Speedy Ortiz: This is how you launch an album

New album from Speedy Ortiz is called Foil Deer, and it's out at the end of April. But - more importantly - their press release takes the form of a comic from Michael DeForge:

PRobit: Norman Winter

Norman Winter, former head of Press for MCA/Universal and the PR to Michael Jackson, has died.

Winter was doing the press for Jackson at the time of Thriller, which would be enough for a career in itself; but his client list just rolls on and on:

Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Janet Jackson, Queen, Rick James, Barry White, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Who, AC/DC, Steppenwolf, Meatloaf, Johnny Rivers, the Jefferson Airplane's Marty Balin, Christopher Cross, Bobby Ross Avila, Donny Osmond, Garth Brooks, Herb Alpert, Paul Anka, Phil Ramone, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Bootsy Collins, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Brian McKnight, Outkast, Usher, Jimmy Cliff, Steve Martin, Joan Collins, Arsenio Hall, Morris Day and gospel luminaries Jennifer Knapp and Deniece Williams.

And that's before you get to the rap artists.

Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Babyface and Bangin' On Wax (the Bloods & Crips collaboration), Domino, Bone Thugs - N - Harmony and Eddie Griffin.

And the Latin artists.

Emmanuel, Lucia Mendez, Chichi Peralta, Renegade, Luis Cardenas and the Golden Eagle Awards

I've lifted those client lists from Billboard; it's worth noting that Billboard merely cut and pasted a big chunk of them direct from Winter's own website.

That website also recalls the time Winter introduced Elton John to the US:

A real London bus. Whoever would have thought?

Norman Winter died from complications related to Lewy Body dementia on Thursday, 22nd August.

Fictionalpopstarinspirationobit: Josie DeCarlo

Earlier this month, Josie DeCarlo died. She was married to Don DeCarlo, comic book creator. One time, on a cruise, she dressed as a cat, which was the moment of inspiration that led to one of the all-time-great made-up popstars.

This one:

Bookmarks - internet stuff: Glenn Danzig

The Daily Cross Hatch talks to Tom Neely, creator of that Henry Rollins/Glenn Danzug comic:

Knowing what you know about Danzig as a person, did you really expect him to be excited about that book?
No, no. I didn’t know what to expect. When Jay was on his way to interview him, we were speculating. He’s either really gonna be pissed or he won’t give a shit. But it was something weird and in-between. He was like, ‘I don’t give a shit,’ and he wouldn’t even look at it, and then he went on this weird rant, calling us “stupid Internet hipsters.”

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Lou Reed

It's not all Glastonbury today. I suggest you have a quick look at Lou Reed's New York Mysteries, as drawn by Krent Able:

Look, we're sophisticated, urbane intellectuals. We don't need to eat food that's had monkey shit scraped off the top of it

[Thanks to @daniel_orton]

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Radiohead

The Laugh-Out Loud Cats welcome the new record:

CC-BY-NC-ND licence by ApeLad

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Kerrang

While searching out something else today, I discovered this guide to bands making cameo appearances in Kerrang's Pandora strip:

Fluffy
Who were they: Skanked-out version of Lush, Select Magazine liked them. Used to perform in fetish bars before making it big, as if the Torture Garden crowd wants to hear anything other than “Pin Ups” on non-stop repeat play.
Where are they now: Somehow utterly vanished, although if you go to Wikipedia’s entry for the band you’re only two clicks away from a cartoon featuring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan drawn as children playing with a wooden vibrator. So that’s something.
Is this comic strip funny: I honestly have no idea what’s going on here. Or why Lauren Laverne is in panel five.

Badly drawn Lady

When I was a kid, pop success meant, if you were lucky, you'd get a comic strip in Look-In, in which your pop persona was bashed into delivering a couple of set pieces and a punchline.

Nowadays, though, we fawn a little more heavily, so Lady GaGa's getting a 'my struggle' comic book which runs through her 'story' with some very, very bad drawings.

The extract shown on Pedestrian suggests that GaGa's story is actually being boiled down to a ho-hum-High-school-outsider affair ("The Nuns didn't like me") which makes it sound less like the real story of someone's past and more like Degrassi Junior High having a crack at doing Don't Let Me Get Me in drama class.

Henry and Glenn sitting in a tree

There's somethings which, however intriguing they might sound, you really don't want to look directly at. A comic depicting a gay romance between Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig is probably one of them.

I mean, where would they even live, LA Weekly West Coast Sound blog?

Oh, their neighbors are Hall & Oates, who are just your average neighborhood Satanists with a penchant for D&D.

Actually, that makes sense.

The book of the club

Rock music and comic strips - not always comfortable together, no matter how hard Look-In tried to turn Nick Heyward and Haircut One Hundred into comic heroes.

So the idea of a comic book series based on CBGBS doesn't immediately lead you to think of clearing some space on the shelf.

However, Every Day Is Like Wednesday has details which suggest this might be worth investigating:

The image above is the cover of the first issue, by Jaime Hernandez (obviously), and the creative roster includes comics people Kieron Gillen, Rob G., Chuck BB, Kelly Sue DeConnick and newcomers to the field like Ana Matronic (of the band Scissor Sisters), Sam Humphries of MySpace and Kim Krizan (screenwriter of Before Sunset and Before Sunrise).

And here's a preview page which should swing you firmly behind the project.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet: Ice Cube

Overcompensating records Lil' Ice Cube's Bestest Day Ever:

Two girls that I like called me. Then I went to the park to play basketball.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet

Every Day Is Like Wednesday reviews Method Man - who has turned himself into a comic book:

Method Man eschews the Brian Michael Bendis method of using “@#$%” to stand in for four letter words (As in “@#$% you, you @#$%ing @#$%!”), using a method that’s even more transparent. When Peerless swears, in narration or dialogue, we get the first and last letters of the word, with hangman-like spaces between.

[Method Man: The Comic Book on Amazon]

A Way ahead

We've not seen it ourselves, but according to the the Daily Cross-Hatch (whose comic viewpoint is pretty damn sharp), Gerard Way makes a far better comic artist than musician. Let's hope he throws in My Chemical Romance and follows his "first love" all the way.

Gerard Way: cartoon villain?

Comic book hero Hart Fisher set Gerard Way on his way to fame and fortune, offering him a start out in the 1990s. Now that Gerard is spreading his wings from badly-drawn music into the comics field, Fisher is getting grumbly. Indeed, he's suggesting that Way ripped him off to create My Chemical Romance. It seems the heart of the beef is that Fisher published a comic by Way on his Boneyard imprint, and feels now Way is writing for Dark Knight, he's not being given his due.

Fisher, it's fair to say, has more than one axe he's taking the opportunity to grind on this one:

I'm not sure if your average comics fan has noticed, but my company's work, and the work of it's creators, has consistently been black listed from the comics price guides. Why don't you go find out how much Garry's first comic is worth. You know, On Raven's Wings #1 (april 1994) and #2 (september 1994) and good luck on finding that shit listed anywhere. Now go looking to see how many Bill the Bull comics are listed, you know, with Duncan Rouleau's first published work (see if that's listed in the guides kids). Go see if John Cassaday's first published work, a Bill the Bull story called "Justin", is listed anywhere in the guides. He worked for several years at Boneyard before he broke, he's been one helluva friend to me over the years, and he lists my work on his site, but you won't find it listed in the guides. How about those Dahmer comics. Any of them listed on there? How about John Lucas's early work for me, you find that listed anywhere? Flickering Flesh anyone?

Fisher is apparently now trawling his own work to find evidence that My Chemical Romance lyrics were a straight rip from him, rather than every other goth band ever.

Chameleon circuit

Over on AttentionDeficitDisorderly, a collection of sketches of David Bowie by a bunch of artists. We like Michael Kupperman's effort the best.

[Via Boing Boing]