Favorite Albums: The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society

There was a time when my favorite group was The Kinks, and I was busy trying to get all the albums that featured my favorite songs by the eclectic British Invasion group. From You Really Got Me, through Lola and All Day and All of the Night, I picked em all up! But there was one particular album that I didn’t know anything about. It was called The Village Green Preservation Society, and was one of the last albums featuring the original 4-man lineup of Ray, Dave, Mick and Pete. What WAS this album? Was it Country? or, by the look of the cover, was it Folk?

Well, I didn’t know, but since the album was one of the few Kinks albums in the NICE PRICE line, (for those who don’t remember, the NICE PRICE albums were these selected cheaper priced albums that sold for $3.99) I didn’t have anything to lose by purchasing the album and checking it out- and MY GOSH, did THAT end up being a BARGAIN!

Like I said, I assumed it was going to be a country or folk album just by the title and cover picture, so I was COMPLETELY TAKEN UNAWARE when I was hit by one of the most witty, sentimental and HILARIOUS concept albums I’d ever heard in my life! Listening to this album was like foraging through an old chest of treasures in a dusty attic- all these little gems singing about the most mundane things in life, tunes that were innovative AND catchy at the same time!  We only had to listen to it once before the album became THE soundtrack me and my friends listened to for MONTHS, and to this day, The Village Green Preservation Society still remains one of my most beloved albums in my collection, easily one of the top twenty LPs I own!

The Village Green Preservation Society

An Ode to all things pure and simple in the world, championing such things as antique tables, little shops and virginity! This song about celebrating all the everyday things in life sets the template for the theme of the Village Green Preservation Society LP!

Do You Remember Walter?

A sentimental song about a childhood friendship. After reminiscing about adventures he’s had as a kid with a friend named Walter, he realizes that if he were to meet Walter now, He’d probably be nothing like the childhood friend he knew, and would probably not even care about the things they did. But that’s okay, because he still has his memories of their childhood days.

Picture Book

A song about the magic of looking through old Photo Albums, this song is more recently known for its brief stint as the theme song for one of those computer photo printers.

A sort of precursor for the album closer “People Take Pictures of each other”.

Johnny Thunder

We’ve always debated whether this song was about a true Paul Bunyan-ish hero or a misunderstood savior, but one thing is sure- Johnny Thunder’s a tough  ol’ guy, and he has a little sweetheart named Helena who has all the faith in the world in him.

Last of the Steam-Powered Trains

A sad song sung in the first person of a now passé Steam-Engine lamenting his replacement by the more slick and modern express Trains  that progress has presented. But he perks up by saying that by being an antique and placed in a museum, his well-being will be seen to!

I love the way this song’s beat trudges along like a train chugging, slowly picking up speed as the song progresses, to its big end!

Big Sky

And just who might the character “Big Sky” be, if not our Father who Art In Heaven?

A song about the sometimes callous indifference God has regarding the trials and tribulations we petty humans go through, while reminding us that one day, all our suffering will be rewarded. “One day we’ll be free, til that day can be, don’t let it get you down!”

Sitting By The Riverside

Ah, a song drenched with shades of Maurice Chevalier! This song completely encapsulates a dreamy scene sitting in a little café sipping tea as gondolas go by in the orange sunset, soaking in the Joi de vivre…

A sweet way to end Side One!

Animal Farm

Side Two’s opening track about leaving the headaches and bustle of the big, noisy city and moving to the country, where a man can rest easy and clear his head, free of traffic and superficial people…

Village Green

A sort of sequel to Animal Farm, this one’s about a fine, upstanding young man who has made a name for himself in the big city, but has fond memories about his days growing up in the simple country.

Phenomenal Cat

And what would an album  about the sweet and innocent things in life be without a NURSERY RHYME? A song that conjures up the images of “The Owl and The Pussycat”, the highlight of the melody is Ray’s own distorted singing as the voice of the Phenomenal Cat merrily humming away!

Starstruck

A fun ditty about a young girl who gets obsessed by the glitz and glamour of the  Hollywood scene, and her subsequent transformation into a wanna-be socialite, this tune is made fun by it’s showtime revue refrain: Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba!!

All of My Friends Were There

A trauma all of us go through- drinking too much and making a fool of yourself in front of everyone!

Wicked Annabella

Once you’ve sung a nursery rhyme, what could be more appropriate than to follow it up with a Fairy Tale? And a pretty spooky one, at that! The story of a wicked old Witch that flies the skies at night, looking for kids who haven’t gone to sleep like good little children…

Effectively sinister guitar riffs for this one, too!

Ah, haven’t we all known girls like the songs titular heroine? Smart, sexy, and oh-so-highly desirable, Monica knows she’s too good for just about ANYONE, and enjoys shooting hopeful young suitors down in flames! A man obsessed with a gal just aglow with confidence and charisma!

People Take Pictures Of Each Other

A HILARIOUS, fun way to end the album! The song sings about the wonder of Photo taking and photo sharing, and as the nostalgic host shows more and more pictures to his guest, the bored captive audience begs, “Don’t show me no more, please”! Something that ANYONE who’s been forced to watch somebody else’s family slideshows can relate to!

A Mark and Brian Christmas: Bacardi Rum Cake

More Classic Gems from Mark and Brian Christmas Past!

As the days got closer and closer to Christmas, the Mark and Brian gang started getting more and more winsome and sentimental, and a lot of the conversations  leaned towards childhood/early memories of Christmas...

While discussing the various food items that they’d brought for their Christmas potluck, Frank “Mr. Owl” Murphy related a short but interesting story about the Bacardi Rum Cake his wife had made for the occasion…

A Mark and Brian Christmas: Top Nine Rejected ELMO Dolls

More Classic Gems from Mark and Brian Christmas Past!


In the spirit of Christmas Shopping for Children's Toys, Mark and Brian offer up the Top Nine Rejected ELMO DOLL themes before the manufacturers finally settling on the famous "Tickle-Me Elmo"one!

Favorite Albums: Duran Duran / Rio

It was actually my sister who introduced me to the music of Duran Duran as a whole. Before she started bringing home all their albums and EPs, the only song I knew from them was the heavily-played on MTV song Hungry Like The Wolf. But after a few months of listening to her playing her albums over and over, I actually began to dig their music quite a bit!

I had an RCA Videodisc Player which I had purchased so I could watch The Who’s “Kids Are Alright” movie (the only format it was available in at the time), so most of my music concerts were in the Videodisc format as well. Discs like The Beatles’ “Let It Be” (Yes! They released it on Videodisc!) and Fleetwood Mac’s “Mirage” Tour Concert were bought on a regular basis, and one day my sister asked me if I’d let her use the Videodisc Player if she bought a Videodisc of her own. I said sure, and the following weekend, she came home with a video collection of DURAN DURAN!

For a guy who didn’t know much about Duran Duran , this was a  mind-blowing and very educational experience! You got to see the band go through their early new wave roots up to their current (at the time) status as video-as-art mavericks! You got to see them go through several phases of “looks”…The songs segued into each other, making the contrasts of each type of video all the more palatable! And the SONGS were so damn good!

Eventually I had to go ahead and purchase their albums myself, including both versions of their “first” album, as well as what I consider their pop-art masterpiece, RIO.

The cover art for Rio was the (soon to be) iconical image of a smiling woman done by Patrick Nagel, at once capturing the whole “Nu-Romantic” feel before you’d even started playing the record!

1.Rio

The album starts off with a single synthesizer note, then the drums kick in to introduce the beat and then the song turns this into a jumping, rocking piece, setting the stage for your musical trip!

 2. Most of the songs here had videos shot on exotic locations (like, famously, Sri Lanka) and so when hearing songs like “Lonely in Your Nightmare” conjures up visions of faraway lands, giving you a melancholy (and quite lonely) feeling, John’s bass solos are particularly expressive here.

3.The version of the song “My Own Way” I learned was from the video, which featured the dance-“night” version of the song, and when I first made a cassette to play in my car, it was THAT version I inserted into the album’s playlist. And even now I still would prefer to listed to that version than the decidedly slower one originally on the album!

4. The one song I’d already known before coming in, this is a fun number that’s only marred by an EXTREMELY irritating end with a lady loudly moaning during the fade out. WTF, this wasn’t so noticeable in the single version!

5. Hold Back The Rain

Side One ended with this longish song in ths style of the above Hungry Like the Wolf track, this one foreshadowed later songs New Moon On Monday and Union of the Snake.

7. New Religion

This is one ROCKING number, another one driven by John’s distinctive bass plucking.

ME and my friends would LOVE to sing this song with its interesting lead vocal overlaid with a counter vocal during the choruses! One of my faves from this album!

8.Last Chance On The Stairway

 Ah, another BIG favorite  of mine- this one begins with an almost whimsical and romantic feel (with him sweetly reminiscing "I don't remember quite how I met you, wasn't long ago") but turns into a rocking song full of desperation!

9. Save A Prayer

Like Lonely In Your Nightmare, this one was shot on location and so gives an added feel of displacement, loss and loneliness. One of the more famous MTV videos by them, I might add. A truly beautiful and haunting song!

10. The Chauffeur
Did I mention Haunting? MAN, songs like  album closer “The Chauffeur” go even further by giving you the strangest sense of unease!  its Magical Toyland feel to it, I've always imagined the picture on the cover of Aerosmith's "Toys In The Attic" with the dolls and hobby-horses coming to life, and there's even a disembodied voice asking about "the toys in the attic" A mesmerizing end to an amazing album!!

Years later, and though they’ve made many video collections after that, they’ve never released that original Duran Duran Video Collection on DVD. Sure, the videos themselves are (for the most part) available on other collections, but there was something about the way that old video was put together that just made it…perfect! 

Good Girl Art Covers starring those Fighting Force Girls

Once again I’ve taken a famous Good Girl Art Comic Cover and inserted my own Fighting Force gals into the scene, this time STARTLING COMICS #45, with Wendy & Karen fighting Tim as the Jackalwere...

Startling Comics #45

Fighting Force Featuring Wendy #206, Art by Z

Favorite Artists: MAD's Angelo Torres

Angelo Torres Cheesecake Art

People will sometimes ask me why my illustrations of girls always tend to have gals with real curvy hips and legs, and my answer is immediate: “Ah, That would be the influence of Angelo Torres!”, To which inevitably, the next thing the person usually asks is, “Who?!”

 Readers of MAD Magazine in the seventies and eighties knew the format of each issue was pretty set. The magazine would start with a Movie spoof usually drawn by Mort Drucker, the middle of the magazine would feature Dave Berg’s “The Lighter Side Of…”, and the issue would end with a TV Sitcom spoof. The TV spoofs were almost always drawn by an artist named Angelo Torres, and I’ve always just loved how he drew women.

  My first exposure to the greatness of Angelo’s work was way back in 1977 or so. I was an avid Charlie Angels fan, (owing to the fact that I was in love with Jaclyn Smith) and one day I was over at my friend Byron’s house after school, and he had the latest issue of MAD magazine featuring a beautifully rendered cover of Charlie's Angels by Jack Rickard, and a satire inside drawn by Torres!  I immediately sat down and read it, and it was love at first sight!

Charlie's Angels, MAD #193

   First off, His depiction of Jaclyn was right on, and furthermore, most of the s(tory had the girls running around in bikinis! (I’ve noticed that whenever anyone spoofs Charlie’s Angels, they always show the three girls in bikinis, but viewers will attest that Kate Jackson never went NEAR a bikini on the show…but I digress)

  Maybe it was since the first girl I ever saw him draw was Kelly Garrett, but I became an instant fan right there, and from then on I would always recognize him as the guy that drew the Charlie’s Angels Spoof, and over time I noticed “That guy that always draws girls in bikinis ”, or at least It seemed, much to my delight!

Fantasy Island

  One of the things I really dug was the gorgeous way he drew women of all different ethnicities, whether they be Spanish, Black, Asian, or just the good ol’ California girls, and it almost seemed like the script put in exotic bikini-clad women simply because they knew Angelo would be illustrating it!

Six Million Dollar Man,MAD #172, Hawaii 5-O, MAD#141

    The girls were always drawn with special details in the face (eyes, lips), and MAN could he draw girls’ legs! I remember that every time an issue came out with a story featuring Angelo Torres’ art, I would buy it, and as I got older , I would try and try in vain to copy the drawings of those issues, attempting to emulate the style of the master himself. And I’m still trying to this day!

Here are more of my FAVORITE Angelo Torres "cheesecake" illustrations!

Riptide, MAD # 254

The Love Boat, MAD #202

Vegas, MAD #210

Three's Company, MAD #196

Owl and the Pussycat,MAD #145

  I Love this one- Who else but Torres could give Babs such great legs? AHAHAHA

Scott Corbett’s “Trick” Books

The “Trick” Book Series...another favorite children’s book series of mine, 

written by Scott Corbett and illustrated by Paul Galdone

  Scott Corbett’s Trick Books centered around the adventures (and misadventures) of a young boy named Kerby Maxwell, his friend Fenton, and his dog Waldo.

  Kerby stops to help an eccentric old woman with her heel stuck in a drainage grating. Her name is Mrs. Graymalkin, and she is so grateful to Kerby for saving her shoe that she later rewards him with a mysterious old chemistry set that belonged to her son when he was a boy. But this is no ordinary chemistry set- when the mysterious chemicals are mixed to Mrs. Graymalkin’s instructions, they have the powers to create many wonderful, exciting effects!

  Trouble hitting a home run at the game? A drop of a special mixture onto the ball will solve that! Your dog run away? A special concoction will make his whereabouts appear in the beaker! And so on and on. For every problem, there’s a potion to fix it!

  Mrs. Graymalkin’s potions create such magical results, Kerby believes she is a witch, whereas levelheaded Fenton believes she is a genius scientist who happens to be extremely eccentric!

And who knows…? Maybe they’re BOTH right!

Here are some of my favorite books in the series:

The Lemonade Trick

Mrs. Graymalkin has some fun with Kerby in this, the first book in the Trick Series.

She tells him if he mixes two bad-smelling chemicals together, it will bubble and fizz together and end up smelling like roses. He goes home and tries it, but instead he is compelled to drink the concoction, which makes him do good deeds all day!

The Limerick Trick

This was the first Trick book I read, and maybe that’s part of the reason this is my favorite book in the series. Kerby wants to win a poem contest because the prize is a new bike. He asks Mrs. Graymalkin to give him a potion that will make him write the winning entry. She gives him what he wishes, but adds a little bonus- for his greediness, he starts to speak uncontrollably in limericks!

The Hairy Horror Trick

Kerby’s cousin Gaye discovers his Chemical set! The boys mix a concoction to make her forget that she has seen it, but unfortunately Gaye has moved around some of the chemicals when she was looking at it so the experiment goes wrong, the end results leaving Kerby and Fenton with beards and moustaches, and Waldo bare as a poodle!

The Hateful Plateful Trick

Kerby’s cousin is back, and they try another experiment which leaves all of them smelling like the type of food they hate the most. The terrible news is that the only way to get RID of the smell is to EAT the very dishes they despise! But where will they find a place to get all the dinners before their parents come home?

Like the THREE INVESTIGATORS series I mentioned before, much traveling around to other libraries was needed to read all of the books in the TRICK BOOK series. And even with all that legwork, I still didn’t get to read THE HOME RUN trick till I got a copy off of Ebay when I was trying to complete the set. (succeeded, too!)

 My Scott Corbett "Trick" Books Collection:

The Trick Books:

The Lemonade Trick

The Mailbox Trick

The Disappearing Dog Trick

The Baseball Trick

The Limerick Trick

The Turnabout Trick

The Hairy Horror Trick

The Hockey Trick

The Home Run Trick

The Hateful Plateful Trick

The Black Mask Trick

The Hangman’s Ghost Trick

There is one book in the series that sticks out, though. It is THE MAILBOX TRICK, and there’s no trick in it. In fact, Mrs. Graymalkin isn’t involved with the story at all. Which is kind of weird when each dust jacket writes on the inside “Mrs. Graymalkin! No TRICK book is complete without her!” They should have taken their own advice!

   In this story Kerby’s cousin Gaye mails out letters he wrote only to blow off steam and never meant to send out. So the whole book he’s trying to get the letters back before the recipient can read it. I remember reading it and WONDERING when the heck he was going to call Mrs. Graymalkin for help, and was pretty disappointed when the story ended with nary an appearance of her!