Give Me Just A Little More Time
Song written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, Eddie Holland, and Ron Dunbar; recorded by Chairmen of the Board

Ahhh- Seattle, Washington, and Athens, Georgia, we hardly knew ye’. What has become of your music scenes, Liverpool and Bakersfield? Once a site becomes worthy of pilgrimage, does that means it is no longer fully alive? What say you, Graceland and Rock Hall?

We are so obsessed with the passage of time that we focus on the way music transports across the years while giving little notice to the way it carries us geographically. As music (and its creators) have become more mobile over the centuries, the influence of locality has become less clear. Folk music has the clearest roots that remain apparent, but that uniqueness can often be a bar to wider popularity. (I started citing examples, but the reality is that all music is listenable, just not necessarily going to market well for our current sales channels.)

The surprise is that pockets of commonality do arise within popular music. The location-specific genre that caught my ears by surprise was Carolina beach music. I knew the tunes before I knew that style, which may be the best way to fall in love with a style. (Which came first for you- Nirvana or grunge? The Temptations or Motown?)

The revival in the 1980’s gave me a name for this loosely defined music. My “in” was Chairmen of the Board’s magnificent song. I moved on to The Showmen, The O’Kaysions and The Foundations. Apparently, the rest of the world has noticed Build Me Up Buttercup as it keeps popping up.

Even more than all that, Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts… Really, what can one say?

All of which gets you a genre. But not immortality. You need something unbelievably special.

And that happened-

Check out J. J. Jackson’s But, It’s All Right– oh, sweet, lovely heaven. Pair that with Give Me Just A Little More Time on repeat and you’ve got some very, very happy ears. You may even have to try the Carolina Shag.

I found myself on the Carolina shore a decade or so after getting my limited handle on the beach music concept. I didn’t do much to explore the music scene beyond tuning in a couple local radio stations. So, it’s a little strange to me that I can hear some of these songs and I’m back on that beach or standing on the porch looking out to sea. I can’t say that I smell the ocean, but I do feel the shadow of a lighthouse and sense the crash of the waves.

More than a lot of artistic groupings, Carolina beach music feels de facto and haphazard, but that’s okay. Sometimes the only order we can bring is through our senses and not through pure logic.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 113 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

Marvelman/Miracleman

Comic book written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Garry Leach, Alan Davis, John Ridgeway, Chuck Beckum, Rick Veitch and John Totleben

Boom and bust happens with flowers, real estate, and art, as well as anything else that can be treated as a commodity. For American comic books, that happened in the latter two decades of the 20th century. All sorts of ridiculous behavior ensued, as with any such economic cycle. The big publishers, DC and Marvel, went through remarkable changes in fortune and ownership. Small publishers blossomed as everyone wanted in on the money. Who can forget Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters or The Fish Police? Some publishers promised big money to lure popular artists. Alternatively, they could reprint work from abroad, be it Corto Maltese or Marvelman.

Quality varied, which may go without saying. Even if the work by the artists was good, the materials used for printing might be downgrade. Editing staff might be shortchanged, leading to publication delays. Finance and legality might not be managed ideally.

Comic book conventions became huge as places to exchange comic books and not so much the entertainment expositions that they are today. Re-sellers set up tables of long boxes stuffed with the wee pamphlets. They prayed on one another, so you could just as often find a seller who had bought out another and was unloading thousands at negligible prices. Investment mattered less than turning over the volume. That was where I found issues of Miracleman as published by Eclipse Comics.

I had read enough recent superhero stories to know that they had taken a turn to the dark side, but nothing prepared me for this mix of humanity confronting the all-powerful myth of the superhero. While so many other similar attempts felt like wish fulfillment, this story never stopped dragging those childish hopes and dreams into adulthood.

And then,

as a reader, you start trying to obtain the entire run of sixteen issues, which turns out to be difficult. Moreover, word starts seeping out that everything might not be acceptable with the way the artists have been treated. In fact, the situation is bad enough to fill a book. Lawsuits ensue among all sorts of surprising parties over all sorts of copyright issues. Feelings remain hurt.

Which drags the audience along into adulthood. They’re only comics? They should be innocent? There’s money in them thar’ hills. The question ends up asked: as a consumer of this particular work of art, are you supporting those who have harmed the people whose art you consume? Certainly, we have struggled on this very issue with our coffee and our clothing, but weren’t comic books going to be simple?

Kirby, Siegel, Shuster,… Wilde, Dickens,… So many who could never speak up…

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 114 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.