R. Crumb’s Music Madness – part two, by Michael H. Price
Continued from last week:
Robert Crumb and I began early in 1985 to develop a musical accompaniment for the first stage production of R. Crumb Comix at Fort Worth, Texas’ Hip Pocket Theatre. We consulted by telephone between my digs in Fort Worth and his home near Winters, California, and Robert prepared numerous reference dubs from his collection of 78-R.P.M. phonograph records. These, I augmented with musical sources from my own library, plus scattered original compositions. I recruited an orchestra from within guitarist Slim Richey’s and my jazz trio, Diddy Wah Diddy, and from our affiliated string band, the Salt Lick Foundation, with which I had recently completed a string of record albums for Slim’s Ridge Runner/Tex Grass labels.
Band rehearsals commenced in May of 1985, with all concerned forewarned to buck up for a three-hour show scored with what Crumb wanted to be “constant music – just like in those ol’ Hal Roach comedy films.” Yes, and never mind that the Roach pictures (including the Depression years’ Laurel & Hardy and Our Gang series) ran to just 20 or 30 minutes apiece in length. Well, at least there would be an intermission.
So Robert reached Texas on schedule, got settled in, and found the progress agreeable. He warmed especially to the women (consistent with Crumb’s vision) whom director Johnny Simons had cast. Robert took issue with some of the music as sounding “too modernistic – that ’forties swing stuff” (no accounting for taste) but found the score workable overall, enjoying the sound well enough to commandeer a plectrum banjo from Salt Lick’s Lee Thomas and perform as a member of the orchestra on the opening weekend that June. Crumb’s banjo-playing fit right in, evoking memories of Eddie Peabody and the Light Crust Doughboys’ Marvin “Smokey” Montgomery. I had composed one of the show’s tunes, “Save Me a Slice of That,” as a Doughboys pastiche.
He’s done it all – sword & sorcery, capes & masks and even….erotic comics. Howard Chaykin isn’t shy about his work and he joins ComicMix Radio to talk – and not talk – about what he has coming up in 2008.
It’s not a secret that I worship Kyle Baker. Perhaps his wife, Liz, is a bigger fan, but that’s debatable. So it’s no surprise that I looked forward to his new series from Image, Special Forces. It’s even less of a surprise that I like it so much.
This may be turning into a bad series of coincidences. 
Only two books for Manga Friday this week; the deadline crept up on me and found me with a smaller “read” pile than I expected. But they’re both pretty good, and both are brand-new, which may make up for it.
Lee Falk’s Mandrake The Magician – arguably America’s first costumed comics superhero – is headed to the big screen at last.
Continuing with our commitment to bringing you the best in online comics, ComicMix is proud to announce the return of Mike Grell’s 
In his newest adventure, Sable is hired by the head of an African diamond cartel to transport a magnificent raw diamond to an exhibit in New York. But his task is complicated by having to play escort, bodyguard and babysitter to the cartel’s corporate spokesperson, Bashira, a temperamental model with a history of drug problems. While Sable struggles to keep her under control and out of tabloid headlines he finds himself the center of a deadly hunt and a plot that reaches beyond the world of glamour and into the world of terror…
No, I haven’t read this book. But really, how can you not love a title like 
Eighty years ago on this day in Johnston, PA, Steve Ditko was born.
