A is for Alien

A is for Alien:

Invasion of the Saucer Men, 1957.

Batman #128, March 1959. Cover art by Sheldon Moldoff.

The Aliens #1, December 1967. Cover art by Russ Manning.

Alien Worlds #6, February 1984. Cover art by Frank Brunner.


3-D Alien Worlds #1, July 1984. Cover art by Joe Chiodo.


UFO Flying Saucers #5. Gold Key, 1975. Art by Luis Dominguez.


U.F.O. Seeing Is Believing, n.d. Art by Erv Gnat.

Badass Comic Book Cover: Elric: The Balance Lost #10

Every week I'll be bringing you a comic book cover that I feel eclipses others out there—to the point I might just have to own it when released! This week: Elric: The Balance Lost #10! Nothing like Elric art!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New eBooks: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant – Unbeliever

Last week, I took a poll asking, "What characters make up your personality?" For me, not all of my characters are wholly wholesome. One of them is a downright prick most of the time. Thomas Covenant. Outcast. Leper. Unclean. The eBooks for Stephen R. Donaldson's opus are now available! Here's more about them and why you should read them if you haven't already!

Happy Birthday, Golden Gate Bridge!

Happy Birthday, Golden Gate Bridge!:











The Golden Gate Bridge has been a landmark of San Francisco since its completion in 1937. The love affair with the bridge started prior to it even being built. It was desperately needed to alleviate the traffic from the ferries. Despite the Great Depression, the areas surrounding San Francisco voted and passed the bond measure to pay for the bridge by using their homes and businesses as collateral.

Today, May 27th, 2012, marks the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge. If you are in the San Francisco area celebrate the Golden Gate Bridge’s anniversary in person and watch it glow.

If you would like to find other Golden Gate Bridge photos take a look at our beautiful Golden Gate Bridge groups.

Cloud System Booster, Optimize, Clean and Repair Your PC

Cloud System Booster, Optimize, Clean and Repair Your PC:
Cloud System Booster is a free system optimizer, cleaner and repair program for Windows that combines features of programs like CCleaner with optimization and repair tools. When you start the program after installation you will notice that it offers one-click access to features right from the start screen. It is however recommended to check the settings first or switch to expert mode directly to see what a specific feature does to the system.
You may also notice that it is automatically connecting to a cloud server to retrieve the latest updates and optimizations. You can disable that in the program preferences.

Expert mode displays the inner-workings of each module, with options to disable complete groups or individual items. Lets take a closer look at each module:

Clean

This is comparable in functionality to temporary file cleaners such as CCleaner.  You can use it to clean web browser related files, Windows files, and other software related files that are not needed for functionality.  Browser support is excellent, as it is not only supporting the top 5 browsers, but also additional browsers like Maxthon, SeaMonkey or Avant.

Optimize

The optimization category can be used to disable system services, optimize the Windows start up, resource management or network. You find several tweaks here that you won’t find in the majority of tweaking apps out there. You do however need to be in the know when it comes to some of the tweaks, especially when it comes to changing the state of services. If you are not sure if you need Network DDE or the WebClient Service, then you may need to do some research first, or uncheck the services from being included in the optimization.

Repair

Repair offers to resolve common file extension and Registry errors, as well as changes that have been made to the services and privacy settings under the program’s own Optimize module. It is not really clear why the latter two are listed here, as restore options for all tweaks are available in the program settings.

App

App specific cleanups are listed here. This is basically the Clean module all over again but only with a focus on applications and programs. You will however find web browsers listed here as well with different settings.
As I mentioned earlier, you can use the program to restore any tweak, optimization or repair that you have made with the help of the software. The settings furthermore allow you to schedule regular runs of the program, and configure the one-click boosting mode in detail so that it only optimizes what you want it to.
If there is one thing to criticize it is the lack of explanations when it comes to the items listed under a module. That’s not a problem for most tech-savvy users, but if you are not, you may have a hard time customizing the selections.
The cleaner itself is not as versatile as CCleaner, as it is not possible to add custom locations to the application. While it covers a lot out of the box, you may miss one or the other option that the developers have not added to their program (yet).
All in all a nice looking, versatile program  that one should at least keep an eye on.

Bring Back Torrent Download Links On The Piratebay

If you are on the Piratebay website from time to time, you may have noticed that the people behind the site have moved away from torrent files to magnet links in the recent past. When you open a page on the site, you still see a get this torrent link published there, but it is a magnet link and not a torrent file link.

While not true for all indexed files yet, it is likely that the site will eventually remove all torrent download links and rely solely on magnet links instead. The core reason for this is bandwidth, as torrent files are much larger than magnet links.

Piratebay users on the other hand may experience issues with magnet links. While most modern Bittorrent clients support them, they may slow down the downloading of the needed data, especially during the beginning and if a torrent is not well seeded. They can also not be used for services that turn torrents into direct http downloads.

The free userscript ThePirateBay: Magnet to Torrent brings back torrent download links on the Piratebay website. When you visit a torrent page on the Piratebay website without it, you may notice that the Get This Torrent link on it links to the magnet link only, and not a torrent file. With the userscript installed, you will notice that magnet links are now displayed as such, and that the Get Torrent File link links to the torrent download.

The biggest advantage of this userscript is that it retrieves the torrent file information in the background, and displays them instantly on the screen without any user interaction. Piratebay users who prefer torrents over magnet links will surely find this a useful userscript to install on their computer.

The userscript has been tested in Firefox, with Greasemonkey installed, and in the Google Chrome web browser, and it worked as intended in both browsers.

Rush - The Rise and Rise of the World's Biggest Cult Band

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Rush
The Rise and Rise of the World's Biggest Cult Band
Classic Rock Magazine
By Philip Wilding
Portraits by Andrew MacNaughtan
July 2012

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With thanks to Simon Sweetman for providing scans of the article

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Click Any of the Following Images to Enlarge

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A CRAZY INVENTOR, A SAUSAGE MAKER AND AN IRISHMAN WALK INTO A BAR ...
No, not the start of a bad joke, rather it's the 'inner selves' of Rush.
With a new album imminent, Lee, Lifeson and Peart explain why they're still going strong.

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The ultra-swish Beverley Hills restaurant is either an extreme exercise in discretion or Los Angeles has undergone some sort of power cut. The room's so dark that the waiters carry small torches, like ushers in a cinema, just so patrons can read the menu more easily. In the half-light, Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee of Rush, various members of the band's management and label, and the man from Classic Rock pull back chairs and peer across at each other in the gloom. Waiting staff hover close by, their hands lit up by small points of light, as if the restaurant's home to a family of slow-moving fireflies.
Lifeson and Lee have moved into the hotel across the road while they're finishing the mix of Rush's new album, Clockwork Angels, at Henson Studios, a 20-minute drive to West Hollywood from here. As delighted as they are by the way their 20th studio album is turning out, after two months spent recording at Revolution Studio in Toronto, the initial mixing sessions in Los Angeles were brought to an abrupt halt by the death of the band's long-standing photographer and friend, Andrew MacNaughtan, from a heart attack at the age of 47. The band had done a photo session with him the day before his death.
"I remember getting back to Toronto after that first mixing session - we just packed up and went home. you know?" says Geddy, "Andrew had passed and I couldn't sleep and so I got up and was nursing a Macallans, flicking through the channels and I saw that [Rush's 2010 documentary] Beyond the Lighted Stage was on. I don't know why, but I just started watching it."
Alex Lifeson leans in to listen, nodding intermittently.
I started seeing things in it that I hadn't noticed the first time," says Geddy, "listening to things a little differently, because when I saw it the first time I really didn't want to - it was hard to watch. Watching yourself talk about your life, it's not for me. But, my god, how strange to see your life up there on a television show in the middle of the night and I thought about all the different people that can't sleep and are having the same experience I am, but they're watching about my life. It's just so bizarre.
"Billy Corgan, he blew my mind. The things he was saying about his relationship with his mother and what Entre Nous meant to him, and even Trent Reznor - those things meant a lot to me. You don't start doing this for any other reasons but your own and, of course, 40 years later, you never expected that you'd still be doing it. And then to hear other people describe your work in such a serious light just makes you feel like you've lived a life and that's such a nice feeling."
"That," says Alex with a grin, "and getting over the shock that a filmmaker made us interesting.
"We've had so many comments, like, 'It's a great film,'" he continues. "'I love the fact that they're sweet guys who grew up together and had this dream and they're funny and they're family guys.' It's interesting the things that they latched onto and relate to in terms of their own relationships and struggles."
Geddy looks up from pouring over the extensive wine list. "There's been a huge shift in perception of us," he says. "But just because we're nice doesn't mean you should like our music."
There's a pause as he glances around the room. "Though it does mean we get into restaurants a little easier now."
Alex stabs his fork at the gargantuan starter - a crown of seafood that Heston Blumenthal might have built, dry ice billowing from its centre. The restaurant has comped the table.
"You spoke to Neil today, right?" asks Alex. eyebrows raised. "Did he stop for breath at any point?"
The Inn Of The Seventh Ray restaurant sits somewhere near the top of Topanga Canyon and is today alive with a thrumming new-age version of Greensleeves and the sound of a babbling brook. Topanaga's been home to the musical great and the good for decades - an affluent, hillside bohemia that's welcomed everyone from the Doors to Tool into its neighbourhoods.
It's not hard to see the attraction on a sparkling spring afternoon. The tight corners leading up the canyon are worth it to get to the leafy plateau of a secluded main street. That the restaurant has its own bookshop filled with volumes on self-help and enlightenment comes as no surprise. That the soup on the menu is 'created through the vibrations of each day' seems perfectly plausible, especially after the first glass of Californian white and with the sunshine dappling through the trees.
"I thought," says Neil Peart happily, "that we could do yoga instead of an interview."
Just as CR is dreading the flourish of a yoga mat and an instruction to do the downward dog, Peart's lays his sunglasses on the table, keen to begin talking.
It's hard to underestimate me impact of Andrew MacNaughtan's death on Rush, not least on Peart. It was his decision to first use the photographer, and it was Andrew who first introduced Neil to Carrie, his second wife. They were, in every sense, firm friends.
"We were very close to him, Carrie and I, to him and his partner, Alex," says Peart. "It was devastating, but more disbelief really. Shocked. It's still setting in. Anyone who's lost someone will know that you keep seeing them. 'Wait, there's Andrew,' you know? I remember he and I attended the South Park Halloween party. This was back in '98. He was an SAS officer and I was Mandy, the English biker chick, a leather-clad, foam-enhanced drag queen. I stood seven-feet tall under a gigantic blonde bouffant. It's weird, I just passed the store the other day. We went to get foam at this place at the bottom of La Brea. Andrew and I went there to buy the padding, then up to Hollywood to get the wig."
Since 2007's Snakes & Arrows, Rush have drifted, with a reassuring lack of guile on their part, towards the mainstream. An appearance on the The Colbert Report angered some diehard Rush fans when Stephen Colbert 'accidentally' walked on set as the band were in the middle of Tom Sawyer (Lee: "Some fans were really offended by that. They've made such a bond emotionally to the music that it's hard for them to take lightly. It was funny, but to them it was sacrilege. Lighten up, would you? We're just having some fun."). Then there was a glowing revival piece in Rolling Stone, a series of sell-out tours, a cameo in Judd Apatow's I Love You Man and the acclaimed and award-winning Beyond The Lighted Stage, which have all contributed to their ascension in the public's eye.
Peart's place at the heart of that film is pivotal to the journey it takes the viewer on. Whether it's on screen talking about the double tragedy of losing his daughter and then his wife, or his elongated trek across the American continent as the ghost rider trying to outrun his pain.
"It was such a delicate subject matter," says Sam Dunn now, one half of the production and direction team behind Lighted Stage. "We didn't want them to think we were prying, but the fact of the matter is that what happened to Neil did affect the band. They thought it was over."
Sam and his partner Scot McFadyen spent hours with the band and while both recognised the adversity Rush had struggled with, the pair were delighted to discover the band's underlying sense of humour, not least about themselves.
"We had Geddy and Alex in the edit and we said, 'Do you have any feedback?'" says McFadyen. "And they say, 'Yeah, we like it ... but could we have just a bit less of us?' There's the Rush humour in a nutshell. They make this serious, cerebral music, but there's rarely a serious moment."
Not least in the drunken dinner that the three attended at an old hunting lodge. It's worth picking up the second disc of the DVD edition of Lighted Stage for the extended highlights of that meal alone. By the end of it, Peart has laughed for so hard and so long that the drummer's the colour of an aubergine, "That was funny," says McFadyen. "It was so hard to get the essence in the film credits because we were with them for three hours and they kept getting drunker and forgot the cameras were there. That's how they are together: they're goofballs with each other. And they love their red wine!"
Even the man who's never watched that film is glad people got to see that dinner scene and, in a sense, the band's inner self. "It's good people saw that because it's real," says Peart. "That dinner was incredible. These three guys have been together all this time, but it's warm and friendly as can be. Because we're close, we balance each other, no one gets away with any of that shit, that's the difference. When bands start to separate then each wedge can do whatever it wants and no one can say anything.
"If you're going to stay friends then you're going to say something if someone's out of line in any way and we've kept egos in check all the way because of that. You can get an elevated opinion of yourself, but you can't be friends and get away with doing that. If you're going to be close then you have to stay level.
"Will I watch the film? I probably won't, no. I'm not interested in it. I like reading my stories over, I listen to our music from time to time, but I never watch DVDs. I don't look at myself - I'm not that kind of narcissist. And I know everything about it - my parents have seen it and everybody's told me everything about it. I've lived it."
It's a day later and the band are at Henson Studios with irrepressibly upbeat producer Nick Raskulinecz who, admirably, is recording the Deftones in the morning and mixing Clockwork Angels in the afternoon. Out in the sunlit courtyard, Lee had stopped to show CR Charlie Chaplin's footsteps embedded in the concrete. Chaplin first owned these Hollywood Studios and made both The Gold Rush and The Great Dictator here. Later, when it was A&M Studios, America's answer to Feed The World, We Are The World, was recorded and filmed in the main studio here.
These days, since Jim Henson bought the place, a giant Kermit the Frog hangs out of one of the exterior walls and smaller, twin Kermits stand atop the gates as you enter the complex. Alice In Chains's Jerry Cantrell (who sometimes plays golf with Lifeson) is working in a studio down the hall. In the back room, Lifeson and Peart are hovering about as the final song on the album, The Garden, is being mixed. As the song reveals itself, each band member ribs the other as original parts of the song they recorded have been dropped down in the mix or removed altogether.
"Oh, Neil, didn't you come in earlier than that?" says Geddy happily.
In the small anteroom swathed with red and yellow drapes, the band are either sitting around or drifting in and out. Neil's just recorded a voice-over for one of the shorter segues on the album while everyone stood around grinning. The mood - after a long mix and the worst possible interruption with Andrew's death - is almost carefree. It feels like the last day of school. Earlier, when CR was interviewing Lifeson, Neil had appeared at the glass wall dividing the studios with a handwritten sign that said: "Stop Talking Now!" When CR brings it up later, he gives a look of mock-seriousness: "I was obviously talking to Alex," he says.
"Nobody takes the piss out of themselves to the extremes that we do: says Geddy. It's early evening and conversation has turned to the film shorts that are regular highlights of the band's live show. Lifeson, who has something of a minor acting sideline going on - watch out for him soon as Dr Figg opposite Billy Boyd in the adaptation of Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy is, everyone agrees, very keen to get in front of the camera.
"I don't care what else he acts in," says Geddy, "he always acts best in our films. I always think of the most ridiculous get-ups for him. 'Al, how about you be a real fat guy?' He really takes to it. Those three characters that appeared in the films from the Time Machine tour are the three essential character aspects of us.
"When we designed those characters, I wanted them to represent the inner us: inside Big Al is this big, fat, crazy inventor, who loves to eat - that's Al. And Neil's got the furrowed-brow Irishman with the Waspy background and I'm this crazy sausage maker! The wigs are very good too.
"I think it's fun, and sometimes it's funny to watch the audience, especially somewhere like Helsinki - some things don't cross the language barrier. You look out and it's this sea of perplexed faces, an audience of bewilderment. We're going to continue to make them. I hope people like them! The first time I saw Jethro Tull was on the Thick As A Brick tour and they were so good playing-wise, but their production was so much fun - they had a sense of humour that kept occurring and it really stayed with me as what a lovely bonus to give an audience that's sitting there for three hours listening to this intense music - and our music is a little on the bombastic side, so I think it's nice to give some candy. It's nice to see them smiling."
"It's always been that way - Geddy handles the visual stuff, I'm our de facto graphic art editor," says Neil, who is, incidentally, studying the album artwork on his laptop. "And Alex, he's the musical scientist. We all have our roles in there. Plus, Alex looks dazzling when he's all dressed up."
Nick Raskulinecz first worked with Rush on Snakes & Arrows. As a long-term fan, he pushed for the co-producer's role. He remembers them then as a band who were trying to redefine themselves and find where they fitted in.
"I feel like they kind of lost their path a little bit," he says. "They didn't really know where to go and what to do and what to sound like because music had changed dramatically from Test For Echo to Vapor Trails, and then from that to Snakes & Arrows, music had changed again. There are five-year gaps between all those albums and things were really different, so it was, do we try and sound like music now or do we try and sound like us? Are we making songs for the radio? How do we make Rush be Rush in three and a half minutes? That's the standard - how do we keep people's attention? Do we go for new fans or do we please our old fans?"
As history bears out, Raskulinecz managed to help the band embrace the new, but not be afraid to give a nod to their past - the ringing guitar chord from Hemispheres reappeared as a motif in Far Cry and, even more remarkably, bass pedals were back in the mix.
"To be fair," says Raskulinecz, "they didn't resist any of it. The hardest part about the bass pedals was finding a set because they didn't have them anymore. We called a company in Toronto and rented these bass pedals and had them shipped to the studio. Geddy's sitting there, we take the lid off and he's like, 'Whoa, these are the ones we used on the Permanent Waves tour and then sold!' I was like, 'You got rid of these? Are you kidding me?'"
Which brings us another five years later to Clockwork Angels. A complete concept album - the band's first - centered, in part, around a young man's quest set against a world of steampunk, clockwork and alchemy (Lee: "A concept album - I know, that's what we've been joking about all this time! We kept saying, 'It's Caress of Steel all over again. Get ready for the Down The tour part two!'"). Peart's borrowed from sources as diverse as Daphne Du Maurier, Joseph Conrad and Voltaire's Candide to move the story along.
Long-term fans of the band will find much to love: the thundering Headlong Flight recalls, in part, Bastille Day, while the expansive, multi-layered and intricate title track is as good as anything the band has ever recorded.
Peart says he hopes that song will be in their live show forever. "What was it that Oscar Wilde said: self-plagiarism is style?" says Peart. "We certainly do a few tongue-in-cheek nods to Bastille Day in Headlong Flight - that's deliberate.
"I got to reference my teacher and friend Freddie Gruber, who died last year, in there too. He gave me that line from the song, 'I wish I could do it all again', because there he is, 84, he grew up in New York in the 40s, worked out through Chicago and Vegas in the 50s, LA in the 60s and since then his path has crossed with everybody. His response to it all was, 'I've had quite a ride - I wish I could do it all again.' So I got to make it personal, but universal too, you know?
"The starting point with the concept was the steampunk idea. I love how it's a direct counterpoint to cyberpunk - it's like a different vision of the future. So I was enthralled by that theme and my character's journey through this world. I also had in mind Voltaire's Candide too, that was a germ of it. Plus there was so much stuff I'd been reading about the circus stuff, which became Carnies, from Robertson Davies' novels. And I'd read a lot of history from the south-western part of the US and that figured into the story of the explorer Coronado, who kept going out into the desert to find the fabled cities of gold. And The Wreckers was actually from Daphne Du Maurier- that's been in my mind for 30 years. I guess it's an episode in Jamaica Inn. So all of that coalesced into the character and the history of the story, the whole concept."
Almost 40 years into their career, Rush are changing the way they get things done. The Time Machine tour saw them improvising, for the first time, live on stage. Each night, Working Man became an exercise in pushing things as far as they could go. That transferred to this latest album. For the first time ever, Peart didn't prepare his drum parts but just came in and played them live: 75 percent of his playing on Clockwork Angels is improvised and was done in one take.
Lifeson says as he's 58 now, he couldn't give a shit about how people perceive him or the way the band works. His attitude, happily, appears to be spreading to the rest of his bandmates. "Certainly, a lot of it is confidence too - we feel very confident in our playing and where we are and where we're going," he says. "I've got nothing to prove - I'm just going to do what I'm going to do and let it go. And that's what happened. Ged and I were getting these drum tracks back from Neil and were like, 'My god, that's amazing - he never plays like this!' There are so many parts and so many cool things and consequently, that gets you all fired up and you try a bunch of different things.
"Hence Ged and I swapping instruments on The Wreckers. We were on a break and Ged picked up one of my guitars and he started messing around, and I remember he got up and came back with some lyrics. Then he sat in the corner playing the melody for the verses and I thought, 'Wow, this sounds great.' He just wanted to put it down very quickly and I grabbed his bass and we ended up recording the demo with him playing guitar and me playing bass - it was great! He played on the record, but it's my bass part, which is really cool. When we swap instruments, we sound like Barenaked Ladies, which was a surprise. We had to Rush-ify the song."
Lee says they've never played better live than on this last tour. Also, because of the live jams on the Time Machine tour, they've gone back to writing and working as a band the way they did when they were starting to make their mark on the world.
"I don't know why we took so long to get back to that place," says Lee. "You have ways of writing and sometimes you ignore the obvious. And the obvious always comes back to what you are as a band and we're players first, always. But somewhere along the way we missed that connection on how that playing informs the writing.
"We forgot that's how we used to write in the old days - that's how we wrote Spirit of Radio, that's how Tom Sawyer was written, all of us together in a room jamming. So without realising it, our playing was informing our writing right from the get go and then we went away from that. We separated that from what I guess is essentially Rush."
After this record they'll be without a deal, which doesn't bother the band at all. They admit the live shows might be stripped back at some point as the long tours are finally taking their toll, but, in Alex's words, they're going to make records until they die. At one point during the mix in LA, they posit that the next few years would see the band finally playing some festival shows too.
"We were such control freaks for so many years," says Lee, "we didn't want to go anywhere where we couldn't control the environment, so we're learning that wherever we play, that's our show. And at the end of the day, it's about the playing and the songs and it'll be fine.
It's a very long way from the band's management offices in Toronto in the spring of 2002. Vapor Trails was just about to be released after the band's protracted and enforced sabbatical after the death of Peart's daughter and then his wife. At the time, Lee had told CR that: "I don't think about making more Rush albums really. I want to enjoy my life as much as possible. I know I can't really get on without writing, but I don't know whether it necessarily has to be with Rush any more.
"We did an album and it worked out. Hopefully the tour will be something we won't regret three months from now. I get tired of waking up with no throat and this is the most ambitious tour we've embarked on in 15 years and I hope that's not a mistake. Maybe it'll be the last big tour we do. Don't get me wrong, Vapor Trails is, in some ways, the most successful journey that the three of us have been on together so it's very possible that we'll repeat that experience, but I don't want to take anything for granted any more. After all that's happened, how can we?"
Time, as the saying goes, is a great healer. Ten years later, the three members of Rush are re-energised, goofy, having the time of their lives. They still complain about the long tours and talk about cutting the shows back, but never do (Lifeson: 'We've been saying that for 20 years - still hasn't happened), and these are the kind of stories Geddy Lee gets to tell now:
"When we were living at the London Hotel here, while we're mixing the first time around before Andrew passed, right around two or three in the morning I'd be just drifting off to sleep and I'd hear this acoustic guitar playing and I'd be, 'I know that sound.' And Big Al would be out on his balcony, which was right underneath mine - he'd had some refreshment, apparently - and he'd be playing to LA. He plays all the time.
"And I would just lie there in the darkness and look up at the ceiling with this huge smile on my face every night even if he had just woken me up. I knew the headspace he was in and I knew what he was doing - he was being Al and he was playing to LA. Those moments are forever - so sweet, so funny."

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MOVING PICTURES
Alex Lifeson's Alternative Career

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Obviously not content with just playing guitar in one of the world's most successful bands, in recent years, Alex Lifeson has ventured into the acting world. After playing the coveted role of, er, Cop 2 in Trailer Park Boys: The Movie in 2006, Lifeson expanded his repertoire by appearing in Suck (alongside other rock folks like Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper and Henry Rollins), and then as Undercover Prostitute #1 - complete with blonde wig and lipstick! - in Trailer Park Boys: Countdown To Liquor Day. His biggest role to date though, is as Dr Figg in the current adaptation of Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy. Alex tells CR how it happened.
In Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy, you play the shrink who commits Billy, how did that role come about?

Director Rob Heydon is a friend of a friend and we'd met some years ago at a social event. He asked if I would be interested in playing a role. Geddy and I were working on the new album at the time but I had a few days free. I played opposite Billy Boyd, who is a great guy and extremely talented actor and musician. I was very nervous and even though I knew my lines well, felt terribly self-conscious. In addition, I had to deliver my lines in a Scottish accent when I could barely speak English.

You keep up a stream of steady, small roles, what does it give you that being a rock star doesn't?

Most of the roles I've played were casual, comedic moments and they have been fun and comfortable partly because they were light and improvisational. I feel quite comfortable being a bit of a clown. I do feel out of my comfort zone with roles, although rare for me, that require a more serious approach. After our scene in Ecstasy, Billy told me every scene can be terrifying for every actor so take a deep breath and don't let fear get in the way.

Would you like to take the lead in something?

No, not a lead role but a supporting role in a Second World War film might be cool. I do like a uniform and they had some great ones.

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Rush's 20th release is their first concept album.
It's also one of the best albums of their career
by Dave Everley

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Rush - Clockwork Angels
Anthem / Roadrunner
Like a comet on the far fringes of the Milky Way, Rush appear on the great telescope of popular culture only sporadically. They've spent the past 40-odd years happily plotting their own course away from the eyes of the mainstream.
Recently, though, the Canadian trio have found themselves engaging with everything they'd previously run away from. The 2009 documentary Beyond The Lighted Stage, rightly saluted them as one of rock's original frontiersmen, with celebrity fanboys such as Trent Reznor and Billy Corgan lining up to ladle on the love. This led to Rush appearing on US comic Stephen Colbert's top-rated chat show, which pushed them further into uncharted territories.
And so, as Rush return with their first record in five years, and their 20th in total, both their stock and their profile are higher than ever. Whether the wave of goodwill spurred them on while making the album isn't clear but, if the end result is anything to go by, it certainly hasn't done them any harm.
Clockwork A11gels doesn't sound like the work of men entering their fifth decade as a working band. Where their last few albums have felt like triumphs of intention over execution, this one finds a band not just firing on all cylinders, but also doing a very good job of sounding more relevant than ever before.
The two teasers they handed out last year as part of Record Store Day, Caravan and BU2B, are representative of the album: taut but inventive, intricate yet never flashy. Both appear here, opening the album in a punchy one-two. Of the pair, Caravan edges it thanks to the way it hops between a muscular, circular riff and wide, chiming spaciousness in a heartbeat, though the admirably cynical BU2B - or Brought Up To Believe - is crucial to the album's concept.
Ah, The Concept The lyrical spine of Clockwork Angels is apparently a tale written by drummer Neil Peart and inspired by both the steampunk movement and Voltaire's 18th-century French satire Candide. They've roped in sci-fi author Kevin J. Anderson to help out with the conceptual heavy lifting via a spin-off novel that will presumably spell out what's going on. That will be useful, given that it's not especially clear what Clockwork Angels is actually about.
There's some stuff about watches and anarchists and a nagging feeling that it's all about being a tiny cog in some vast celestial machinery. There's even an unlikely nod to Daphne Du Maurier in The Wreckers, a freewheeling homage to the 60s rock the trio grew up listening to. Beyond that? Answers on a postcard.
Thankfully, Clockwork Angels isn't a slave to its concept; the songs are the master here. This is never more evident than on the title track, which corrals at least half a dozen different musical ideas into its seven minutes without ever sounding like it's showing off in front of its mates. The fact that it's topped off with a spring-heeled chorus shows a band with total and utter confidence in themselves.
Conceptual leanings aside, Clockwork Angels isn't a prog album. Of course the musicianship is impeccable, but it's never showy. They keep a lid on extending songs beyond their natural life; only three songs exceed the seven-minute mark. And Neil Peart has never sounded looser or livelier as he races around his drum kit. It all adds up to a clear-sighted, modern rock record.
And it's a terrific-sounding one, too - copper-bottomed but crystal clear, dense but light of touch. The Eastern-tinged flourishes that weave through the muscular The Anarchist enhance rather than overwhelm it; there's a tangible warmth to the exuberant Wish Them Well,
the album's most uplifting moment; and the ringing chords of The Garden provide a suitably stately finale to the whole show. Kudos here to co-producer Nick Raskulinecz, a man whose motivational skills are clearly matched only by the band's own willingness to be motivated.
There are echoes of Rush's past - you can catch a sniff of Bastille Day here and an echo of Working Man there, but it looks forward far more than it looks back.
So, is Clockwork Angels the best album of the year? It's too early to tell. The best album Rush have made? It's up near the top. The sound of a band who are entering their fifth decade more confident than ever before? Undoubtedly. And that, more than anything else, is the mark of true greatness.

Jean Giraud – Moebius (8 May 1938 – 10 March 2012)

Jean Giraud – Moebius (8 May 1938 – 10 March 2012):

This is a belated tribute post to the late, great Jean Giraud, better known as Moebius and whom sadly, as I’m sure you know has recently passed away, following an extended battle with cancer. A gloomy time for the highest echelon of visual futurists, following the recent death of Starwars designer and visionary Ralph McQuarrie, another brilliant blinding light flickers and fades.
Jean Giraud was one of the worlds finest comic artists and fantasists, up there with luminaries such as Federico Fellini, Stan Lee and Hayao Miyazaki . Perhaps in fact he was the finest, I don’t think it’s an exaggerated statement to suggest that Giraud possessed an almost supernatural ability, an artist whose oneness with his inner creative universe was matched only by his voracious workrate. It’s extremely poignant to now think that every vision forged from Moebius’s staggeringly complex creative mind has now been produced, there’ll never be another…
For this post then I’ve handpicked a just a small selection of his beautiful art,  as usual I’ve then tried to lace with as many leads out as I can for your further reading, lets start with his background.
Jean Giruad was born in in the Paris suburb of Nogent sur Marne on May 8th 1938. His parents divorced while he was young and Giraud was sent to live with his grandparents in the country, this rupture he later explained lay at the heart of his choice of separate pen names. With had little formal artistic training other than two years at the École des Arts Appliqués which joined at 16, Giruad was already publishing his cowboy cartoons by his late teens. Upon leaving education he would then spend some time in Mexico with his mother before a stint of national service in Algeria where he collaborated on the army magazine 5/5 Forces Françaises. 
Giraud’s career was set inmotion when he started to work as an apprentice with Belgian Comic artist Joseph “Jijé” Gillain, one of the leading comic artists in Europe at the time. During this period Moebius worked on titles such as  Jerry Spring ”The Road to Coronado” of which he inked. Things really began to take off after a collaboration with writer Jean-Michel Charlier and the start of the western comic serial Blueberry, for Pilote and the title quickly gathered a large following. Giraud evolved with Blueberry creating a darker and grittier style, which continued further in 1968 when the loosening of censorship laws allowed more adult themes and explicit content to be incorporated.

Above: Blueberry, superbly lit and coloured.
Giraud’s work in the 60′s and early 70′s was predominately all involved with the Western Gernre, and was produced as either under the pen names Jean Giraud,  Giraud or just simply Gir, but there was also another pseudonym – Moebius – first coined in 1963  used for a 21-strip Science Fiction serial that ran in a satire magazine called Hara-Kiri. The strip ended in 64 and the Moebius Moniker disappeared for 11 years…
in 1975 Moebius joined forces with with journalist/writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet, artist Philippe Druillet, and finacial director Bernard Farkas. The grouped called themselves “Les Humanoides Associes” and together they started the genre busting magazine magazine Métal Hurlant, better known to the english speaking world of course as Heavy Metal.

Above: Les Humanoides Associes, barefooted flare-wearer Moebius is on the right, Philippe Druillet next in then Dionnet with Farkas on the left.

Above: Moebius cover for a 1977 edition of Heavy Metal, trademark with typical hyper-detail.
Under the banner of  Heavy Metal, Moebius published some of his best loved and acclaimed work, and moved to a greater international stage. Material from this period includes the groundbreaking Azarch, named after it’s silent warrior protagonist who rides a pterodactyl-like creature through a strange, desolate landscape. Giraud also penned the the non linear, Airtight Garage strip, which he basically made up as he went along! The ‘Garage’ in question was in fact an asteroid that housed a micro universe.
From today’s viewpoint though the title with perhaps the most importance and resonance is The Long Tomorrow, a Moebius collaboration with the late Alien screenwriter Dan O’Bannon. The Long Tomorrow is now looked upon as the seminal cyberpunk piece first defining the grunged dsytopian look and feel and heavily influenced creatives such as Alien and Bladerunner director Ridley Scott, Neuromancer novelist William Gibson and Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo - this to name but a few.  Here’s a great quote from Gibson on the artwork featured in Heavy Metal
“So it’s entirely fair to say, and I’ve said it before, that the way Neuromancer-the-novel “looks” was influenced in large part by some of the artwork I saw in ‘Heavy Metal’. I assume that this must also be true of John Carpenter’s ‘Escape from New York’, Ridley Scott’s ‘Blade Runner’”, and all other artefacts of the style sometimes dubbed ‘cyberpunk’. Those French guys, they got their end in early.” source
Below: A page from The Long Tomorrow, imagine the impact power this had back in 1976.

In addition to comic art and illustration Moebius of course has a long CV of working with film and animation, this all started back in 1974 when was asked by Alejandro Jodorowsky to contribute art to his doomed, big screen adaptation of Frank Herbert’s “Dune”. If you’ve never heard of this unbelievably ambitious project, then you in for a real treat, I’ve posted about it in the past, but your best to head straight to the source: http://www.duneinfo.com/unseen/ also attached were Chris Foss, HR Giger, Pink Floyd for the Soundtrack with Salvador Dali to play The Emporer for a rumoured $100,000 a day!
Anyway before the inevitable implosion, Moebius had created a stunning collection of artwork totaling over 3000 pieces, including a storyboard of each scene, below are a just a few examples, for more head straight to: http://www.duneinfo.com/unseen/moebius/

Above: This regal character from Dune is Doctor Wellington Yueh, wonderfully ornate detailing.

Above: More concept costume artwork from the unseen Dune, Duncan Idaho (left) and Gurney Halleck (right), excellent boots and erm codpiece. One thing I really love that features again and again in Moebius’s art is the graphic detailing, the bird graphic on these characters chest’s is a great example, in fact I’ll make a point to research and write about the graphical lexicon of Moebius in future, masterful work.
Below: A Spice Smuggler, Moebius at his most playfully wild and outlandish – just superb – but again I think minimal skull and crossbones graphics caps the hole outfit off.

The next big film project to come along was Ridley Scott’s 1979 Sci-Fi Horror classic Alien, joining part of a creative force which again included Giger and Foss. Moebius’s creative involvement however was cut short after a difference of opinion with Scott, limiting his involvement to just three days. This was still sufficient time to make an impact, as his conceptual spacesuit drawings made it into production with only minor changes, as you can see below.


Above: Original Sketches for the crew’s EVA suits, which are I must say probably one of my favourite movie costumes.

Above: The actual suits featured it the film, Scott’s production team have given them a slightly darker edge, love the wedged helmet torch. Just a side thought, I never really thought of Alien as a cyberpunk film until a friend described it as such in conversation, but it’s beaten up aesthetic certainly fits…
Next up something we have a conceptual drawing of an Imperial Probe Droid, that appears memorably at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back. I had absolutely no idea Moebius was involved with the film until researching for this post, I always thought the droid design and its garbled transmission pattern was one of the coolest things in that movie, and now I know why!
** EDIT Moebius DID NOT produce the drawing below, it was probably produced by Joe Johnston based on designs from The Long Tomorrow, the ESB production team attained special permission from Moebius to adapt the design. Thanks for pointing that out Cecil

Above: An original sketch, interesting to note similarities with the Sentinel robots featured in The Matrix series, though of they would come years later…
Work on the revolutionary CGI pioneering film Tron (Disney 1982) would follow next, with Moebius once again acting as a conceptual artist and back up storyboard creator. Heres a small selection of the art, fascinating when you consider just how close some of these drawings are to the actual finished costumes.
See more of the artwork over at http://theairtightgarage.tumblr.com/search/tron a wonderful Tumblr blog dedicated solely to exploring the work of Jean Giraud.


Another film I’ve covered in the past and also from 1982 Moebius is the Franco-Hungarian animated film “Les Maîtres du temps” (Time Masters) directed by none other than René Laloux. Moebius was employed as designer and judging by the box art obviously having him involved was a big deal, as his name takes prominence on the box art, top right of the image below. For more imagery from Les Maîtres du temps check out Eric Carl’s excellent gallery set over at Flickr.

Throughout the 80′s Moebius would continue to be involved in major hollywood projects including Masters of the Universe (1987) Willow (1988) and The Abyss (1989) though ultimately neither Lucas or Cameron would use his designs.
Probably the film that owes most to art of Moebius is Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element (1997), the project started out in 1991 as a script titled Zaltam Bleros, and Giraud was hired in the early stages to produce concepts for costumes, vehicles and sets. Over the next 6 years Zaltam Bleros would under go many revisions before emerging as the popular super camp blockbusting space opera though throughout it’s metamorphosis Moebius’s designs essentially remained intact. The relationship with Besson would turn sour as after the films release Moebius and Jodorowsky attempted to sue accusing him of blatantly plagiarising The Incal, a comic book series they had started in 1981.  The case was unsuccessful though and in fact Jodorowsky would later conceed he actually considered it an honour that somebody stole his ideas.

Above: Art from Luc Besson: The Story of the Fifth Element currently retailing new on Amazon for nearly $900 !
Of course whilst all these film projects were ongoing so was the comic illustration and writing, including collaboration with Stan Lee and Marvel comics on The Silver Surfer as you can see below. Specific comic series is something I shall cover in depth in future posts.

To underline the importance and prominence of Moebius in his native france in 1988 he was chosen among with 11 other winners of the prestigious Grand Prix of the Angoulême Festival, to illustrate a postage stamp set issued on the theme of communication. In recent years Moebius’s work has been the subject of several exhibitions, sharing a joint exhibition 2004/2005 with Hayao Miyazaki at La Monnaie Paris, and then in 2010 his very own grandoise ‘Moebius: Transe-Forme at Fondation Cartier’ once again in Paris. This was something I posted about at the time, If you’ve not seen the imagery before it’s definitely worth a look, stunning stuff, I really wish I could have gone, oh yeah and I love Giruad’s sharp tailor suit.

So that draws my brief tribute to a close, there’s so much more I could write and post about, and of course I shall continue to do so in the future, a future in which without doubt Moebius’s legacy will just continue to gracefully evolve.
Finally here’s a great quote, taken from an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2011:
“They said that I changed their life, work is why I became an artist. Oh it makes me happy. But you know at same time I have an internal broom to clean it all up. It can be dangerous to believe it. Someone wrote, ‘Moebius is a legendary artist.’ A legend — now I am like a unicorn.”
Jean Giruad – Moebius passed away aged 73 and is survived by his second wife and business partner, Isabelle Giraud and two children Helene and Julien from his first marriage.

***
Further Reading:
Moebius tagged Gallaries at But Does it Float http://butdoesitfloat.com/filter/Moebius
An excellent tribute article By Dan Dos Santos - I ♥ Moebius –  http://muddycolors.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/i-moebius.html
Jodorowsky on Moebius http://www.duneinfo.com/unseen/moebius/
A tumblr for all things Jean Giraud  http://theairtightgarage.tumblr.com/
io9.com tribute post with Willow and Abyss artwork.
Not sure how long this link will remain valid, but while it’s up do check the Moebius Redux documentary, originally broadcast on BBC4 a couple of years ago.
Au revoir Moebius…