A small corner of the internet got very excited last week when writer Gabe Soria (Life Sucks) posted an entry titled ‘Historia de la Musica Rock: Locas’ to his tumblr. Among the many tweeters linking to the post was Nick Abadzis, artist on The Cigar That Fell In Love With A Pipe. Doing a great service to humankind, Soria has trawled through the first volume of Jaime Hernandez’ Locas stories and noted down any song mentioned and compiled them into a playlist. That’s 704 pages from the first 50 issues of Love & Rockets. He’s not even the first person to attempt this, in 2006 Robert Boyd listed all the songs he could find in both Jaime & Gilbert’s work. However, Soria actually compiled all the songs into a downloadable file, not that I would ever condone such a thing *ahem*
A mention of X-Ray Spex in Love & Rockets Volume 1 issue 33 © Jaime Hernandez
It’s an impressive list, featuring bands that you would expect such as Black Flag (although I would have sworn they would have had more than one song mentioned) and X-Ray Spex that soundtrack Maggie’s adolescence, as well as Lou Christie and the Allman Brothers Band. The latter acts were both covered by Hopey’s band. Famously, Hopey misheard the lyrics of Christie’s Two Faces Have I and it becomes a running joke. Years later when Izzy bumps into Terry playing a solo gig she heckles from the audience ‘play Do Vases Have Eyes’.
Hopey mishears a song title in Love & Rockets Volume 1 issue 18 © Jaime Hernandez
Country, rock, easy listening, punk, new wave, hip hop and even TV theme tunes are included. The playlist is a wonderful way to enter into the cartoonist’s mind and the list betrays the many musical influences in Jaime Hernandez’ life. In the Art of Jaime Hernandez, Todd Hignite noted how important Jaime’s mother Aurora was in his formative musical world (as well as so much else for Los Bros). At home Aurora would listen to the local pop radio as well traditional Mexican music. Later Jaime would be influenced by the hard rock and glam tastes of his older brothers but then punk broke and it changed the lives of Los Bros Hernandez. For a while Gilbert and Jaime played in garage bands Beer Gut and Suspicion but they decided being cartoonists was the career for them. Their younger brother Ismael pursued music more seriously becoming the bassist in Nardcore band Dr Know. All these influences show up in Jaime’s stories.
The likes of Spotify and YouTube mean it is now easy for artists (or fans) to create playlists to promote their work or to reveal influences. Hattie compiled the discography from Pascal Blanchet’s graphic novel Nocturne into a playlist for an earlier Graphixia post. Pop culture blog largehearted boy regularly posts playlists by authors they have interviewed including Geneviève Castrée on the release of her book Susceptible. EDIT: Gabe Soria also has a playlist on largehearted boy for Life Sucks. Castrée described how personal compiling the mix was ‘It is nearly impossible for me to make a playlist inspired by Susceptible without turning it into some kind of soundtrack to my life’.
Goglu’s mother confuses Sonic Youth and Pink Floyd in Susceptible © Geneviève Castrée
Susceptible detailed Castrée’s life up to the age of 18 when she left home and the playlist is like a DVD extra that fills in some background to the story. In her teens she starts experimenting with drugs and hanging out with punks, she discovers the Dead Kennedys, CRASS, and Iggy and the Stooges as well as Sonic Youth, The Raincoats and Stereolab. Bands that would later inspire her to make her own music.
Geneviève Castrée performs as Woelv. Photo by Liam Butler from K records website.
Indeed, like Los Bros, Castrée also plays music but she has managed to successfully intertwine it with being a cartoonist. In fact, she did not start making music until after she was making comics. In an interview with The Comics Journal Castrée describes how when she came to make Pamplemoussi, for Montreal based publishers L’Oie de Cravan, she wanted it to also contain music. However, she had to learn from scratch how to make the music she wanted ‘I don’t want anyone else to write the music, I’m going to do it. So I kind of had to teach myself how to make notes with the guitar’. Castrée has gone on to make music under the name Woelv (the album Tout Seul dans la Forêt en Plein Jour, Avez-Vous Peur? also came with a book) and she currently records as Ô Paon. If you like droney, slightly folky music with singing in French then check it out, it’s great!
Reading about Soria’s Locas playlist immediately made me think of the mix that Blank Slate Books released when they published the collected edition of Hugo Tate by Nick Abadzis (author of the acclaimed Laika) in 2012. I briefly mentioned Hugo Tate, which has a quote from The Comics Journal on the front cover comparing it to Love & Rockets, when I was discussing Deadline last time out. Like Hernandez there are TV and film theme tunes (as well as incidental pieces) amongst the music, and like Castrée there is room for Iggy and the Stooges. I got in touch with Abadzis to ask him about the mix.
Cover for the Hugo Tate playlist © Nick Abadzis
He reminded me that an early version of the playlist turns up as a mixtape in the book in the strip Ancient History. When Hugo leaves for America he sends his friend Jason a cassette filled with music they both like (you know, when mixtapes actually were on tape!). Jason is confused as it is all music he already owns. According to Abadzis, Hugo knew that but he was ‘trying to tell his friend how much he liked him and that he was going to miss listening to those songs with him’. This highlights an important social aspect of mixtapes and playlists especially in the past when they would be handed to someone on a physical format to play rather than streamed on a website. As Abadzis puts it ‘making an artifact to give to someone, a little box that contains sounds you love’. A mixtape might be used to woo someone, or just to say that you enjoyed their company, ‘If I ever gave you a tape or burned you a CD, I must’ve liked you’.
Detail from Hugo Tate – Ancient History © Nick Abadzis
The tracks on the Hugo Tate mix are all songs that Abadzis loves but he compiled them from Hugo’s mid 90s point of view. With music from the past there is always an element of time travel involved, I can’t hear The The’s Uncertain Smile without being transported back to 1988 and walking around with my headphones on. I asked Abadzis if, like Los Bros and Castrée, he had ever been a musician but he explained that despite being from a musical family and having lessons as a kid he had ‘lapsed’. However music is obviously very important to him and he mentioned that being a DJ might have been a viable option if cartooning hadn’t worked out.
With such a true-to-life feeling to the storytelling in Hugo Tate I asked Abadzis how autobiographical it was. He explained that there were elements of his life in the story, and his younger self in Hugo but this was ‘the process of fiction at work’. Reading Ancient History again after chatting to Abadzis, I can see elements of him in other characters too. Jason talks about getting some decks and being a DJ despite Stan trying to get him to join a band. He is also open minded about music and excited to ‘dig around the Record and Tape Exchange, unearth forgotten gems.’ I actually worked in Record and Tape in the late 1990s, I know just how much digging he would have to do.
Detail from Hugo Tate – Ancient History © Nick Abadzis
Ancient History is dedicated to the friends that Abadzis used to exchange mixtapes with and is actually a love letter to friendship and to the lost art of recording a physical mixtape. Compiling a digital playlist just doesn’t have the same emotional connection, especially for us folks of a certain vintage. It also highlights the importance of music in many of our lives. Ruminating on his potential alternative career as a DJ, Abadzis noted that comics are only one kind of storytelling medium – ‘You can tell stories with music too’