I’ve been looking forward to this show since I heard it was being made a few months ago. I’ve been a fan of Hitoshi Iwaaki’s original manga ever since I read Shaenon Garrity’s review of it (http://shaenon.livejournal.com/40665.html#cutid1) way back when and was excited about seeing an anime adaptation. Surprised, since you don’t see a lot of 90s manga getting adapted in this day in age, but excited non-the-less. As a result, I had some expectation for the show when I started watching the first episode.
Of course, those expectations consisted of:
1. There would be lots of horrifying body transformations and violence
2. There would be weird humor involving the sentient hand-thing
And I was not disappointed.
For those who haven’t seen the show or read the comic, Parasyte is about Shinichi, a Japanese teenager, who wakes up one day to find that an alien parasite has burrowed into his right hand and taken control of it, allowing said parasite to turn the hand into whatever amorphous blob it needs said hand to be. Shinichi is, understandably, a little off put by this, but puts up with it for the sake of not being taken in by the authorities or having to chop off his hand. Sadly, the parasite doesn’t know what exactly its deal is, other than it was planning to take over Shinichi’s brain rather than his limb and tries to find another one of his species in order to get some answers. This ends…interestingly.
My first thought on seeing the show was that all the character designs had been updated and cleaner up some, as Iwaaki, while an excellent artist when it comes to body horror and similar grotesquities, is only okay at drawing people. Admittedly, these redesigns weren’t as major as I thought they were, but everything a little nicer looking regardless. Happily, the more gross parts of the show are still done in the same wonderful style as the manga, which means stuff like this:
It’s great.
I’m also just happy to see that this show (at least for this episode) has at least a pretty good budget. All the a animation for the parasite stuff is great to look at and I REALY hope that it maintains this level of quality for the rest of the episodes.
As it is, it’s been a while since I read any part of the manga, so I can’t comment to much on how the story’s being adapted and such, but I had fun and, frankly, that’s all that they part of me that still think’s John Carpenter’s The Thing is mankind’s greatest achievement wanted. So here’s hoping I like next week’s too.
1. I'll Be Seeing You; 2.
Fools Rush In; 3. It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow; 4. The World Is in My Arms; 5. We
Three (My Echo, My Shadow and Me); 6. Dolores; 7. Everything Happens to Me; 8. Let's Get Away from It All; 9. Blue Skies; 10. There Are Such Things; 11. Daybreak; 12. You're Part of My Heart
Frank Sinatra & Tommy Dorsey – Greatest Hits (RCA Victor, 1996)
1. Night and Day; 2. Imagination;
3. I'll Never Smile Again; 4. Blue Skies; 5. The One I Love (Belongs to
Somebody Else); 6. Fools Rush In; 7. Stardust; 8. In the Blue of Evening; 9. Polka
Dots and Moonbeams; 10. Without a Song; 11. This Love of Mine; 12. I Think of
You; 13. Once in a While; 14. How Am I to Know?; 15. The Sky Fell Down;
Sinatra had been kicking around the music business for a
while as a singer for various bands and orchestra before eventually catching a
break and becoming the singer for Harry James’ Orchestra, which led to his
first released commercial recordings in 1939. While touring with James, he was
noticed by Tommy Dorsey, who asked to be one of the singers with his orchestra.
Sinatra accepted, debuted with the orchestra in 1940, and started to make a
name for himself, both for his talent as a singer and for his good looks, which
earned him fame as a teen idol. He would leave Dorsey’s orchestra to try his
hand at being a solo star in 1942, but not before recording around 5 CDs worth
of material with Dorsey. These songs would be the start of his real evolution
as the talented singer he would become and be remembered as.
Listening to this material, the first thing you notice is
that…well…
Frank doesn’t really sound like Frank yet.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still clearly Sinatra, but he
sounds noticeably different than I would in his 50s/60s prime. Most of this is
due to his age: he sounds very youthful on these songs and it certainly fits
the teen idol image that he had at the time. More importantly, it’s clear, at
least on the earlier songs, that Sinatra hadn’t hit upon his signature style
yet. The confidence and brash attitude that’s so prominent in his later
recordings hasn’t been developed yet. Instead, he sounds more like any other
crooner from the period, especially Bing Crosby, who was clearly a major
influence on Sinatra. As someone who’s way more used to Sinatra’s later
material, it’s a really weird effect. Kind of like seeing a picture of someone
who you only know as an older adult when they were a kid.
The material on these CDs, from what I can tell, paints a
pretty good picture of the kind of music Sinatra and Dorsey made during their
three years together. Both of the CDs have the same kind of material on it in
terms of mood, tempo, feeling, etc., even if they only share two songs between
them, and they illustrate what Sinatra and Dorsey did best (or, at least, what
they were most famous for). Of the 25 songs found between these albums, only 8 or 9 can really qualify as being
upbeat in any way. Tommy Dorsey was nicknamed “The Sentimental Gentleman” and
the songs here show why. Slow, moody, romantic ballads seem to be the band’s
forte and dominate both discs. There are upbeat tunes, to be sure, but at least
as far as Dorsey’s work with Sinatra goes, ballads tend to win out over more
up-tempo stuff. Not that this is bad: Dorsey and Sinatra excel at these kinds
of ballads, made with lush arrangements and filled with the kind of elegance
and glamour that people associate with Hollywood movies and other entertainment
from around the same time. Everything has a kind of glow to it, like it’s being
beamed in from another, softer universe where romance was the worst problem
anyone had to deal with. (Of course, given that this stuff is relatively light entertainment
from early 1940s America, that’s pretty much EXACTLY what it’s supposed to
sound like, so…good job, guys).
That said, a part of my wishes that Sinatra and Dorsey had
done more upbeat stuff, if only it meant getting more stuff like “Let’s Get
Away From It All.” Have you heard “Let’s Get Away From It All?” Cause you
should.
It’s some good shit. Admittedly, this is less of a Sinatra/Dorsey
song and more of a shared spotlight for several singer who were working with
Dorsey’s band at the time (including Connie Haines and mixed-gender vocal group
The Pied Pipers), but still, it’s SO GOOD. Everything just blends together so
nicely. I kinda wish Dorsey had done more songs like this. All the singers here
sound really nice together and I’m surprised Dorsey didn’t do more of these (to
my knowledge at least).
The CDs themselves are about what you’d expect for short,
inexpensive compilations. They’re both pretty basic: CD, case, and a small
booklet/inlay in the front. I’ll Be Seeing You has a fold-out strip
made up of 8 panels, 4 on each side. One side is taken up by the cover art and
a 3 panel-long publicity photo of the This
Song Is You box set. The panels on the other side are made up of the track
listing (on one panel), the liner notes, (on two panels), and a short written
ad for the box set that lists all the songs and fancy swag that it comes with. The
track list is well done, as it gives the usual writing and publishing credits,
as well as when the songs were recorded and what, if any, other singers sang on
the song other than Sinatra. The liner notes themselves, written by Will
Friedwald, are short, but not too bad. They briefly cover the popularity of the
Dorsey/Sinatra pairing and how working with Dorsey ended up influencing
Sinatra’s singing style. In a touch I particularly like, it notes that the
songs selected for the CD were specifically chosen to be a mix of big hits and
more forgotten tracks. It also talks briefly about previous reissues of the
Dorsey/Sinatra material and why this reissue improves on the earlier ones. The
biggest weakness of the notes is that it’s clear that they’re meant to function
more as an ad for the This Song Is You box
set and not as much as an independent piece of writing. The relative sparseness
of the liner notes certainly makes the box set’s notes, touted as being a “100
page full color book with many rare photos and memorabilia…[and] two major
essays and complete studio sessionography” seem all the more appealing just for
their (probably) deeper analysis of Dorsey and Sinatra’s music.
The Greatest Hits CD is more or less the same and has, if anything,
even sparser information. Of the six panel booklet, one panel is given to the
liner notes by Chick Crumpacker, which give a brief overview of Sinatra and
Dorsey’s career together and a short biography of each man. Two more panels
have the track list, including the songwriting and recordings date information
and the credits for who worked on that particular reissue. The booklet and CD
case also advertises other CDs in RCA Victor’s jazz-centric “Greatest Hits”
line, which this CD is a part of. This suggests that this particular
compilation was primarily aimed a neophytes, who would be drawn to the famous
names on the front and the spiffy Al Hirschfield caricature on the cover,
rather than more seasoned Sinatra/Dorsey fans.
Both of these CDs are technically out of print, but you can
pick up inexpensive copies on Amazon and most other online marketplaces. (In
store purchasing will, of course, be more of a crap shoot.) I could recommend The Essential Frank Sinatra with the Tommy
Dorsey Orchestra as a good in-print alternative to these two CDs, but I
don’t think I can REALLY recommend a Sinatra/Dorsey CD that doesn’t have “Let’s
Get Away From It All” on it. And, of course, the true die-hard can track down
the out-of-print, but still fairly easy to find This Song Is You box set, which does away with the whole track list
problem by just including everything. If you like this style of music and can
find it for a nice price, I’d almost recommend going that route. (Buyer beware,
though: This Song Is You came out
when cassette tapes were still regularly sold and plenty of the cheaper copies
floating around are of the cassette version. If format like that is the kind of
thing that’s important to you, be wary if you decide to buy.) But again, unless
you know of some particular favorite from that period, almost any compilation
will do. No matter what songs are on it, you’ll still get that smooth, glowing
Sinatra/Dorsey combination. And really, isn’t that why you’d buy one of these
albums anyways?
I find it interesting/telling that that 2-disc Essential set only has a little over
half of the songs that appear on I’ll Be
Seeing You and Greatest Hits
combined. That’s often the trick with these older, pre-33 & 1/3 album acts:
their songs, while not always completely interchangeable, were often pretty
samey. It’s sometimes more important that Sinatra, Dorsey, & Co. are
performing A slow, romantic ballad rather than a PARTICULAR slow, romantic
ballad. It also shows, in a certain respect, how little the specific track
listings of CDs focusing on this era of Sinatra’s career matter. Each one only
bothers to include one of the two biggest hits of Sinatra had with the band (“I’ll
Never Smile Again” on Greatest Hits,
“There Are Such Things” on I’ll Be Seeing
You) and the success that a song had in the 1940s seems to have had little
impact on whether or not it would be selected for a CD track list.[1]
This is exacerbated by the fact that, well, this isn’t really a well-remembered
period of Sinatra’s career in the first place. Unless you were listening to it
as it came out in the early 1940s or are a real fan of Sinatra and/or Dorsey
and/or big band music in general, you probably don’t have any strong feelings
on a specific song that appears on any of these CDs. There aren’t any songs
from this period that everyone would expect to be on it, no early ‘40s
equivalent of “My Way.” However, don’t let that deter you from seeking out this
music. It’s well worth listening too, even if Sinatra and Dorsey are better at
capturing a certain kind of style than crafting a specific pop song that only
they could have come up with.
(Fun fact: some of this music was mastered from glass parts.
Didn’t know you could record sounds to glass. The More You Know!)
[1] Of
course, determining what qualified as a hit in American music prior to 1954,
when the Billboard charts as we know them first got organized, is a crapshoot
at best. Even the best (and, until very recently, only real) source I found,
Joel Whitburn’s Pop Memories 1890-1954, admits that its findings were cobbled
together from a variety of sources and involved a certain amount of guess work
and approximation to make any of the information useful.
Frank Sinatra. The
Voice. Ol’ Blue Eyes. The Chairman of the Board. Plus, I imagine, a whole other
host of nicknames that haven’t survived the years or, at the very least, aren’t
very flattering. Easily one of the most successful and famous of the pre-rock
pop singers, Frank Sinatra certainly qualifies as an icon even if you’ve never
heard a single note that he sung in his almost sixty year long career. He
managed to evolve with the times, going from being a teen idol in the 1930s and
1940s, to a more mature and sophisticated singer in the 1950s and onward.
Or, at least, so Wikipedia tells me.
Admittedly, my own knowledge of Sinatra, especially before I
embarked on this project, was limited and basically amounted to the follow:
Sinatra was a famous old pop singer and died
before I was especially interested in music.
He sang “My Way”, “It Was A Very Good Year,” a
cover of The Beatles’ “Something,” “New York, New York”, a nice version of “The
Christmas Song,” and “Blue Moon” (Which I only know because they play it on the
radio in Fallout: New Vegas)
Took on some acting roles, which he was
apparently pretty good at it.
Made a bunch of famous concept albums in the
1950s.
Helped kick off the whole “older artist does
duets of iffy-quality with other, sometimes younger artists” trend.
Allegedly had ties to the mob at one point.
So, yeah, certainly famous by most cultural standards, but
for someone my age, there’s a good chance that he’s less known for anything in
particular and more just for being a famous, beloved American icon. Neither of
my parents are Sinatra fans themselves, so I never heard it around the house,
and the number of venues for hearing Sinatra’s particular brand of pop music in
public was pretty limited come the 1990s/2000s/2010s. You don’t hear a lot of
Sinatra on the radio these days and, outside of certain special occasions, you might,
at best, run into his music because it was used in movie or because someone you
know likes it. Not the best kind of exposure for an act that everyone “knows
about” but which a lot of people don’t listen to regularly.
So, to get a better idea of what Sinatra’s music is actually
like, I did a little research, picked out a few one-CD compilations, and at
least tried to get a sense of how it evolved during his career. A lot of this
amounted to comparing how many songs were on a specific CD and what whoever
reviewed a given album on allmusic.com thought about it, but I think I managed
to get a selection that would at least be informative, if not necessarily the
best of all possible choices.
Broadly speaking, there are 4 distinct eras of Sinatra’s
career: singing with Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra for RCA from 1940-1942/43, his
first major solo recordings for Columbia from 1943-1952, his Capital albums
from 1953-1961, and his Reprise albums of 1961-1981. There are other recordings
outside this, like his short tenure singing with Harry James’ Orchestra, an
album down with Quincy Jones in the mid-1980s and, of course, the duet albums
his did near the end of his career, but I won’t discuss these smaller pockets
of material unless a compilation uses any of there material.
And now, it’s time to give these CDs a listen and see what,
in fact, all the hubbub is about.
Next Time: Frank Sinatra and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra on
RCA
One of the great things about the modern age is that it's easier than ever to explore the art and entertainment of the past. Yes, YOU TOO can explore all those cool movies and books and especially music from the past that everybody went wild over then and still talk about to this day.
Of course, this is all nice and fine when it's for, say, a self contained piece of media, like a film or a short story, where if you want to find why its so revered you can just, you know, go read/watch/whatever it. Music, however, can present a little more of a problem.
Say there's a singer or a composer or something. And they're REALLY famous. Even people who don't care about the genre they preform in know who they are. However, for a lot people, they're just famous for being a famous person. They revered because of course they're revered, they're really talented and stuff. Which is fine, but it usually works better if you have some familiarity with their work. If the only reason you know someone is supposed to be good is because they keep popping up on "Best of All Time" lists, but you've gone most of your life hearing maybe a couple songs by them, then it loses some of its impact. And even if you want to correct that, who the hell do you go about doing it? Sure, you might get lucky and try to do it with someone who had a very short career, but most of people who achieve this kind of fame record for year and years. Decades, even. More material than most neophytes would want to bother with, just due to the shear volume of it all.
However, the neophyte does have one thing that can help: compilations. You know, "Greatest Hits" CDs and their ilk. But even then, how do you know if the CD you're getting is even any good, especially when there can be different CDs that cover the same period and ones from different companies with the same title but they have not material in common and why aren't half of these in print any more and oh god its like being stuck in a hedge maze
Point being, even that can get confusing, especially if you're knowledge of said performer is "They're Famous" and not a lot beyond that.
Which is where this series comes in. Iconblivious: where I look at short CD compilations of singers who I know about, but aren't familiar with their material, and see what there deal is. How do they measure up to what little I know about them? What surprises do I find? Are the liner notes any good or do they show that it's just some budget-line release with a famous name on it? And other topics. Compilations are limited to single CD releases, though some 2-CD ones may sneak in from time to time, depending on the circumstances. For now, I'll focus on the kind of material I personally don't know about, i.e. pop and jazz vocalists who's prime started before the 1960s, but that's not set in stone.
Will I find new music that I've been missing out on or will I deiced that these people appear to be famous for being famous for a reason? Only time will tell.
(Special thanks to Mike Anderson for coming up with the title.)
(Awww. It's cute. Sorta) 
