14 favorite elements of songs I currently have on rotation while I create artwork for my own book

1. The cinematic-sounding French horn lines during Kanye West's "All of the Lights"
Ye is a modern-day Mozart--as in batshit crazy, but a total musical genius.

2. The military drums during Pusha T's "My God"

(Photo source: Trebles and Blues)

3. The piano sample during Trebles and Blues' "The Tempo"

4. The handclaps during The New Pornographers' "Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk"

5. The bloops that open The Chemical Brothers' "Car Chase (Arp Worship)" from the Hanna score

6. The bass line of Lyrics Born and Sam Sparro's "Coulda Woulda Shoulda"

7. The really tight brass section during The Heavy's live 2010 performance of "That Kind of Man" for KEXP

8. The "Love You Save"-esque beat of Dennis Coffey and Mayer Hawthorne's "All Your Goodies Are Gone"

9. Dres' flow during the Black Sheep track "Elevation"

10. Bambu's delivery of "I used to sit in church and look at the stained glass and wonder why none of them look like me" during "Misused"

11. The electronic bass line of Daft Punk's Tron: Legacy end credits cue "Solar Sailer"

12. Ernie Isley's smokin' guitar solo at the end of The Isley Brothers' "Summer Breeze"
I only listen to that cover of sappy Seals and Crofts just to get to that guitar solo.



13. Teena Marie (R.I.P.) leading the female half of the Long Beach audience in a playful battle of the sexes with Rick James over which gender is louder during the live 1981 version of "I'm a Sucker for Love" that's on the deluxe edition CD of Street Songs

14. "The Michael McDonald of the rap game," Nate Dogg (R.I.P.), proving he wasn't your father's Michael McDonald when he crooned "And you even licked my balls" during Snoop Dogg's "Ain't No Fun (If the Homies Can't Have None)"

Some factoids about The Palace: Theatre of Crud, Chapter 5--for the one or two readers who actually give a shit

I modeled Chapter 5 of Theatre of Crud after an actual panel from Watchmen (located on page 18 of the 1986 miniseries' fourth chapter, "Watchmaker," a.k.a. the Dr. Manhattan flashback issue, to be exact).


However, I drew the feature film version of Laurie Jupiter instead of the original Dave Gibbons interpretation of Laurie because the Malin Akerman version is far more attractive and has a better-looking crimefighting outfit. It really brings out her ass.

There are only two things the Watchmen feature film did better than the original comic: the climax, which doesn't include a ridiculous-looking squid, and Silk Spectre II's fashions. The outfits worn by Silky in the comic would have been constantly mocked by the alternate Earth's equivalent of Go Fug Yourself.


"This pantsuit with the front pockets. Is she supposed to be a cobbler? Does she have an awl in there?," snarked Carr D'Angelo in a Comic Book Resources recap of the miniseries. "I do love Gibbons as an artist but he really doesn't draw sexy women."

Just like how Silky's fugly pantsuit didn't make it into the 2009 movie, there were tons of gag ideas I wrote down for Theatre of Crud but ended up not drawing. They included "Rich Little impersonators," "Steampunk Kanye" and "A Teabagger gets teabagged by a teabagger, or as Studio Ghibli calls it, Pom Poko." I drew a strip in which Joe, who's wielding a Filipino knife, kidnaps Rush Limbaugh, but I wasn't satisfied with it.

The why of fly: Michael A. Gonzales' "Gangster Boogie" details the making of the Superfly soundtrack

(Photo source: Michael A. Gonzales)

I got my first taste of the late Curtis Mayfield's Superfly soundtrack when I watched a tape of a faded-looking print of the 1972 blaxploitation flick in either 1996 or 1997. Three elements of the movie stood out for me: the late Ron O'Neal's Shakespearean performance as a coke dealer who wants to quit the game, Sheila Frazier's nice body during the bathtub love scene and Mayfield's exceptional original songs, which are more insightful than the screenplay itself (Elvis Mitchell noted that "Mayfield's score rebels against the movie's insidious mythologizing of Priest"). Any piece of music Mayfield wrote or produced for movies just plain sizzles, whether it's any of the tunes in Superfly, the Let's Do It Again theme he produced for the Staple Singers or the Claudine theme "On and On" by Gladys Knight & the Pips.

Superfly fan Michael A. Gonzales has written what has to be the definitive chronicle of the making of the Superfly soundtrack, "Gangster Boogie," the must-read cover story in the latest issue of Wax Poetics magazine (what an issue it is: Mayfield! David Holmes! Roc Raida! Do the Right Thing! Black Dynamite! Funkdafied '70s European library music!). The Superfly soundtrack's influence on R&B and hip-hop shows no signs of waning (I didn't notice "Little Child Runnin' Wild" was sampled in Kanye West's "Flashing Lights" until it was pointed out by The-Breaks.com).

What makes Michael's piece stand out from other writings I've read about the 1972 soundtrack is that it doesn't neglect the importance of the sidemen and arrangers who helped Mayfield craft the soundtrack. Michael has said he wanted to avoid writing about Superfly through the lens of the auteur theory like other writings about classic albums he's read, hence the substantial interviews with Superfly guitarists Craig McMullen and Phil Upchurch and arranger Johnny Pate, who composed a terrific instrumental score for Shaft in Africa after Superfly.

"Gangster Boogie" also sheds light on the tensions between rock musicians and traditional film scorers that arise from projects like Superfly. I wasn't aware of Mayfield's lawsuit against his former friend Pate, who claimed he was solely responsible for writing Superfly's "Junkie Chase" and "Think" instrumental cues. It's one of many juicy tidbits in a fly article about the flyest of '70s movie soundtracks.