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Underground > Comic Books >

Phonogram: The Singles Club

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Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

02:39 / 09.12.09

Also, dig that Brett Favre stance on the title page! Lloyd's about to put a wicked spiral on that vase.

04:47 / 09.12.09

Not to worry about the numbers too much, KG. As Daniel Lanois apparently said to Bob Dylan in the late Eighties, 'Miles Davis never sold any records either.'

Have you thought about asking editorial to let you have a go at 'Marvel Boy'? The character's about three beers, a roofie and a fight away from a terrible fate at the moment, after the DA annual, but perhaps you, McKelvie and your excellent colourist might divine some reason by which he might yet be saved?

Aplogies if that's a misquote. I don't have a copy to hand. Of 'Animal Man' that is; I've never actually read 'Pilgrim's Prog.'

14:21 / 09.12.09

Kenickie=rubbish?

19:25 / 16.12.09

Kenickie do seem a bit hopeless; like a regional band who didn't realise that at least one of them should have 'done a Richey', when it was likely to be reported in the national Sundays.

I'm glad they're gone though.

20:50 / 16.12.09

You must be aware, that if I ever get my hands on Marvel Boy, I'm going to annihilate the poor fella due to those words.

15:34 / 17.12.09

I'm loving Los Campesinos! so thanks for that, great issue all round- I love you guys despite the Kenickie blind spot.

(BTW does the Los Campesinos! male vocalist sound like the sultans of ping FC, or is that just me?)

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

00:41 / 18.12.09

You will not believe the bullshit I am having to go through to find a copy of this goddam book, I'm entering a strangling fugue here

08:28 / 21.12.09

I would believe it. Nothing about Phonogram is ever easy, it seems.

01:36 / 22.12.09

Los Campesinos! (ouch!) sound, to these tired old ears anyway, a bit like Joe 'Johnny's brain is like a sex milkshake' Stretch's band.

There's a thread in the Conversation about this. If you can't face it, or find it, type in 'Joe Stretch' on Youtube, and prepare to be amazed.

I'll admit to being a bit jealous of Stretch - how is he getting away this, I sometimes wonder?

Actually, I think about that quite a lot. I almost never think about anything else.

Joe Stretch is 'the new William Burroughs', apparently, but that can't be right.

I am the new WB, damnit!

At least, I'm doing my best. Has Will Self, or one of the other pretenders, been busted recently for 'lurking' (the cops' words, not mine) outside one of those new-fangled religious schools? In perhaps an ill-advised choice of raincoat?

17:20 / 22.12.09

"Nothing about Phonogram is ever easy"

But it's so worth it, like the great view at the top of a mountain. But, y'know, Pop.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

03:39 / 24.12.09

I enjoy Los Campesinos! very much, but I think I may be too old for them. Does that make sense?

16:09 / 26.12.09

Took me ages to find the sixth issue, but damn I am glad I did. It was actually a strange bit of synchronicity, as I was listening to a leak of the latest Los Camps album for the first time while reading this comic. And Lloyd's enthusiasm for Los Campesinos! equals not only my enthusiasm at first hearing them (some random mp3 from some random music blog), but my continued enthusiasm listening and relistening to their stuff.

The thing about Phonogram is that at a time when I find music reviewing and journalism beyond useless (not that I ever had a use for it), full of pretension most of the time and bloodless technical description the rest of the time, Phonogram really gets me with a description of music as meaning something and making a change to people's lives. I dig that.

And while I don't quite understand why you called Laura Heaven a villain (since until she goes all black-eyed at the end, she was a whistful thing).

I also want to take a moment to compliment McElvie's art in this issue. It's been superb since the beginning, but the subtle things he did her, the light motion lines on Lloyd's hand as he twists the volume knob, the facial expressions, the sense of movement, really made me pause and examine the art for a while.

I'm sad to read elsewhere that there probably won't be a third series.

19:54 / 13.01.10

X-himy: I suspect I should have put villain in quotation marks. As in, clearly I've got too much sympathy for her to say she's the bad guy. She's just acting abominably. Almost everyone else had a good reason for acting like a prick to people - mainly because they didn't realise they were being a prick. Laura knew she was being a prick, and did it anyway - in fact, she did it to be a prick. Sometimes, some people have to be pricks. I think she's beautiful and tragic and very sad.

Oh yeah:

Feb 10th, apparently.

KG

19:55 / 13.01.10

Er...

KG

21:30 / 14.01.10

'...probably won't be a third series'
Say it ain't so!

11:48 / 20.01.10

aw come on now, the singles club has just set the scene for the next series, fleshed out the characters, shown a willingness to step outside linear narrative structures and have a bit of fun with what you can do with a comic. it would be a shame not to get series 3. and a film.

as for laura, i thought she gave that guy in the cab about as hard a time as he deserved.

13:35 / 20.01.10

I wonder if I'm missing something; what did Laura actually do, to warrant the status she seems to have as an 'evil' character? If being a bit self-absorbed, and off hand with people in night clubs is a sign of bad intent, then we're all doomed, surely?

I can see why being a Long Blondes fan is, in itself, enough to ... well, Dante's written about it, in more detail than I'd care to go into, but that can't have been the point. Can it?

07:40 / 25.01.10

I was chatting with someone via this by e-mail, and I suspect I've said it publicly before - maybe even in this thread - but, with hindsight, I probably should have put the villain in that back matter in quotation marks. It's very much "villain". I've too much sympathy to put her as the Bad Guy.

Short version: everyone else fucks everyone else over for some other ill-conceived reason, normally a lack of empathy. She fucks everyone else over for cruelty's own sake, because it makes her feel better. She knows exactly how they feel, but she does it anyway, because it makes her feel better. Better she hurts them than she hurts herself.

(As opposed to - say - Seth, who tears people to pieces but has no empathy whatsoever.)

I meant she's the "Villain" because there's no misunderstanding with her. She is what she seems. When she was stealing Penny's money, she was just stealing Penny's money. We may be able to empathise with the reasons why, but...

(Which isn't to say that Lloyd didn't deserve it all, of course.)

"it would be a shame not to get series 3. and a film."

And a lunchbox!

00:42 / 29.01.10

This, I think, is what I find a bit odd about 'The Singles Club' - nobody seems to be doing much that's immoral, amoral, moral, or anything inbetween. The stakes seem so minor. I don't mean to have a go, because I'm enjoying the series, but, honestly, they all seem like jolly nice young people who'll be able to sit down and laugh about it over breakfeast next morning.

I don't know if that's the plan or not.

22:20 / 29.01.10

What I took to be the point of Laura is that her existence - i.e. everything about her - is appropriated.

Penny has her dancing - even if it is everything of her, even if she has nothing else and is going to marry some strapping rugby player in the future, even if she's not sparklingly intelligent, witty and urbane - she has something she does that she loves.

Marc has the curse as an emotional signifier - whether he inflicted it on himself or whether his long-lost-sort of-love placed it on him doesn't matter, because, 'put here, come here, same difference', to badly misquote an unpopular writer 'round here.

Seth and Silent Girl have their own ways and means - even by the perversity of holding an event that will attract Phonomancers and then banning them from doing what they do (most likely in the knowledge that they'll do it anyway, but hey.)

Emily Aster has Emily Aster, having cut away and attempted to to replace Claire, however successfully.

Even Lloyd has his ideas and, obviously, some interesting talent, even if his social skills leave something to be desired.

But Laura... She has the quotes, which she's not afraid of claiming as her own if the other person won't know she's doing it, and she has in the Long Blondes what Emily Aster once had in the Manics, but she doesn't have a self, exactly, being defined by what she's not (Penny), what she wants (Marc, apparently) and what she knows she can't have (Lloyd, or, at least, Lloyd's ideas).

She would appear to be all potential and no originality, and stagnating because of it. She's not necessarily evil; she's just stuck.

Just my take on it, anyway. Too serious? Try this instead...

13:23 / 06.02.10

Re: Alex. I'll accept that. Even at their baddest, they're no worse than people I hang out with. The minor-stakes is sort of part of the whole thing, really.

Fever: I'd go along with what you're saying. Laura is the teenager as a transitional state without nothing but art and the idea of something she'd like to be.

Issue 7 out next week. 5 page preview here.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

22:33 / 06.02.10

already dreading the deals I'll have to make with the fell powers of the night to get a copy...

08:34 / 07.02.10

"!"

uncle retrospective

21:09 / 07.02.10

So KWK is wolverine?

21:51 / 07.02.10

It was that or get Deadpool in.

20:42 / 08.02.10

I eagerly await the Deadpool analogue in the phonomancer world, someone who listened to the Cranberries too hard;

In your head, in your head they are fighting,
With their tanks and their bombs,
And their bombs and their guns.
In your head, in your head, they are crying...

zombie

Poke it with a stick

19:24 / 11.02.10

Worth the wait, even if I have Shakira howling in my head for some (fairly obvious) reason.

More when I've reread it. Or maybe I'll just reread it with a sappy grin on my face.

07:25 / 12.02.10

Kid-with-knife would clearly dig Shakira too.

In passing - we're sort of having a wake at the Prince Arthur near Euston from 7 tonight. We'll be doing some manner of party thing when the trade comes out, but we thought drinking is important. Drinking is very important.

KG

uncle retrospective

15:28 / 13.02.10

First the bad. Nothing pisses me off quite as much as indie boys listening to metal that Pitchfork told them it was ok to like. Indie Dave should have be cut down by some weirdo in a viking helmet wearing a manowar tee shirt, denouncing "death to False Metal fans".

Bah, it's an old wound but sometimes still sore.

The rest? Amazing, what a great issue and I'm very sorry to hear that they're won't be any more of Phonogram or S.W.O.R.D.
Balls!

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

18:15 / 13.02.10

Metal will be devoured by hipsters just like everything else, sir. It's well underway.

05:52 / 14.02.10

Uncle R;

Not to worry.

I still can't listen to a 'metal' record without recalling that Bruce Dickinson, singer in 'Maiden' was expelled from boarding school for putting his old chap in his headmaster's soup.

Even now, that pretty much sums up the genre for me

21:04 / 16.02.10

Bruce Dickinsoup?

07:57 / 22.02.10

I refuse to let Bruce Dickensoup be the last post in this thread. I just refuse it!

14:07 / 22.02.10

Is there going to be a Phonogram disco? By god I'd attend.

Also, what's Phonogram's view on Lady Gaga? Greatest pop star ever or merely of all time?

08:20 / 23.02.10

It's not definite, but the Black Plastic next month on the 17th may be the Phonogram Trade Launch party. Which will be dancing!

(It's not definite as Jamie may actually be elsewhere, in which case, that's that story knackered.)

Gaga would have been central in Phonogram 3. In a story set in 2009 about the last 30 years of pop videos and (primarily female) identity, we couldn't really dodge her even if we wanted to.

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