#sonic channel art has been so silly. i look forward to seeing the new one each month :)

[futuristichedge]

He should be at the club!!!

[cryptoriawebb]

I want to talk about something. Something very personal and dear to my heart. Before I do, however, I’m going to ask right now that anyone stumbling onto this either takes the time to stop and read this in full, or carries on with their business, leaving this post untouched. I’m not here to talk about shipping. I’m not here to talk about which characters “are” better and what is and is not “canon.” I know the Sonic fandom is a toxic place filled largely with a young and/or aggressive audience. That’s fine. I was part of it once--on the younger end and adamant about who belonged with who.

I’m not, anymore. Nor do I have patience for any silly comments regarding these points. This is not about the fandom. It’s not about shipping and it’s not about blanket character statements.

This is about me, and how important the Archie Sonic comics were to me. 

I don’t remember how old I was when I first stumbled upon the world of Sonic, but I do remember what it was. The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehow used to air on one of Disney’s many channels, and one day my brother saw it for the first time. He described it to me, and for a while I hadn’t a clue what he meant. I remember trying to picture the series and my gosh, I was off the mark, design-wise. Regardless, I eventually did see the show and we used to watch it together in the morning. It was strange and silly and I didn’t think much of it, but I loved Sonic’s catchphrases, the theme song and Tails. 

Sometime after that, we found the OVA at a video rental store (remember those?) I know a lot of people out there don’t think very highly of it, but I was young, and at the time didn’t have any Sonic reference beyond the cartoon. Honestly, I preferred the OVA after watching it. It was darker than the show, with a different type of humor I must have found more appealing. It was also one of the first anime-type-things I’d ever seen. I loved the design, this interpretation of Tails and Robotnik and I also quite liked Knuckles, having never seen him before. 

I suppose I should state right now I was not allowed to play video games growing up, and the first computer I remember entering my home was in the very late nineties. Even then, we didn’t play a lot of PC games, mostly Disney and things like Clue Finders and Freddie Fish.  At some point I know we discovered a sega collection of old Sonic games, and Sonic R, I just can’t remember when. 

Anyway, after that, my next “Sonic medium” came in the form of advertisements for Sonic Sega Dreamcast. I don’t remember what I found so appealing about it, but I very much wanted to play this game. At this point I was pretty obsessed with the OVA and had acquired a lot of old toys relating to the Dreamcast game. Alas, twas not to be, and that was it for me and Sonic..

...until my brother picked up issue #110 for me at a store. I’d never seen a Sonic comic before--had no idea such a thing existed, and believe me, I carried that thing everywhere. The art and story I found incredibly confusing, as did I the side story about Sally and the Sword of Acorn. Who was Sally? How did she know Sonic and Tails? I hadn’t a clue, but I loved the art. A lot. If I were to go back and try reading that comic now I’m pretty sure it would fall apart...the cover’s already been detached from the pages ^^;

Sometime later, I was in a comic book shop--my brother and I loved super heroes and we were starting to get into manga--and I found #114. In it, I discovered a sort of continuation to #110, as well as another beautifully illustrated story by J.Axer. Imagine my surprise to discover not only more characters I’d never seen (Bunnie, Antoine and Rotor) but Amy Rose! Whom I knew, vaguely, from my toys and what I knew of Dreamcast. Like my previous comic, I loved this one so much it also fell apart. J.Axer’s art really fascinated me, I would trace and try to mimic it all the time. Artists today look down on such things, but through the course of doing what I did I broadened my horizons and grew to be a better artist. 

It wasn’t long after that I discovered Sonic SatAM. I was thrilled. Sally, Bunnie and everyone else in a TV show of their own? Why was I not aware of this? I must have rented those videos a thousand times. There were only two or three available, with a handful of episodes each, but I didn’t care. I admit I was a bit saddened to see Tails as a mere side character, but that was the only drawback. I knew this story, or part of it--Sally’s father, King Acorn, I’d seen him before. I knew Knothole, Snively--I knew all of it. It was...amazing, quite frankly, and I’m sure I talked about it a lot...to such a point I started annoying my brother. But again, did not care. I had all this insight and I couldn’t get enough of it. So when I stumbled into another comic shop one day and found several back issues (#100, #103, #104, #105 and a few others) I knew there was no going back. 

I admit, I can’t remember if I found those back issues before or after I realized it was a monthly series, but either way, once I did, I became a steady collector for the next ten years. I ordered back issues, specials, drew art and comics regularly...even when I got older and my interests tapered, I still collected. This world was so in depth, the art--at least most of it--detailed and rich--and I loved all of the characters. All of them. To me, these comics were the meat enhancing the bare bones that was the video game universe. I preferred them to any other incarnation I’d seen prior, and to be quite honest, I still do.

 I can’t speak for the video games now--I know they’ve grown and added characters and I’m sure there’s a lot to be said for that world--but the last video games I played were Shadow and Sonic Heroes. I did watch Sonic X for a while, I just...didn’t care much for it. Shadow was the only one I felt matched the same thought, tone and creative care the comics had, and that’s because they adapted his history pretty well, at least I think so. 

The comics had their ups and downs; I’m not the biggest fans of the #130s, but before the reboot, I really felt things were on a strong track forward. That said, I desperately feared the end of the Freedom Fighters...especially Sally Acorn. I remember actually crying about it to one friend. Since discovering her, Sally has been and remains my favorite Sonic character. 

Please note again, my thoughts are my own and I’m allowed to have them.

Now then...Sally Acorn. Her and Bunnie, fluctuating occasionally because Bunnie reminded me of my favorite X-men growing up (Rogue) but I’d always come back to Sally. I know some people don’t like her. That’s fine, not everyone is going to like every character. For me, though, Sally was one of few tomboy characters I knew of as a child. Yes she was feminine, but her femininity never overwhelmed her. She never felt over-romanticized, at least to me, and I really appreciated her modest design. It always bothered me female animal-type-characters were heavily dressed while the boys rarely wore full clothes. I liked that she broke that norm, it fit her personality.

Her relationship with Sonic felt very buddy-buddy, too, as much as romantic. Like they were really equals, despite differing status and power. Sally’s sacrifice remains stapled to my memory; it is, I think, the defining nature of her character. Her “true” character, I think: what comes out when it’s down to the wire. I’m really impressed with how she’s grown over the years. Not only how she chose to “end” her life but how strong she became after breaking up with Sonic. I don’t at all believe he held her down--and unlike some people I wasn’t bothered by the slap. I just wasn’t. I am, however, so happy she was able to become the Sally I grew up reading, the one I was first introduced to, once again before her final moments. Above all else, she and the Freedom Fighters proved to me you don’t need special powers to be a hero. 

Sonic may have been the ace in the hole, but every one of the Freedom Fighters brought something unique to the table. Watching them evolve over the years--from one universe to the next, powers, kids and otherwise--has been such a wonderful experience. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve invested for so long...I only wish I were able to see how the original story intended to progress.  I tried describing the comics to a friend recently, particularly where it left off before the reboot. He was incredibly surprised by how vast and dark it was. 

I’m going to confess I stopped reading shortly before Sonic rebooted the universes. I have read scans of that initial first issue, but once I discovered the story wasn’t going to continue, I lost a lot of my drive to collect. I’m not going to talk about Penders here--I think we all share mutual feelings in that regard--but in my opinion it was absolutely the defining nail on the coffin for this twenty+ year run. He remains one of few people I find incredibly difficult to forgive. I’m a firm believer in forgiveness, but I grew up reading Sonic. I wanted very much to continue reading it, to see the characters I love continue growing. I can’t do that, anymore. None of us can. 

I don’t expect to see Sally and the others carried over to IDW. The Sonic gaming side of things has evolved so much from where it started out: most readers today know of the Freedom Fighting crew through the comics only. If it’s true Sega sees a different creative vision for their franchise, I think this is finally goodbye...I said goodbye years ago, but it’s final now. The comics as I knew them are over. Another staple of my childhood, already reinvented and reimagined, gone for good. The chances a new generation will find the comics, reboot or otherwise, and meet and connect with the characters I loved the way I loved them, rather than through internet fodder they don’t understand are fewer now and far between. That hurts me, it does. As a creative individual who held this so close to them, one thing I’ve always wanted is for people to discover something and experience what I did. Understand in their own way why myself and I’m sure so many others held onto the comics as long as we did. It’s not about shipping, it’s not about what’s canon or who’s better than the other. It’s about something else entirely. For me, it was an expansive, inclusive and ever-changing world. It was following a show that made something equally impressive from so very little and nurturing it until it took on a life of its own.

Maybe I’m a little dramatic, a little theatrical, but if you've stayed with me through this entire confession I hope you can forgive me. I loved these comics. They were a part of my life for a very long time, and I’m going to miss them, indefinitely.

Thank you, Archie Team, for creating something wonderful. Thank you SatAM and yes, even thank you, Sega, allowing them the chance to give us these memories.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Dave Depper Interview: Welcome to Earnestville

Photo by Jaclyn Campanaro

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Dave Depper is a bonafide music lover. As we talk while he drives from his girlfriend’s place in Seattle to his home in Portland, we bond over music both old (Talking Heads’ “Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)”) and new (Sera Cahoone’s From Where I Started, on which Depper plays bass). It makes sense, then, that for his first solo record, Depper (now a full-time member of indie rock giants Death Cab For Cutie) had to find a way to channel everything he loves into a messy canvas. He played the infamous “20 song game,” writing 20 songs in 12 hours, 2 of which ended up on what would become Emotional Freedom Technique, a shiny synth pop record centering on the dissolution of relationships.

Here, Depper, who is already working on his follow-up (and is scheduled to record a new Death Cab record), breaks down Emotional Freedom Technique in advance of his performance at this weekend’s Bumbershoot festival in Seattle. Read the interview below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: Emotional Freedom Technique was born from a spontaneous process. What happened in between your initial “20 songs” process and the final product? How much did you tinker with what you had initially come up with?

Dave Depper: Quite a bit. In terms of the 20 song thing, only 2 songs from that ended up making it, so there was a lot of interim songwriting. As for those two songs, “Never Worked So Hard”, except for changing one word, that was mostly done, which was crazy. As for “Anytime Anywhere”, that was vastly different. It was almost like a jokey song. It had auto tune on my vocals and a hair metal guitar solo. As I took the album idea more seriously--I didn’t set out to make a sad, confessional record, but as it appeared that way, that song had to be taken out of Ironicville into Earnestville.

With the rest, I wrote so many songs for this record and had a lot of different roads I tried going down and lots of lyrical revisions--”Lonely With You” had about 5 different sets of lyrics. It was when I wrote “Do You Want Love?” that it all became together. It became the unifying statement of the record. It stemmed from one of many breakups I was having. I had an endless amount of short-term relationships, and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Breaking up with someone, in the middle of conversation--which was a very polite and sweet break up as far as those things go--she asked me, “What do you want, man? Do you even want love?” I honestly don’t even know what that means anymore. Being a songwriter person, it became a great idea for a song--not that I like having emotional tragedies having to occur to create songs. It was quite a bit later--maybe a year--that I was thinking about that conversation, and the rest of the songs sort of gelled around that idea, and I thought about exploring that period of time.

SILY: I get the sense from both this album and what I’ve read of you talking about your next one that you’re the type of songwriter to have a ton of ideas you have to make sense of. Are you not as deliberate? Do you spend more time doing the filtering after the initial idea?

DD: Definitely, filtering is my challenge. I kind of spray ideas out Jackson Pollock style. I have a million different interests. I like a large breadth of music, and a lot of what I spend my time doing is trying to recreate a version of what other people have done in my own way. I really like learning from music I’ve heard before--trying to get into the brain of other instrumentalists. I’ve always been fascinated by the synthesizer on The Police’s Synchronicity, ever since I was a little kid. I spent an hour recreating it as close as I could. I probably spend about 90% of my time in the studio doing that dumb stuff hoping it will turn into inspiration later on. It generally does. The challenge for me is turning down my ADD brain and focusing on one idea--which happily happened with the record once I figured out it would be a synth pop thing with a specific sonic template and lyrical theme. But it took years to get to both of those places.

SILY: You still definitely have bits and pieces of everything else that creep up as an element within a song. The final song on the record has some slide guitar on there.

DD: That’s kind of the only capital G guitar moment on the record. When I was mixing it with my friend Thom Monahan, he was just kind of like, “I don’t see how this fits into the album.” We mixed the album in order, so that was the last song we mixed. He was like, “I’ve been on this smooth, synthy ride, and this is really jarring.” I was like, “This is exactly what I want. You have to trust me.” I really wanted this cathartic Spiritualized meets Stereolab explosion at the end. I was happy I was able to make that live in this world it didn’t belong to.

[The pedal steel, too] was used on this track and “Lonely With You”. I bought it from Chris Funk from The Decemberists--it’s actually used on most Decemberists records. I don’t know how to play pedal steel at all, but it’s been an obsession of mine to try and combine synth pop with pedal steel guitar. There’s this Pet Shop Boys song from the 90s called “You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You’re Drunk”--which is also the best song title ever--out of nowhere, this pedal steel solo comes in this sad ballad. I’ve always been obsessed with that moment. Something flown in from a country song on this futuristic synth song.

SILY: Do you have a favorite song on Emotional Freedom Technique?

DD: I have three. “Do You Want Love?” I’m proud of in that I spent most time on that song by far and didn’t know where I was gonna go. The rest, I more or less had an idea what was gonna happen. That, all I had was that bass and piano riff and I just kept on adding to it. I spent three weeks not sleeping or eating making that song. It seems to be the song that has resonated most with people. It sort of ended up leading off the album. I’m really proud of it, especially because I didn’t know I had it in me.

“Lonely With You” I really love because I started writing it in 2007, or something insane like that. It’s been this white whale for me, trying to finish that song. It ended up sounding perfectly like it did on my head. The last track, “Hindsight / Emotional Freedom Technique” is the most meaningful song I’ve ever written. It was the first song I ever wrote that felt honest. When I wrote it, I realized I had a breakthrough as a writer.

SILY: How does the album art convey the themes of the record?

DD: The album art came together really randomly. I had three ideas going into this. I wanted it to be an unconventional portrait. I wanted there to be a grid in the background. And I wanted to use the font used on the road signs on freeways in France. The grid represents sort of how the album is on a grid. It’s actually a very rigidly paced, robotic album that I programmed. I programmed all of the drums and played a little bit of them. I really wanted that to come through on the artwork. When I was shooting the photo with my friend, we spent all day basically throwing things against the wall to see what stuck. I was sitting on a chair with a silvery background, and she put a pink light in front of me. I think the record is sort of pink colored for whatever reason. She just randomly was like, “Hey, put this full length mirror in your lap right now.” We snapped five photos, and it took two minutes and we moved on to something else. But going through everything later, that conveyed so much of what I wanted to convey. I don’t look really happy or sad. It’s kind of hard to tell what my expression is. That kind of represents how the record is a bit ambiguous. I don’t come to any conclusions of love or where I am. There’s a callousness to this whole thing.

The genius illustrator who worked on the record--Abigael Tripp [from the album’s label, Tender Loving Empire]--came up with the idea of integrating the grid into the photo and having it surround me, which brings me into the technological aspect of the photo and record. And I wanted the French road sign font because it conveys a sort of kinetic energy to me. As silly as it is, that font seems to represent the road and forward motion to me.

SILY: What’s your live set up like?

DD: I knew from the get go that I needed an awesome rhythm section, and I got a great drummer and bass player. The songs just kind of came alive. There are two gal friends of mine playing keyboards and singing, and one of them playing a bit of guitar. I’m playing guitar most of the time and some keyboards. There are lots of harmonies.

It was a really fascinating experience--I had never really had to translate something to the stage like that before. Especially this record, which I recorded all by myself. The challenge was figuring out what to leave out. I really didn’t want a bunch of karaoke backing tracks behind us. It was really fun to hear people bring their own history and playing style. Some really took off in different directions than I was expecting.

SILY: I see that you’re working on some new stuff, and that Death Cab is working on a new album. What else is next for you?

DD: The Death Cab album is gonna be occupying most of my time and energy in the fall. We’re gonna be doing that October through Christmas. I’m working on some new solo stuff I’m really stoked about. It always seems to happen during the summer when I’d rather do everything outdoors. The themes of the new stuff haven’t really revealed themselves to me, but I want to take some of the sounds from Emotional Freedom Technique and push them a lot farther. “Do You Want Love?” is kind of this free-form, darker, dancier thing, but not necessarily pop. I’ve always been fascinated by Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, and how the songs don’t have traditional choruses or bridges--there are all these weird layers of percussion and chanting that come in and out--I’m interested in applying that to the sonic template from Emotional Freedom Technique. Weird synthesizers, drums, and programs. When I finish that, I have no idea. What the lyrics are going to be about, I have no idea. Hopefully I have it figure out by the time I have to drop my entire life and record a Death Cab record.