Take this Jeffrey Morgan's Media Blackout #201, may it serve you well!
Since you asked, here's my annual accounting of all the audio-visual items that I excessively obsessed about during the year — and still do!
ON MY TURNTABLE: Ian McLagan — Never Say Never (Maniac) Pop album of the year! :: Samuel James — Songs Famed for Sorrow and Joy (Northern Blues) Blues album of the year! :: Ministry — Cover Up (13th Planet) Industrial album of the year! :: Johnny Winter — Live Through the '70s (MVD Visual) Music video of the year! :: The Scenics — How Does it Feel to be Loved (Dream Tower) Velvet Underground album of the year! :: Jeff Beck — Live at Ronnie Scott's (Eagle) Rock album of the year! :: Dr. Hunter S. Thompson — The Gonzo Tapes (Shout! Factory) Containing five and a half hours of HST's dictated work tapes, this five-disc box set is an invaluable aid for any writer of any ilk and the best spoken word album of the year!
IN MY BOOKSHELF: Samuel Bernstein — Mr. Confidential: The Man, His Magazine & the Movieland Massacre That Changed Hollywood Forever (Walford Press) The title's a mouthful but this exposé about the truly legendary scandal sheet Confidential more than lives up to it. Profusely illustrated and wittily written, this is the best book on '50s Hollywood ever authored! :: Will Eisner — The Spirit Archives (DC Comics) :: It took eight years but all 26 volumes of this masterpiece are finally out and well worth every penny of the $1,329.74 cover price! :: Dean Motter — Mister X: The Archive & Mister X: The Condemned (Dark Horse Comics) :: The first is a deluxe hardcover reprinting of the original influential series while the second is an all-new adventure that picks up where The Archive left off! :: J. David Spurlock & Kerry Gammill — The Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos (Vanguard) :: Rob Zombie waxes rhapsodic in his introduction to this hardcover portfolio because Gogos is the undisputed grand master of monster portrait art! :: Jack Kirby — Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus (DC Comics) :: As if four volumes containing Kirby's complete Fourth World saga weren't essential enough, along come the equally uncanny follow-up volumes Omac: One Man Army Corps and The Demon!
Be seeing you!
