Top 19 -- Veruca Salt: American Thighs

We've come to the part of the Top 19 where I no longer talked about these albums on Facebook. Even though they're still in the Top 19  I guess you can consider them honorable mentions or runners up to the Top 10 Facebook list.*

* This preamble seems highly unnecessary but so is this list.

On the list of these 15 or so albums (it actually might be more, I'm having a lot of fun writing these blog posts), this might be the album that I've listened to the least. I like it a lot, but this album and this band is really an amalgam of all the female bands that came out in the mid-90s that I enjoyed. From the Breeders to Juliana Hatfield to Belly to L7 to Garbage to Liz Phair to Jewel (yeah, I know) to Letters to Cleo to the Cranberries to Luscious Jackson to Hole*, there was something about a woman with a guitar that just got me. 

Yes, all of these women were good looking and I'm sure that had something to do with it initially. And I know that sounds chauvinistic but beauty sort of wears off once you buy their CD and spend a lot of time listening to it. I'm not sure why the record industry started pushing female-lead bands, but I'm glad they did. It was a great alternative to the male-dominated rock songs that were ruling the charts at the time. 

What made the female-lead rock band explosion so interesting is that for years, the music industry seemed to ignore females and guitars. Through the 80s (when I was growing up in music), rock and roll was male dominated. If you were a woman, you played pop. Maybe some R&B. The only women who rocked were Joan Jett, Lita Ford (who both were in the 70s sexploitation band "The Runaways") and Pat Benatar. They were considered anomalies and curiosities, not real "rockers" like Warrant or Winger. But they were. Those women fucking rocked harder than a lot of guys, because they had to. But they never seemed to be taken too seriously. 

* Did I like Courtney Love? No. Like a lot of "serious" music fans, I spent a lot of the 90s blaming her for the death and subsequent profiteering of Kurt Cobain. Even before Cobain took his life, Love was cast as the Yoko Ono of the 1990s. Was this fair? I don't know. Possibly. Possibly not. Cobain was a troubled guy and I think that people who put their faith in him as the voice of a generation couldn't face that it was him that was letting them down, so they turned their vitriol towards Love. That being said, Love was also a loud, obnoxious, opportunistic, drug addled mess (though it's funny, we tend to worship men who are loud, obnoxious, opportunity, drug addled messes -- but that's a discussion for another day). But her band rocked. Whether Cobain or Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan wrote their songs, it doesn't matter; Hole fucking delivered. And I think that what was so maddening about Courtney Love. If she was a no-talent, it would be easier to dismiss her. But she was talented and she controlled the narrative and sometimes that's tough to wrap your brain around. 

Veruca Salt was fronted by guitarist Nina Gordon and Louise Post with drummer Jim Shaprio and bassist Steve Lack marking up the rhythm section. You didn't really see Shapiro and Lack very much, the focus was on Gordon and Post. Their first single, "Seether" was a pretty big hit on MTV and that's when I first discovered the band. I recall hearing the single in 1994 and that's all I thought about. 

I bought the album some time later and it's excellent, my favorite song of the 90s is on it: "Number One Blind". The video only aired on MTV a handful of times, which is borderline criminal. It really captures a time in my life when things were in a strange upheaval of where I knew that I was in one place, but I wasn't going to be there for too long. My educational journey was ending soon and the real world was coming on fast. I was an English major, but what the fuck does that get me in the job world? 

The chorus, "Levolor, which of us is blind?" is haunting and has continued to stay with me for a long time. Not just because of the words, but the way that Gordon so ablely sings it. The dueling guitars through out the song also bring a sort of sadness that adds to the melancholy and diachotomy of the lyrics. "Be my blind. Be it all the time. Be it night or day. Take my sun away. Away." There's a push and pull in this song that just grabs me. I can't explain why or how, but every so often you land on a song that just nails you right. 

"Number One Blind" from Veruca Salt does that. 

A few years ago the band reunited (there was a rumor that Gordon and Post dissolved the band because one found out that the other was sleeping with Foo Fighter Dave Grohl) and I wanted to see them. This was during our time in Burlington when we had close to zero friends, so I couldn't ask anyone around here. None of my college friends wanted to go and for some reason, I didn't feel like going by myself, so I asked the priest who married Aly and I if he wanted to go. Our priest is an incredibly nice man, whose close to my age and has incredibly awesome musical taste. He deferred too. What sucked about not seeing them is that they played "Number One Blind".

The following year the came back into town in support of their newest album "Ghost Notes" (which is actually pretty awesome, you should check it out) and we suddenly had a group of friends in town. I asked my friend Ken if he wanted to go (he had never really heard of them before) and he agreed. And it was a great show. They didn't play "Number One Blind", but that was okay. The club that we saw them, the Paradise, is pretty small so we got really close to the band. And again, they ripped it up. 

Murder at Malibu!

What makes a team book a fun read? The writing and the art are good places to start. The characters need to be interesting. But the biggest reason is that there needs to be a sense of purpose or an overarching theme behind the group.

The Fantastic Four are essentially a family*, Mr. Fantastic is the husband of the Invisible Girl, brother-in-law of the Human Torch and best friend of the Thing. At its core, there’s a family dynamic. The Avengers are Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. They deal with the stuff that no one else can handle. If you’re an Avenger, you’re the best of the best (at least in theory – I’m looking at you Dr. Druid).

* My theory as to why the FF sucks as a movie: there’s not enough time to establish a family dynamic, figure out how to use their powers and deal with a bad guy. Not in two hours. It would be better as a book. When I say this, people always use “The Incredibles” as a counter argument and that kinda works. But the thing is, “The Incredibles” is about a nuclear family: dad, mom, brother, sister and baby. You already know how that works, that dynamic is practically hardwired into your brain, so you don’t need a lot of time to explain it. The FF isn’t a “traditional” nuclear family and time is needed to establish bonds. Why does Sue love Reed when he’s an obvious asshole? Why are Johnny and Ben so close? Why does Ben defend Reed despite Reed constantly fucking him over? There’s no shorthand to this and it’s not stuff that you can get across in two hours.

The X-Men are a little different. They’re together because they’re mutants and half the world hates them, the other half fears them. They needed to be brought together to be taught how to use their powers and work for the betterment of mankind. At least that’s what Professor Xavier says, I think he just wanted to look at some young tail.

Yuck.

Even the Defenders had a reason, even if it was an anti-reason: they were a non-team. That meant if the Hulk doesn’t feel like dealing with the villain of the month, he doesn’t have to. The Sub Mariner has things to do in Atlantis, get to it Subby. There were always plenty of heroes hanging around Dr. Strange’s mansion to lend a hand.

Do these teams above bicker with each other? Constantly. But there's that purpose that ties them back. Yes the Thing wants to knock the Human Torch into next week, but he won't because they're practically brothers. Wolverine routinely wants to ram a claw into Cyclops' throat (let's be honest, who doesn't?) but he won't because he believes in Xavier's message.

That brings us to the Champions. It seems that writer Tony Isabella saw that the Marvel method is, "Have teammates argue with each other" and confused it with growth or substance or something and left it at that. We’re in issue four and I still have no idea why they hang around with each other. I mean I get why Angel and Ice Man are pals and everyone probably wants to sleep with Natasha, but the others are just jerks to each other. Bobby has a hair across his ass about Ghost Rider and now Angel does too.

Before I get into that, I need to explain this month's plot a bit: Hercules and Black Widow are walking on the beach when they’re attacked by an old, crazy guy calling himself Billy. He attacks our hero without any provocation and talks about himself in the third-person, which reminds me of Rickey Henderson. Being reminded of Rickey is great.

(My brother had this poster when we were kids, it's so awesome. AND there's a bonus comics pun in there! Who says I don't bring it all home?) 

They kick his ass and are trying to figure out what to do about it when these six goons come around to bring Billy back to where he came from. Hercules isn’t too happy about this because all of a sudden, he likes Billy. The goons shoot him and Widow and the next thing you know they’re at the San Marino State Hospital. I just looked it up and San Marino is 52.3 miles away from Malibu, so I’m not sure what Billy was doing in Malibu anyway and why it took these guys so long to track him down, but comics!

Anyway, Hercules is in cuffs and Widow has a device around her neck that will fry her if either makes the wrong move. It turns out that this scientist is trying to replicate the Super Soldier Serum* and has been testing it on the mentally deranged, the old and the poor. Surprisingly, it hasn’t worked out very well for any of them.

* I love how the SSS only worked for Steve Rogers. It (at least up until I stopped reading comics in the late 80s) never worked well for anyone else. For the most part, after being injected with the SSS, it drove people insane. I think that says a lot for Steve Rogers, that he’s the ultimate American. Not just in terms of mental capacity, but in terms of will and temperament. That’s a nice idea to hold onto, especially if we use him as an avatar for America.

  

This scientist, Dr. Edward Lansing, is planning to try his experiment on both the Widow and Hercules so that they will be his slaves. Their first mission? Destroy the Champions? Why? I don’t know. They just have to, that’s why.

Herc, Nastasha, Dr. Lansing and some more SSSed-up goons attack the Angel, Ice Man and Widow’s friend Ivan. And they’re kind of kicking their asses pretty well, until Ghost Rider shows up. Remember, he’s not only the cavalry, but he’s also the friend and teammate of Angel and Ice Man.

Angel says, “How ‘bout puttin’ your money where your mouth is for once before we all get creamed?” Does the Ghost Rider need this shit? Fuck and no, he doesn’t. If I were Johnny Blaze, I’d turn my bike around and go somewhere else. But Blaze is a better hero than I would be, so he helps the two asshole mutants fight Hercules and it goes okay. Ivan has his hands full with the Black Widow who is literally choking him—like Homer does to Bart*, only less funny.

* The Simpsons are probably my favorite piece of pop culture ever, when they finally leave the airwaves, it's going to be a sad day. But the whole Homer choking Bart “joke” hasn’t really aged well, has it? I guess it’s good that it's a cartoon because seeing a real 38-year-old man choking a real 10-year-old boy would be disturbing.

This act wakes Natasha up and she kicks Dr. Lansing in the face, breaking his control box. The mutates (his words, not mine) end up turning on him and kill him. I guess that once the people under his control kill someone they are then bound to turn into brain dead zombies. Lansing wanted Hercules and Black Widow to kill their fellow Champions so they would be under his control, which seems like a dumb plan. Why don’t you just have them kill a drifter or two? Why take the gamble that they could kill other heroes – even if those heroes are Ice Man and the Angel.

In a rare moment of empathy, Hercules feels bad about these zombies. Are they zombies? I guess they are technically, though they're not dead. It sort of feels like I'm not being sensitive by lumping all brain dead slaves into one big zombie pile. Angel doesn't care for my PC musings (and you know WWIII would vote for Donald Trump and would tell everyone that he did so) and tells the Scion of Zeus not to worry that the cops will take care of them (uh, okay?). Hercules argues that these people were innocents who went to a doctor for help, only to see themselves get experimented on and altered in the worst way.

Does Warren Worthington III take stock in that and feel any empathy? Of course not. He flips the fuck out and says, “All right! There is evil the world Hercules – and Lansing is part of it. But there’s good as well – and we’re a part of that! The question is: do we do anything about it – or do we sit around crying in our beer? #MAGA*”

* He didn't really say the last thing. 

A few things, WWIII:

1. Hercules wasn’t saying let’s disband the Champions with a murder-suicide pact. He’s just bummed out about what happened to these people.
2. He didn’t say that you were the cause of this, so just relax.
3. You have wings, Hercules is one of the strongest people on the planet. He's a demigod. Maybe you should slow your roll a bit.

And that’s what brings me back to my original point: I still have no idea why these people are still together. They don’t seem to like each other too much, they have completely different philosophies for practically everything and aside from mooching off the Angel (he’s rich and underwrites everything that the Champions do and allows him to crash at his place) there’s no symbiotic relationship.

I think that the Champions stories have struggled in these first four issues because the group has struggled to find a purpose. They never answered that one important question: why are the Champions here?

This was a meh issue. The group just sorta defeated literal ancient gods, so fighting a mad scientist is not just a step down, it’s an entire building down. And again, they didn’t really defeat him, Black Widow kicked him and the mutates did the rest of the work (killing him) for them. And BTW, good job Champions of saving Dr. Lansing. No one lifted a finger to help him. At all. 

"Oh? Those screams? Just good old Dr. Lansing being torn apart by a bunch of brain-dead zombies. I wonder if Warren still has that margarita machine? Taco Tuesday y'all!"

You know you're a 90s kid when ... stupid sentence beginning but, every time I read this headline, I sing it to the chorus of the Hole song, "Malibu". I'm sure Courtney Love will be thrilled. 

The George Tuska art was a little better, but the writing lagged. The front cover is boss, so they have a four-issue streak on that. I’d have bought this book if I saw it on a spinner or the magazine rack at Mahoney’s Drug Store in Methuen, MA. I give this issue two vest-wearing Angels out of five.