I had to quit cold turkey. For a while I thought I could kid myself and try to just collect one title. Even if I did that, today I'd be spending more than I ever did to support my habit. Now they come out twice as often, have four times the titles, and cost eight times as much.
Damn those comic books. I don't see why we need at least six different Spiderman titles (not including the Carnage/Spawn/and whatever else) and more than that of X-Men.
But I do regret it. Now when I look at comic books I feel totally out of it. I have to ask around until I can find out who Gambit is and what's going on with the Avengers. I even hear that Professor X is dead in one alternate universe. Damn.
Sometimes I even feel that way when it comes to music. After I quit jockeying at WCBN and after the suicide of Kurt Cobain, I kind of lost interest in record collecting. My favorite band had broken up and I had no place to listen to a lot of music for free. Good vinyl was getting harder to find.
Sure, bands are still trying to put stuff out on that magic medium but most attempts to revitalize have failed—a lot of it due to new records being pressed on substandard material with a penchant for skipping.
I recently felt one of these out-of-sorts moments when I got the new Dread Zeppelin CD. I had no idea that they were even still together!
In case you don't know, Dread Zeppelin is a Led Zeppelin cover band playing in a reggae style with an Elvis impersonator doing lead vocals. DZ is not some cheesy novelty band that you listen to once and say, "boy, that was funny," before stowing it away. They're actually very talented musicians who do interesting work and know their material. Who else could have thought of doing a song called "Heartbreaker (at the End of Lonely Street)"?
Their first album, "Un-Led-Ed" (sound familiar, MTV fans?), was all Zeppelin and Elvis songs, while in their second, "5,000,000," they attempted to do some originals that took a while to get used to as well as a less-than-desirable cover of "Train Kept A-Rollin'."
The last I had heard of them was their horrible third album, "It's Not Unusual." The idea of DZ was one that had to contain all of its parts—a Reggae Zeppelin might lose steam quickly, a Led Presley had been done before. Gone was Tortelvis on "INU" and DZ tried to substitute him with a Disco theme. No way.
This was the album that I kind of chuckled at and filed deep in the recesses of my disc collection. I didn't even bother looking for another DZ album for years and decided that I'd just collect the few early songs that I didn't own.
Well, two years later I finally ordered one of their early tapes and along with it came a catalogue from Birdcage Records where I saw several items I hadn't seen before. Studio out-takes, I imagined. But when I got them—lo and behold—I was holding the fourth Dread Zeppelin album—"Spicy Bean Burger"!
It still didn't reach the heights to which "Un-Led-Ed" had soared but it was still a fine album and a hell of a lot better than that discofied Zeppelin. Now, I like disco better than the next man but the third album was just a mistake.
And, reading the issue of "Dread Talk" I got recently (my subscription being renewed with my faith in the band and the return of Tortelvis), I have found that there is another new album in the works called "No Quarter (Pounder)"! The song list sounds very promising, as they are lined up to do versions of Led Zeppelin songs that are sure to make Jah and the Colonel proud.
For more info contact Birdcage Records at P.O. Box 784, Sierra Madre, CA 91024-0784.