And then she turns away from the audience, and there’s a giant red stripe of paint up the back. A subtle and perfectly executed joke.

He’d better strengthen his Alar if he wants to counteract whatever someone is using that mommet on him for. And if he can sneak into the Archives and find the schematic for making a Gram, all the better. <checks publication date, realizes everybody else read that book 7 years ago> Dated reference!

Comics Curmudgeon readers have known about Garbage Ape for years. Seriously, why isn’t joshreads.com more popular?

Ditto. The only thing I had to go on was the list of names and the front and back of the “Gypsy” sleeve. I also had John and Mick flipped, so I scored a 20% on that quiz.

True enough, except for my money, the live version of “Watcher” trumps the studio version by a country mile, and I like the idea behind “Friday”, but it’s musically and lyrically overstuffed. See also “Epping Forest” which I find myself skipping. And I’d almost forgotten “After the Ordeal” was on there at all. It was…

Have we ever done an AVQ&A on a trio of great back-to-back albums?

Yes, this, exactly. You put it more eloquently than I did. Sometimes I doesn’t do words good.

I was WAY into the eels in the 90s-00s, but pretty much everything after Blinking Lights has left me cold. Too much of a good thing? Did I simply outgrow them? Anyway, each new album has me hoping for some radical departure or at least song with one killer hook. Sounds like the waiting continues.

Well, I just listened to Used Future, and I can say I think it’s better than High Country, to damn it with faint praise.

Yeah, a couple of years ago, I saw they were playing near me, and I thought “hell yeah!”. Then I listened to High Country and ended up not going. Ouch.

“Any of the dozens of other Guided By Voices albums that have been released over the past 30 years days or so.” Fixed it for you.

It’s always so thickly produced, too. It’s like their sound hasn’t been updated since the late-80s. Doesn’t matter what style they’re aping, either. DC Talk sounds like White Heart (to date myself) which sounds like Hillsong which sounds like MercyMe which sounds like Amy Grant and so on. Everything sounds like a…

Steve Taylor. He’s always operated just outside the acceptable limits of what CCM as an industry will put up with (for one thing, he’s often satirical, a literary tactic completely lost on most K-Love listeners). He kept popping into my mind when I read about Norman’s personality above. His sense of humor is very…

I wasn’t sure, either, until one day I needed it to call my phone so I could find the damn thing.

The new Dessa is absolutely outstanding. I’ve had it on repeat since this past Friday.

Maybe, like me, people are curious about it, but not curious enough to actually watch it (I dropped off somewhere after they first got to Alexandria). Of course, I don’t watch Talking Dead either (I just come here and read Zach’s reviews after checking wikipedia’s summary—occasionally). That’s all good enough for me.

My point was that by the time LMCBW was released as a single, the album had been out for a year. “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues” was actually released as a single before that, which hit the Mainstream Rock charts, but not the Hot 100. So maybe not “massive”, but still relative indifference to how huge the band would be by late…

Man, I was way too much into TtWS. I...I would definitely go see that lineup even if it was tomorrow.

Yeah, just how 1970-71 were still kinda the 60s, and 1979 was practically already the 80s. Musically speaking, at least.

I bought the 2011 anniversary reissue. I have a soft spot for that whole album (although there are a few tracks that never quite grabbed me). I’m not ashamed. Couldn’t make through any of their other albums. Right place, right time for that one, I guess.