Well, here's where the above mini rant comes in.  Because companies are becoming stingier and stinger as far as providing review copies, it makes the job of pimping their product very difficult.  Basically EMI sent me the barest of bones versions of both albums, which are for all intents and purposes burned copies of the music on CD with almost plain white packaging (they had small photocopied versions of the album covers, but that's about it.)  None of the actual packaging is included, so I'm left with only the music (and a bonus DVD that came with the Blondie album), which affirms my fear that I have to find something original to say about these albums.

I guess I'll start with the deluxe collector's edition of Blondie's Parallel Lines as I'm more familiar with both the band and the albumâ



Call 'em new wave, punk, post punk, pop or just plain rock, Blondie is certainly one of the most recognized bands to come out of the 70s New York Punk movement, and this success can surely be attributed to their breakout album Parallel Lines (well breakout in America that is.)  This is also the album that solidified the classic Blondie sextet of Debbie Harry on vocals, Chris Stein on guitar, Frank Infante also on guitar, Jimmy Destri on keyboards, Nigel Harrison on bass (taking over from Infante who had then recently moved to guitar), and Clem Burke on drums.

Parallel Lines is probably the tightest of Blondie's oeuvre, with a mess of hits (both in the U.S. and the U.K.), but everything on the album feels pretty solid which seems pretty rare in the post Beatles/Beach Boys pop scene where many albums seemed to have two singles and a ton of filler.  It's also the album where the group really begins stretching themselves in terms of style and genre, floating in and out of pop rock, punk, new wave, a touch of reggae and even a smattering of disco (say it ain't so!)  The album practically explodes with 'Hanging on the Telephone' (written by Jack Lee), which features Harry jumping out almost a full second in front of the drums and then the rest of the band.  'Telephone' is pretty much the blueprint for the perfect two and a half minute pop punk song that just keeps pushing and doesn't let up until the last guitar strum fades out.  The album keeps this pace with the second track, the debut of Harry and Harrison's writing collaboration, 'One Way or Another', which opens with a great crisp guitar lick that leads into a very upbeat head bopping rhythm which completely goes against the disturbing stalkerish lyrics.  Harry's cat growl is dripping with feminine machismo, particularly when her voice cracks and you can hear her words practically ripping out of her throat.  OWOA is surely the late 70s reinvention of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood's 'These Boots are Made for Walkin', if not in lyrical content, then in tone and the gusto singing of an empowered woman.



Part of what I love about Blondie is encapsulated in the third track, 'Picture This' (Harry, Stein, & Destri), particularly Debbie Harry's juxtaposition of her deadpan and almost talky singing (not to mention her patented voice crackling) over the perfect pop rhythm of the music.  To me this is the punk creeping out and marring what could otherwise be the perfect pop band, but helping at the same time to keep some of the edge of bands roots and not letting it ever sound too manufactured.  Of course, that doesn't keep her from showing off her vocal range as her lyrics trail off into sustained soaring notes during the short breaks between verses.  Of course another aspect that I dig about the band is expressed in the fourth track 'Fade Away and Radiate' (Stein), which is as much New Wave (with it's moody keyboards and modern dystopian lyrics) as it is Prog Rock (with it's slow plodding beat sweeping toward sonic crescendos; the song reminds me of some of Pink Floyd's Dark side of the Moon), yet also containing a dash of Reggae at the end to close the song out.  It's this variation and experimentation that keeps the band interesting to me.

I can probably go on talking about every song on the album like this, from the fun Talking Heads-esque harmonizing, duets, and the Kraftwerk-ian background electronica of 'I Know But I don't Know', the exquisitely simple beat and church organ keyboard riffs of '11:59', the tug of rope between Harry's talky and sing songy delivery of the lyrics and the start and stop verses on 'Will Anything Happen', the almost sickeningly (but never over the top) sweet early Beatles pop of 'Sunday Girl', the childlike giddiness of 'I'm Gonna Love You Too', which almost sounds like it's riffing off of the Eep Oop Ork Ah-Ah (Means I Love You) song from the Jetsons, or the all-for-one crowd chanting and smarmy backing vocals that punch up 'Just Go Away'.  The biggest surprise for me on the album though is the staying power of the most popular hit on the album, the disco revamping of 'Heart of Glass' a live rock mainstay for the band up until Parallel Lines was recorded.  Not only is it the album's biggest hit, it's also the song that more or less defines the band in the public consciousness popping up on a million pop compilations and band best-of collections.  Growing up surrounded by all of the very plastic and heavily manipulated pop of the 80s, not to mention the glut of sort-of bands that neither wrote nor really preformed their music, you'd think I'd love Heart of Glass outright.  Hell I'm particularly vocal about my love of the Monkees for crying out loud.  But at some point in my upbringing I latched onto the idea of creator written and preformed music equated quality, and I was right there pumping my fist in the air when I saw footage of Tom Petty smashing drum machines and decrying the disco era of pop music.  So when I first heard Heart of Glass as a kid I reacted as if someone threw a wet towel from the garbage in my face.  Years later though, I can't help but appreciate that Blondie was stripping away all the untalented posturing of disco performers and taking the undeniable pop bliss of the sound and melding it with their own, and makes for a perfect dance hit that you can feel proud about liking.

All in all, I completely adore the album, and as I said in the beginning of this rambling love letter of a review, I don't really know what I can add to the 30 years of commentary on Parallel Lines.  I've read that the album's title reflects the never connecting bodies in motion in many of the songs, which I think makes perfect sense.  Unfortunately I fear there really is no original thing I can say about this classic record as a whole.  So again I find myself left with the truncated burned-copy version of the re-release and what sets it apart from the various times this album has been released on CD in the last 20 odd years.  It's called the Deluxe Collectors Edition, but what exactly does that mean?

Well, from reading reviews on Amazon, and thanks to the handy synopsis on the back of my crappy copy I see that the set comes with a booklet featuring the entire original album cover photo session (obviously not included, so I can only hazard a guess that it might be fun.)  The set also contains two discs (and I was lucky enough to get both); Disc one includes 4 bonus audio tracks which consist of alternate versions of 'Heart of Glass' (the 7" version without the little disco opening bit) and 'Sunday Girl' (the French language version that I actually sort of prefer to the original), and two of the most annoying and pointless remixes of 'Hanging on the Telephone' (which is just an evil massacring of the original with a pointless two minute high speed tub thumping intro that I can barely get through) and 'Fade Away and Radiate' (which is almost unrecognizable.)  Disc two contains 4 video shorts, three of which are precursors to what would eventually inundate the teen pop culture on MTV, and the fourth which is a segment from Blondie's appearance on the BBC's Top of the Pops (where they 'preformed' 'Sunday girl'; and yes the quotes around preformed are intentional.)  The first three music videos (which are for 'Heart of Glass', 'Hanging on the Telephone', and 'Picture This') are interesting, but not ground breaking (they've been available in other formats before), not to mention kind of difficult to watch as all of them have the music overdubbed and it's plain to see that the band isn't even trying to go through the motions of faking it.  Heck, during the video for 'Hanging on the Telephone' Jimmy Destri spends most of the running time pretending to hang himself with a phone cord which though fitting for the song, seems instead to speak of his boredom with the at-the-time-pointless video shoot.  The creative impact of music videos just hadn't been explored yet and to me it feels like the band is going along with them in a completely obligatory fashion.  The worst offender of the overdubbing is the Top of the Pops segment though as the band is obviously faking it in front of a live audience.

So in the end, is this version deluxe?  Not really, not when all of the bonus content (except the French version of 'Sunday Girl') detracts from the natural brilliance of the record.  Is it worthy of collectors?  No and, uh, no.  Is it an edition that I would recommend running out to purchase?  Not if you already own it, and honestly, not if you have a choice to get the remastered re-issue from 2001 which is cheaper.  If you can find it cheap it might be worth having nice versions of the promo music videos, but they're hardly worth seeking out the album.

Next week I think I'll sit down and try and get under the hood of the Ultimate Pat Benetar.

Recently I began thinking about how I want to 'collect' and remember the cartoons I loved as a kid.  I have a few goals as far as a collection goes, and since I have some silly issues about buying up old toys and stuff off of eBay I've mainly been focusing on picking up whatever I can on DVD.  My original goal was to get at least one episode from every show on DVD, but as the format changed and season boxsets became first the rage, and then affordable, I've been focusing on those.

Lately though I've stumbled unto another money sucking aspect to the collection, but one that really solidifies the idea of 'owning' a piece of my childhood, which are animation cels.  Pretty much, for me at least, animation cels represent the ultimate keepsake when it comes to cartoons, as you can't get much closer to the source material beyond finding a weird Charlie Kafuman-esque way of crawling into the heads of the animators and writers who created these shows (and it's much less disturbing in that stalker sort of way.)  Also, as far as the collecting gene that I suffer from, I'm the type that prefers the ability to easily look at (my wife would say 'blankly stare at') the collection, as opposed to simply squirreling it away with the knowledge that it's there (which is one of the reasons I can't bring myself to buy individual comic books anymore as they don't display well.)  So the nice original hand-painted cels will hopefully look really swell framed and on the wall.  Anyway, I figured since I'm going to be scanning these in as I buy them for posterity reasons, I might as well share them on the site, and it might as well be under the Cartoon Commentary! heading as it fits in really nicely.

Today I thought I'd share the first cel I decided to buy.  It's a medium sized shot of Orko from the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe showâ



Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with the process of traditional animation, each second of footage in a cartoon in made up of a series of drawings and paintings done on cellulose acetate (think of a clear plastic sheet much like a transparency) overlaid on top of an opaque painted background.  Typically, each separate element in an animation scene that moves will be painted on it's own transparent cel, and then the cels are laid on top of each other to form a scene.  So when I say I'm picking up animation cels for the collection, they are usually going to be one of the individual elements on it's own cel without the background (as this is pretty much the only way I've seen them available for purchase.)  Since the backgrounds are re-used so much they are a bit rarer and might have been sold off in separate lots than the bulk sets of animation cels when studios liquidate their stock.  Also, there are typically a series of production numbers at the bottom of a cel (so the animators can keep track of each cel as there are thousands per episode), and I'm going to try and keep those in the scan when I can, but my scanner only has an 8"x12" bed, so for the Orko cel above I couldn't fit both the painting and the production notes.

I was really happy with this cel (especially for the price), as it's a character I adored from the He-Man cartoon and the actual image itself it pretty nice.  He's floating in a more or less normal pose, which his full body in the shot and his eyes are open.  This points to another aspect of collecting cels that's sort of weird.  Like I mentioned above, there are thousands upon thousands of cels produced for each and every cartoon covering a whole range of movement and perspective, so it's a gamble as to whether or not you'll find a cel where the character or element you want is small, medium or close-up, whether it's in a weird position, whether the character's eyes are closed or if there's an element from another cel intended to sit directly on top of this one you want (in which case that portion isn't painted as it wouldn't show on film anyway.)  Sometimes characters are cut-off on the side of a cel if they are entering the scene from either side, and it depends on what you are looking for as to where there is a full body shot or if it's more of a bust-like close-up.  It really is a crap-shoot.

As far as the actual quality of the artwork itself, this particular cel has survived pretty well over the 24 year or so that's it been around changing hands.  None of the paint has chipped off or stuck to the pencil under drawing that was included (see below), and all of the tiny little blemishes in the black line work appear to be original from when the cel was first produced.  Again, going into a little bit of the process of cel animation, and I'm certainly not an authority on the matter, but from what I can gather there are a series of pencil tests done on paper that is the same size as the finished cels.  These pencil tests include drawings of the various elements through out their series of movements in a scene.  Each pose is rendered on a separate piece of paper which are them scanned in or photographed to see how well the movement works.  If these pass the inspection, they are passed on to junior animators who fill in the gaps of the movements, again in pencil on separate pages.  When the final set are approved, they go onto to yet another group who use model sheets as guides and they re-draw all the pages so that it all looks like one artist drew the final sequence.  These final pencil drawings are then copied to the acetate cels, either hand inked, or photocopied.  I'm not positive but I would assume with the speed at which television animation needs to be produced that they are typically photocopied onto the acetate and then painters come behind them and paint the cels.

The blemishes in the black linework in the above Orko cel look like a bad photocopy job, is basically what I'm getting at here.  Now, for completeness sake I thought I'd also scan in the back of the cel where the actual paint is appliedâ



Now the Orko cel above is pretty simple in terms of color choices, there aren't any shading or color variations in the final image.  So basically it was simply a matter of painting on the back of the cel (so that the front will look crisp and clean) underneath the copied black linework (so that the line work when the image if flipped around will be showing with the paint under), taking care to paint anything perspective-wise that would be closer to the camera (for instance his right hand and ear with overlap both is cloak and hat respectively.)  You'd want to paint the closer aspects first so that they appear to overlap the colors that are 'behind' them and so that the red of his cloak doesn't bleed onto his hands, which would break the suspension of disbelief aspect to the image.  So when you look at the back of the cel you can see that the paint is pretty messy, but because of the way it's layered it looks crisp and clean from the other side.



The last element of the process (which is actually the last image created before the final cel is painted) is the pencil under drawing above.  This is the final drawing that is transferred onto the cel before it's painted.  As you can see in the drawing, it's initially done in non-photo blue lead to get the pose and basic shapes down, and then is 'inked' with a regular graphite lead for the final line work.  You can see in the artwork above where the animators kept changing the placement of the tip of Orko's hat.  When the final pencils are done there is no need to erase the blue under pencils because they won't copy onto the cel.

So I don't have a ton of animation cels in my collection yet, but over the next few months I'll try and share them as I scan them in.

Oh yeah, I also mention the Art & Story podcast with Jerzy Drozd and Mark Rudolph, but I forgot to give a link to their show in the episode, so here it is!

Personally I'm not a fan of complete series sets, unless of course the show in question only lasted a couple seasons. Typically they're released after all of the individual seasons have come out and for folks like me that pick them up bit by bit, the complete set is pointless.  What's worse is that these sometimes come with the best special features (as in the case of Seinfeld which came with a nice coffee table book put together by Jerry and the producers of the show which is only available with the complete set.)  Also, there's that whole pesky price issue.  Who wants to drop over a hundred dollars on a set of DVDs, no matter how much material is on them?  It took me forever and a day to convince myself that it was worth dropping $80 on the complete Monty Python set (a show that I adore), and that was after it had been out for years and the price slashed in half.  I don't mind paying this much in the long run, it's just the all-at-once deal that really gets on my nerves...

Getting back to the Real Ghostbusters, I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of having to choose between either three 4-episode discs that would run around $15 total, or a 25-disc set that will probably cost in the neighborhood of $130.  Since when is targeting only the uber and extremely casual fans a good business plan?  Anyway, that's quite enough griping from me. 

**Update**  Well, apparently I was being way to conservative with my $130 estimate on the complete series.  TVshowsonDVD.com just updated with the release date, price and extras on this set and it's going to clock in at an ungodly $179!  Again, I ask, who has 2 bills to drop on an 80s cartoon series all at once?  Oh, and you have to purchase it thorough Time Life much the way they held the Muppets hostage for so many years.  Ug.  This coveted, yet overpriced, set drops on November 15th...

The reason for this post is to point to a news story on TVshowsonDVD.com, which give fans the opportunity to vote on possible cover artwork for the complete series set.  There are two possible choices, both of which will probably feature some sort of lenticular motion action scenes on the outer slipcase.  Personally my favorite of the two is the simpler art featuring the gang against a flat black background with a lenticular slime effect at the top of the boxâ



The other choice features the trademarked home base of the Ghostbusters, the renovated fire station (which is going to feature lenticular motion action in the windows as well as having the Ecto-1 pulling out of the garage.)  I think it's just a bit wonky, I don't knowâ



Anyway, you can head on over to TVshowsonDVD.com and vote for your favoriteâ

From what I can gather there were at least 10 other Antioch sticker/story books available (other than what I've shared on the blog that is) including 2 Garfield books, 2 Mr. Byte Presents books (which centered on early 80s computing), a couple WWF wrestling books (Hulk Hogan Wins the Belt and one for the cartoon Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling), a couple that centered around the 80s BMX and skateboarding craze, and two more in the series I'm going to share today which centers on the Mr. T cartoonâ



Mr. T starring in Pirate's Gold was published in 1984 by Antioch and was part of a trilogy of books, which also included an Everglades and Wilderness adventures.  Though I'm not positive, I don't think these three book were adapted from episodes of the Ruby Spears produced cartoon (at least not from reading through the episode titles), so for anyone seriously hooked on the show there are at least three more adventures awaiting youâ



Unfortunately the artwork for both the storybook and stickers wasn't culled from the cartoon.  I say unfortunately because the un-credited artist who worked on both is lacking a bit in the quality department.  Actually the artwork isn't that bad, it's just very flat in places and I think a lot of it has to do with the style they were going for.



The drawings on the title page aren't bad at all, but the interior art, which isn't just pen and ink, but rather fully painted pieces, is where it all starts falling apart for me.  I guess the artist just doesn't work well with paintâ



Even though I loved Mr. T as a kid (growing up on a steady diet of the A-Team, as well as his appearances in TV shows and films like Silver Spoons and Rocky 3), I never really bought into the premise of the show.  He just doesn't seem like the type of guy who'd be coaching a team full of teenaged gymnasts. Throw the whole Scooby Doo archetype into the mix with them always solving mysteries as they travel around the country and it gets even sillier to me. I think I was also wondering why he didn't just ditch the kids, pull out a machine gun and REALLY solve some mysteries if you know what I mean.

I guess it's just the Ruby Spears touch as they were also responsible for the Rambo cartoon which is another perfect example of taking a concept that was way more for the adults and trying to shoehorn it into a cartoon for kids.  The silliest thing is that I still watched the show whenever I'd catch it on USA's Cartoon Express (along with another Ruby Spears produced favorite of mine, Turbo Teen.)

As for the story in this book, well lets just say that it's lacking a certain something.  I didn't have the heart (or the patience) to scan the whole thing, but here's a taste of what it was likeâ









I love that the book ends on a moral much like in the cartoon, which featured live action segments of Mr. T going over what happened in the episodes and what you could learn from them.  I know it's heavy-handed and all, but it still an aspect to growing up in the 80s that I'll always love. I guess it's the price we had to pay to get action back into cartoonsâ



As a last bit of trivia, while looking through the wiki entry on the Mr. T cartoon I noticed that the voice actor that played Spike (the precocious little red-haired upstart that idolized and dressed like Mr. T) was none other than Teddy Field III, the same kid who played Bobby the Barbarian on the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon.  I wonder if he cared that he was typecast into this type of annoying kid role?

Like every other cartoon I loved as a kid it's been forever and a day since I've seen the show and from what I've been hearing it might not hold up all that well.  Personally I'm not worried about it holding up.  When I was a kid this is one of the shows that I was so pumped to watch in syndication after school that I memorized the theme song and would sing along at the top of my lungs when it came on.  Silverhawks was the Rankin/Bass follow up to Thundercats, and though I don't remember exact plots I do remember how much I loved the fact that nothing was off the table in terms of content.  Mark Rudolph describes this factor best in the Art & Story podcast, but the show was very Jack Kirby in this manner featuring villains and heroes that used space-aged guitars as weapons (Melodia and Bluegrass respectively), a villain with a giant tuning fork as a weather controlling weapon, and Poker-Face who has slot machines for eyes.

I always used to love it when the team of heroes would "get into battle mode" by wiping their hands in front of their face which would bring down a pretty cool looking mask.  It was a feature that was dearly missing from the action figures (though most of the Silverhawks had a function where you could squeeze their legs together or something to extend their arms out and unsheathe their wings.)  Anyway, coming from Warner Brothers the set is a little pricey ($49.99 suggested retail), but you can pre-order it from Amazon for only $29.99 right now.  The set is going to feature 32 episodes over 4 discs and should be volume one of a two volume series (as there were only 65 episodes produced.)

Also announced by Warner Brothers is the release of the second volume of the Smurfs DVDs.  They havenât set a release date yet, but here is the packing art (swiped from TV Shows on DVD.com.)



The set should contain 20 more episodes from the series, most likely broken up into shorts to remove the repeated shorts from the previous set.

The suggester Retail is listed at $44.98 (which I'm sure will be busted down at places like Amazon for aroun $38 or so when it goes pre-sale), which seems a little steep, but then again Warner Brothers are also the geniuses who released the Thundercats sets priced at $65 (for half a season.)  Haven't these companies learned from the mistakes Rhino Home Video made with the Sunbow properties?  Why haven't they taken a cue from BCI (who, in my humble opinion, are putting out some of the best packaged and priced sets)?

There's been some bootlegs of the Silverhawks show floating around on Amazon and eBay, but I'm glad to see it's finally getting an official release.  It's been like 20 years since I've sat down and watched an episode of the show so I'm not sure how well it holds up, but I have to say that when it was on I was an addict.  I'd rush home from school, plop down in front of the TV and sing along with the theme song (loudly if no one was around.)

 



 

My only wish going into the show was that we'd get a monologue from Bruce (which we didn't), but my wife got a chance to see him and Scott bring the Cathy's to life, as well as seeing Scott's Buddy Cole character do a monologue.



All in all my favorite sketches are probably the ones Dave and Kevin write and play out together.  In probably the funniest moment of the night there was a little back and fourth between the two involving a prank on Dave by Kevin (an in-joke involving Dave's jacket) that broke the fourth wall a bit and for me made for some great ad libbing and vamping.  I thought it was really cool to see behind the curtain a bit, and it was obvious that they were really enjoying themselves which is always a plus.



The capper to the night was Mark performing as Mr. Tyzik doing his whole head-crushing bit, but in a very interesting way.  Mark brought out a video camera and shot the audience while he did his sketch and he used a large video screen behind him to get the whole head between the fingers deal across.  It was great when he got an uber fan in his sites (a dude who too the time to construct and wear a cabbage head toupee) and they had a little tÃte-Ã-tÃte (the fan using the patented head-crushing parry.)



It all ended with Mark's Tyzik picking off the rest of the Kids, one by one and insulting them on their post-KITH work, and then crushing their heads before he ultimately turned the camera and his fingers on himself.  I don't think I'll experience quite the same rush ever again, not at least unless science finds a way to reanimate Graham Chapman's body so he can perform with the surviving members of Monty Python.