am the biggest wimp when it comes to pain. I want to get some tattoos in the right places but OOOWW!! Nope, couldn’t even fathom the pain involved, so I have to pass…
🙂
I’ll say it for you. owww. It hurts every bit as much as you think it would.
I think you’re on the right track there…except Sexy Fridays should maybe be Sexy LESBIAN Fridays. THAT would be a winner.
I had a talk box for a while. I really thought it was fun to mess with, but taking it to gigs was a pain in the arse. The soundcheck guys never had the levels for that ready, so either you couldn’t hear it or it was crazy load. Oh well, good times. 🙂
I think Sexy Friday should be for everyone… I mean, who doesn’t want to be sexy on Friday? No more Casual Friday for big companies… mover over Casual, here comes Sexy!
Can you imagine the outfits worn on THAT day around the water cooler? LOL!
🙂
ROFL! Like the ‘ROCK AND ROLL!!’ in the last panel – though what that reminded me of most nowadays was the awesomely weird film Guitar Wolf: Wild Zero (in which the phrase ‘ROCK AND ROLL!!’ is repeated so often and so enthusiastically that it’s become part of a well-known GW:WZ drinking game). If you don’t know them, Guitar Wolf are the fantastic elder statesmen of Japanese thrash-punk, and their film is a total must-see! It’s a no-budget combination of sci-fi, music, zombies, kung fu, spy thrills, and Yakuza action, and there are sexual subplots running through it that are very much at home with the current 1977 storyline. The best way to describe GW:WZ is a head-on crash between Ed Wood and the Ramones. No, really. You MUST track it down 😀
Well, loving to watch Ed Wood films (now, they’re so bad they’re good…) I’ll have to look that one up for sure. “Yakuza action”? Google here I come… Have no idea what that is. But it sounds fun none the less!
Yeah, I changed the dialog around a bit from the rough draft. I was happier with the final result! I’m diggin’ Budette’s expressions and hopefully can pass them along to Robyn and Lorraine when I get back to them. As I said, I’m lovin’ this stuff!
🙂
Yakuza = Japanese Mafia. Only the Mafia are a lot nicer than the Yakuza tend to be 😛
BTW if you can’t lay your hands on a complete copy of Guitar Wolf: Wild Zero, let me know and I’ll send you one. It’s a rip of a video recording off late-night broadcast telly, but trust me, that’s a very appropriate way to watch it 😀
I think you’ll make a lot of people happy if you find a way to give Robyn and Lorraine the “wow, lesbian sex really is fun!” look.
Holy Shostakovich! Just watched a 5 minute clip on YouTube from the film. Yep, flame throwing microphones, exploding heads, weird Benny Hill-like chase scenes, thrashing rock band and zombies. There you go, an afternoon of fun for all! Nice!
🙂
Bwahahahaha! She shoots! She scores! Glad to have helped further enrich your life 🙂
Guitar Wolf FTW! ROCK AND ROOOOOLLLLL!!!
ok, tafkan. i know we’ve established before that yer not me, but we sure have very similar tastes in music and synthesizers. and now that you’ve established that you like both guitar wolf AND ed wood films … yer not the bizarro version of me, are you?
the very first time i saw guitar wolf, they opened up for the Cramps about 15 years ago. and was instantly converted to one of their devotees before they had even played a single note.
holy flaming whale balls.
they came out on stage, the bass player and drummer got their instruments, the drummer started playing, the bass player immediately started combing his hair and then began tearing into a riff, and the guitarist came out, chugged a beer as fast as he possibly could (opened it right on the spot so it definitely wasn’t a prop), smashed the beer bottle, grabbed his guitar, and then the band quite literally launched like a titan missile into what was probably the most stratospheric, intense, and LOUDEST moment in rock ‘n roll i’ve ever witnessed in my entire life.
and i’ve seen some pretty effing loud, wild shows over the years. the cramps were just as amazing and intense that night too (and could easily be the subject of their own post i reckon — byron, you could probably use some of their song titles too since they originated in the 70’s … RIP Lux Interior) … but GW almost blew them off the stage with their brand of beer-fueled, marshall-amplified, japanese jet atomic-powered rock’n’roll that made my ears ring even *with* stupidly powerful earplugs stuck in my ears.
i bought their cd, “planet of the wolves”, that night at the show, and have been a fervent fan of their stuff ever since. well worth seeing them live if you can find earplugs strong enough to withstand their aural assault.
it is puzzling to me why they aren’t more well-known than they are. i imagine that the only way to describe why they haven’t taken off over here like they should is that they are the blenheim ginger ale of in-yer-face japanese super-loud rock’n’roll bands. much too powerful for general consumption.
guitar wolf is the only band i approve of who employ ‘loudness war’ techniques on their cd mastering.
–dee!
Dude. Duuuuude. When I read your ‘holy flaming whale balls’, I started asking myself if I really *might be* your evil twin. ~cues a few bars of the Twilight Zone theme~
Being more of a classic(al) hard/melodic rocker, I applauded the original birth of punk but rolled my eyes at its widespread musical ineptitude. But that changed for me once Wolf-sama arrived – so much raw energy and (sort of) debauched innocence that it didn’t even matter if they could play well or not 🙂
I’ve never had a chance to see them live, and when Bass Wolf died I thought that might be the end of them (RIP Billy-san), but word from friends who *have* seen them live with UG as Bass Wolf is that the heart and spirit are all still there. So I’m hoping that I’ll see them gigging live one of these days. Rock and rooooolllll! 😀
(Also, totally with you on loving The Cramps since they started – I remember catching a set of theirs in the late ’70s at a now long-gone rock club in Hellay, down somewhere on La Cienaga, and fell in love. RIP Lux, and may Ivy have a gentle time of the rest of her days…)
And there is no such thing as too loud, ever, when the music’s right 😀
You two are a like… you always correct me on things I mess up! OooooO… cosmic, man…
🙂
I will add this to the LOUD thing… loud BUT clean… you know what I mean (hey, it rhymes!)
God I love Marshall amps… miss mine big time… 🙁
Hey, I assumed the ‘…but clean’ part of it went without saying. Distortion rules, but only when it’s *planned* distortion 😀
Why did you ever let loose o’ your Marshall? You naughty boy 😛
Same reason I sold ALL of my stuff back in 1980… I was getting out of the music biz and going into Television Muahahahaha! And we see how well that worked out for me… Not. Anyway, I sold it all but my sweet little Conrad SG knock-off bass. It was my first bass, and couldn’t sell it. If you remember my tales of leaving college, if it did not fit into my 1969 Chevy, it got sold or trashed. Man, the shit I threw away… sigh…
byron: yes, but do we both correct you on the same things? i think that would be the holyshitwtfspooky of it. 😀
the depressing thing about letting gear go is a lot like the stuff that you regret not buying: its ALWAYS in the hindsight.
sadly, classic marshall gear commands a mint now. the ‘new’ stuff is close to the original stuff but just ain’t the same. its like the ‘modern’ versions of the fender amps … i’ll always choose a 70’s silverface or older (though i strangely prefer the 70’s models) over one of its modern equivalents just because it sounds better to my ears.
marshall amplification : for when it absolutely, positively has to be done effin’ loud.
on another note, re the comic title … you should hear dinosaur jr’s version of “show me the way”. no talkbox, but lots and lots of wah and fuzz — jazzmasters thru marshalls. seek it out. it think you’ll dig it. the vocals may not be yer cup of tea (mainly because they’re largely kinda poking fun at frampton, at least during the verses) but musically…wow.
taf to the kan: i think i’ll rest a little bit more soundly knowing that there’s someone else out there in the world who would utter the words “HOLY FLAMING WHALE BALLS!”, even if you are the bizarrø evil twin version. 😀 muauahahahahahaahhahaaaaaaaaaa
man, i could extol the virtues of the cramps endlessly. from the beginning to the end, that band was top notch. just amazing in the power and simplicity.
i think the simplicity of punk rock is really what drives its attitude. and some of those bands were incredibly talented, despite being billed as complete hacks. the damned, the buzzcocks, the pistols, the jam…they were all actually quite proficient despite people saying that they weren’t. been re-learning how to play some of those songs recently on ye olde six string (i’m re-learning how to play left-handed) and in the process of it i’m still amazed at how difficult some of those songs are to play.
it really bothers me that a very large percentage of the ‘modern’ punk bands are trying so hard to define their version of punk that they’ve completely missed the point and lost the plot, or are completely miscategorized and aren’t really punk at all, just snot-nosed brats with instruments that play a tiny bit faster than normal pop music and whine a lot (the stink one-eighty-spews of the world).
luckily, bands like GW didn’t and are keeping both the spirit and the primal viscera of it alive.
you either got the rock or you don’t. there is no in-between.
i hear that now, even without billy, their live shows are still pretty spectacular and still just as powerful, and its great to know that nothing has changed despite the tragedy of that huge loss. i saw them with billy years ago, so i really should watch and catch them on tour and see if its true. but i reckon that seiji chose wisely. heard great rumours about the choosing of the new bass player, like that he was 100% attitude but couldn’t play a note, etc. 😀 awesome. 🙂
—
loud is good if intentional and analog in nature (ie marshall stacks cranked up to scalp-peeling loudness).
but loud can be catastrophic and completely ruin recordings if not done right (ie digital clipping)…
when i mentioned the loudness wars, i meant this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_wars
guitar wolf’s stuff is pegged completely to the red, and strangely, their recordings don’t cause me ear fatigue. but pretty much all others who employ that technique DO. for example, i can’t listen to the stooges’ “raw power” reissue because it actually causes my ears to hurt physically, even at low volumes.
–dee!
Calling Doctor Dee, Doctor Dee, Doctor Dee…
There’s no Reply button under your latest comment, so rather than wander off grumbling about how the comments threading software on this page is teh suXX0r, I’m replying here 😀
Yes all the way re attitude, and yes, the Damned and the Jam and to a certain extent the Buzzcocks did have plenty of chops to go *with* the attitude (the Pistols, not so much). As for the so-called-modern so-called punk bands, your description is spot on the mark; just about the only modern punk band I’ve heard this century who did have the right attitude were an Aussie three-piece called Razer, and guess what, they were women! No idea what became of them though. (Which reminds me re bands with attitude, one of the best tribute bands out there is also female – Hell’s Belles – so good and so right that Angus himself endorses them…)
I pay sod-all attention to the classifications of bands these days, other than to sit back and snigger at metalheads fighting over whether this or that band is thrash metal or death metal or love metal or yadda yadda yadda. As far as I’m concerned, there’s rock and there’s not-rock, and at the most there are a tiny handful of subgenres of rock – hard/heavy, melodic, metal, pop-rock…to my mind, ‘grunge’ and ‘shoegazer’ and ‘thrash’ and whatnot are just meaningless branding.
Oddly enough, just a few days ago I was explaining to my cloth-eared musical-Ig husband what redlining is and what ‘recorded too hot’ means and why we used to have charming expressions in the pre-digital days like ‘the meters are pinned’ (as it happens, it was to do with the deliberately distorted piano riff – I assume deliberately because the rest of the track is clean – at the start of Placebo’s stunning cover of Running Up That Hill. It never ceases to amaze me that they found an actual song in the mine tailings of Kate Bush’s caterwauling original).
Now all I need to make my day complete is for you to say you own a copy of Kung Fu Ramone and would be willing to digitise it and send it to Byron (I know, that’s sacrilege, but I’ve yet to find a copy of the vinyl here) 😛
— Teh Artist
p.s. Being an ancient traditionalist, I say ‘HOLY FLAMING WHALE BALLS, BATMAN!’
the doktor is : IN
😀
don’t agree with ya about the buzzcocks or the pistols, but i suppose that’s just ‘cuz they’re some of my favourites. i think “a different kind of tension” is probably the proof of the pudding there. all the songs are catchy and the playing on that record is just mind-bogglingly tight imho. “another music…” is also really tight. if you haven’t heard that one, give it a really concentrated listen. you’ll be surprised. “i believe” is pretty epic. especially dig the finale of the song. powerful.
on the surface, jonesy may seem like he’s kinda just a barre chord pusher tossing the three chord monte, but if you really listen to some of the ‘other’ songs that weren’t on NMTB, you hear some pretty interesting influences. think my favourite non-bollocks song is “did you no wrong” (b-side of the virgin version of the “god save the queen” single). really great side riff on that. jonesy was also really proficient as a bass player (played pretty much all the bass lines on bollocks, as well as all the other stuff that matlock wasn’t present for or couldn’t be hired to do)…
haven’t seen hell’s belle’s yet. they’ve come through town a zillion times but just haven’t had the scratch to drop on shows in the last few years other than the odd one here and there (or when i could sneak in the back door on the guest list). a friend of mine who was a bartender at the venue they regularly play when they come thru here told me all about the show when they came through and was astounded at how good they were, and he’s a guitarist who is incredibly talented, jaded, and very hypercritical of just about everything (not to mention the fact that he’s been in a few fairly well-known garage punk bands himself over the last 10 years). told me that they’re very, VERY accurate as to how they play the songs and that they’re just amazing to see. they’ve been on the list for me to see for awhile so hopefully i’ll actually get to see them sometime soon.
haven’t heard of razer. not surprising, but it seems like all my australian pals are busy living life and don’t pay attention to music much these days.
its amazing how many subgenres have popped up that don’t make sense, because its patently obvious that the bands that fall under them actually fall under main categories that have already been long-established. i largely think that a lot of these ‘subgenres’ are just tools to sell records and are otherwise meaningless. and some subgenres that are actually defining, well, a lot of really good bands that don’t fit somehow end up there.
the “shoegazer” tag i think was largely just a joke that went horribly wrong. 😀 i really like a lot of the bands that fall under that category, but, like the bands themselves, think that the tag is stupid.
in pre-digital terms, sometimes clipping was absolutely desired and used as an effect to gain warmth in analog breakup. as you probably know (since i reckon you’ve done yer time in the studio, judging by what you’ve said about b3’s and leslies), there was a technique called tape saturation where an engineer would just hit tape with just the right amount of “too much” volume and would get a sort of natural amount of signal satch and breakup. too much and you’d just get raw distortion. not enough and you would just get normal signal. you can hear that technique pretty prominently on led zeppelin records, just as an example. since in analog the signal doesn’t really square off when clipped (unless a stupid amount of compression is employed, of course), employing that technique tended to give you very excellent results with regard to a natural sort of distortion that the ear could easily tolerate if you did it right and only did it with a few instruments. it really provided for an interesting effect and something that i still have-yet to find a way to reproduce digitally. if you try doing it with digital, you just get a squared off mess that sounds like static. this is why its sad that most tape manufacturers have shut down (think there’s only ONE left in the world now — RMG International in holland — basf might still be making tape in germany too but i don’t know).
its funny — recently had to school a friend who was brand-squeaky new to digital multitrack recording but a veteran in the analog world about digital clipping and how it is to be avoided. he was playing several of his new scratchpads to me and they were all heavily clipped. he didn’t know that you couldn’t apply the saturation technique to digital mediums because of how digital handles clipping. a big lesson was learned by him that day. 🙂
i think its simultaneously hilarious and interesting that you say that about kate bush. most people praise her to sickening degrees. i like some of her songs, admittedly, but was always puzzled as to why she was revered because i always thought the majority of her music was honestly relatively uninteresting. her voice was ok, but the music that it was wrapped around was really designed to point to her voice and cause you to pay attention to it and not the music. placebo’s version of that song is actually quite stunning. because, as you said, they found a song in there. molko is a genius. the original is ok, but is extremely repetitive in arrangement (and again, a vehicle for her voice, not the music). caterwauling is a GREAT way to describe what she does. 😀
consider yer day complete. i’ll drop byron a line. and if yer interested, have him get you my contact details.
the doktor is : out.
–dee!
p.s. the original batman rules.
Dee dum dee dum dee Deedly-Dee,
I’m glad you’re willing to give Byron a heads-up re offsite contact, because at the rate this discussion is going he’ll be shouting at us to get a room 😛 😛 😛
FYI Kate Bush was a sweetie and a total gas woman when she was in Waterford being Make Daly’s cousin having a jam rather than KATE!BUSH! doing major venues. Also a far more listenable singer. Possibly something to do with everyone being seventeen sheets to the wind 😉
Analog-fu for digital users! Yay!
And yes, I’m an old-school hired studio gun. Very old-school. Very, very old-school. They called a geological age after me… I miss valve amps. I miss tape. I miss the great old studios (and yes, I cried when Olympic finally closed its doors not long ago. Ah, the times we had…) and the sheer warmth of analog recording. ‘Oh how we stood, shining and tall – we had it all…’ But one way or t’other, rock and roll WILL never die.
Last time I looked, the Doctor was in the TARDIS 😀
p.s. Bob Kane is looking down on you and smiling…
Get a room….
I think a good romp will get the testosterone flowing again to turn Bud back into a guy. Boy will she be surprised when the sheets come down
And where does Peter Frampton call home now??? CINCINNATI. It is funny going to concerts of 70’s and 80’s bands in town as they tend to call up Frampton to do a set.
Frampton had a video out his 80s “comeback” album and at the end Chong (of Cheech and…) commented as Frampton walked by “Hey, didn’t you use to be Peter Frampton?” My how things had changed for him. Doing that damn Sgt. Pepper film ruined him I think. That was just a bad film… and not bad-good, but bad-sucked.
🙂
I gotta say, the last few strips have been a fantastic Channukkah present. Wonder what we’ll get for Christmas and Kwanzaa now.
A barrel full of monkeys and a pooper-scooper to go along with it…
🙂
This was beautiful.
Thank you! 🙂