Mike Baron broke into comics with “Nexus,” his groundbreaking science fiction title co-created with illustrator Steve Rude. He has written for Creem, The Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix, Isthmus, AARP Magazine, Oui, Madison, Poudre Magazine, and many others. “Nexus” is currently being published in hardcover from Dark Horse.
A prolific creator, Baron is at least partly responsible for “The Badger,” “Spyke,” and “Feud.” Baron lives in Colorado.
Mike Baron
Top Ten Power Pop Albums of ‘09
by Mike BaronThe world may have entered a gigantic metaphorical sphincter but there is progress in at least one field. Power pop has never been better. We are living in one of the great musical flowerings of history and it shows no sign of abating. I had a real problem picking just ten records for my top ten, so I kept on going. Just a little bit. We’ve still got a ways to go so I might have to update this list.
The qualitative differences among the top five are nugatory. One could easily choose any of them as the record of the year.
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#1: The Shazam – Meteor
These big-hearted stadium rockers have been building toward this titanic yawp of iconic anthems for years.
“So Awesome” opens the record with a twenty-one guitar salute to the joy of living, lead guitar as hard and elegant as the Golden Gate Bridge. “Don’t Look Down” is a power ballad with every lick carved in stone. You could climb the notes like a staircase. Hans Rotenberry’s vocals are winsome and masterful, going from cooed aside to anthemic bellow in a heartbeat. “Disco at the Fairground” is the best Move song the Move never recorded. Alternating sinister, earth-chewing minor chords with drunken sailor music hall choruses it crunches euphorically. Zappa would approve. (more…)
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Forming the ‘Leave Me Alone’ Party
by Mike Baron“Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.” –Michelle Obama
There is a right not specifically spelled out in the Bill of Rights but implicit in every restriction on the federal government: the right to be left alone. Our nation was founded by individuals seeking relief from overbearing governments and religions. Rugged individualism isn’t merely a conceit of John Wayne movies. It has been and will continue to be a way of life for Americans who believe this nation was founded on the rights of the individual. Not the rights of government. (more…)
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Music Review: The Shazam’s ‘Meteor’
by Mike BaronNashville’s The Shazam have been around since 1993, delighting audiences with anthemic, hook-laden rock in the spirit of their two poles, The Who and The Move. They moved beyond those obvious influences on ‘03’s stunning Tomorrow the World, a blast of rawk big enough to fill the Grand Canyon.
The Shazam are part of the underground independent pop scene, the guys who gather for the Charlottesville Power Pop Festival, International Pop Overthrow, or SXSW. Shazam have been with Not Lame since 1999’s masterful Godspeed the Shazam. Meteor is the first disc Not Lame has produced in three years, not counting their annual International Pop Overthrow compilations. Meteor is a titanic yawp of hard rock anthems alternating with hooks so sweet they take your breath away. Hans Rotenberry, who wrote and sings the songs, has carved a unique and immediately identifiable style from hard rock dynamics crossed with his sweet, supple voice. (more…)
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‘La Muse’ Review
by Mike BaronTwenty-four year-old Susan La Muse has god-like powers. Actually, her powers surpass those of God since she can reconstitute dead people from scraps of debris and restore them to full health and cognizance. She waves her arms and AIDS disappears from Africa. Every internal combustion engine changes to electric (although the question of what is generating this electricity is never answered.) She makes disparaging remarks about being a “white girl” while celebrating every other race. And she solves most of her problems through sex.
Straight sex, gay, bi, group, it doesn’t matter to the sexually omnivorous Susan whose libido knows no bounds. In her most asinine encounter, which becomes key to “world peace,” Susan pulls a train of skinhead Nazis who quickly see the light, accept their “bi-curious” strains and copulate with her and one another. Thereafter, anyone who views her sex tape becomes one with the world and all living things. And “Kumbaya” was heard in the land. (more…)
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The Pop Underground Strikes Back
by Mike BaronFew shows illustrate how low the state of popular music has fallen than “American Idol.” While AI regularly finds singers of talent, the songs they feature are mostly chestnuts. The show also encourages the type of singing that is more at home on Broadway than in small smoky clubs. The judges put an inordinate amount of focus on vocal pyrotechnics encouraging contestants to test the outer limits of their ranges. The most exciting news to come out of the most recent season is the possibility that Adam Lambert might join Queen, replacing the ill-considered Paul Rogers.
I would love to see Adam Lambert join Queen. I already know all the songs. And that’s a problem. Singer/songwriters have been moving off-grid since the nineties. With the demise of the major music conglomerates, innovative talent understands it’s up to them to record and release their own material. The internet makes this possible. No one knows the extent of the effect downloading has had on the music industry, but if we are to judge from the reaction, it has been devastating. The Recording Institute Association of America has brought suits against parents whose children illegally download songs. (more…)
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Why ‘Atlas Shrugged’ Matters
by Mike BaronWhen I mentioned to friends I was reading Atlas Shrugged their response was uniform: “Oh that. I read it in college but now I have moved on to adult subjects.” These were liberal friends, you understand, and I couldn’t help but wonder why they would want to discourage me from reading a literary classic that is selling better now than at any time in its history. In fact, it has recently moved up to become Amazon’s 37th best-selling novel. Last week it was 44. By the time you read this it will have moved higher.
The reason becomes immediately apparent upon reading. It might have been written yesterday. Rand’s description of a socialist state taken over by “looters,” people who cannot create or produce but who seize power under the rubric of “fairness” is so spot-on accurate of today’s administration it’s scary. At over one thousand pages long, Atlas Shrugged is not a weekend read and made me question whether my fun-loving liberal friends actually read it, or read the Cliff’s Notes version which is also selling at unprecedented levels. (more…)
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Ugly Pop World Drives Beauty Underground
by Mike BaronThe disconnect between beauty and popularity in music has never been greater. Where once America sang the Beatles or Motown (”The Sound of Young America”), today the music industry is severely fragmented. Gangsta rap. Speed metal. Trip-hop. The major recording companies whine about declining profits even as they pay Mariah Carey $18 million not to record.
Unanimity of public opinion over popular song has passed. Music, which used to unite, now divides. Eminem and Ludacris would have been unthinkable thirty years ago. We live in an antinomian age where it’s hip to defy conventional wisdom long after every vestige of conventional wisdom lies in tatters. Where Keats’ Grecian Urn once proclaimed, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” today’s antinomian consumer proclaims, “Whatever,” in a voice oozing ennui. (more…)
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Review: Che: A Graphic Biography
by Mike BaronSpain Rodriguez is among the giants of underground cartooning, right behind R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, and Robert Williams. He has never made a secret of his socialist leanings. His first creation was Trashman, “a hero of the working classes and champion of the radical left causes.” Go to spainrodriguez.com and you are greeted by, “Fight the oppressor!”
Spain doing Che Guevara’s biography is a marriage made in Worker’s Paradise. As a narrative, Spain makes Che’s story gripping through his unique graphic style honed on Great Leap poster design, cycle mags, and Steve Canyon. Visually, Che is a pulp masterpiece offering page after page of Spain’s evocative, neo-noir art. His scenes of Havana and Caribbean ocean towns are just detailed enough to evoke a sense of place. (more…)
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Holy Terror, Batman
by Mike BaronPart One:
In 2006, I had a minor low pressure area in my brain and conceived a P.R. campaign directed against Islamo-fascism which I posted on Nate Tabor’s “The Conservative Voice.” The results were swift and devastating. Like any other branch of the entertainment industry, liberalism is the default position of most comic book creators and fans.
Liberalism has a long and honorable history in comics, nowhere more apparent than in the groundbreaking Green Lantern/Green Arrow comics by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams which dealt with drug addiction, the trial of the Chicago Seven, corporate pollution and overpopulation. In “Death Be My Destiny,” O’Neil posited a planet called Maltus where over-population was out of control. Denny was channeling the Reverend Thomas Malthus, a nineteenth-century Brit who predicted a Paul Erlich-like doom. In “The Population Bomb” Erlich predicted: “In the 1970s and 1980s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” (more…)
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