Pop Culture from an Alternate Dimension

  In the '70s the J. Geils Band were considered a great R&B bar band. In 1980 they had huge hit with "Love Stinks" from the album of the same name. Their 1981 album, Freeze Frame, made them hugely popular. The videos for "Centerfold" and "Freeze Frame" were in constant rotation on MTV and front man Peter Wolf became a celebrity. Their next album was a live album. In 1984 J. Geils Band released You're Gettin' Even While I'm Gettin' Odd without Peter Wolf and he released a solo album called Lights Out.  To rejoin them I used "Concealed Weapons", 'Wasted Youth", "Eenie Meenie Minie Moe", You're Gettin'...", "The Bite from Inside" and "Californicatin'" from YGEWIGO and from Wolf's Lights Out I grabbed "Lights Out", "I Need You Tonight", "Baby Please Don't Let Me Go", "Crazy" and "Billy Bigtime". https://youtube.com...

  Last month I was going to do a blog about the Fantastic Four , a comic book movie where everyone working on it was excited about it but after they finished it they found the movie wasn't going to be released. This month is the DC comic version of that issue. In November of 2021 filming started in Glasgow with Leslie Grace starring as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl. J. K. Simmons reprising his role of Commissioner James (Jonah) Gordon that he played in  Justice League . Brendan Fraser was cast as the villain, Firefly and Michael Keaton was back as Batman. It was set to be released on the HBO Max streaming service but it was decided to cancel it all together. There is a good chance it will never be released because all the money that was put into it was used as a tax write-off so since Warner Bros. was paid for it they now can't profit from releasing it.

  In Hell, Madonna was a proposed story for the pulp magazine Doc Savage for the Nov/Dec 1948 issue but was scrapped when the publisher Street & Smith were making changes to their pulps. In fact their hero pulps, including The Shadow, didn't last much longer. This story was unknown to the public until pulp historian Will Murray found a manuscript carbon in author Lester Dent's belongings. Bantam paperbacks had been reprinting the Doc Savage stories when this discovery was made and it finally saw  print in 1979. Recently when Anthony Tollin was reprinting the Doc Savage stories he reprinted it not only with two more late '40s Doc tales but with the Edd Cartier art that had originally been commissioned for it. This version of mine is if it had been printed in 1948 with the "modern art" style cover and pulp magazine design, including appropriate ads.

  Peter Gabriel together again with Genesis. This is one I worked on a while ago but I went through many permutations until I got to this version. I originally had "In the Glow of Night" separated from "Domino" but decided to choose something for readily available. From the Genesis album Invisible Touch I pulled "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight", "Land of Confusion", "Throwing It All Away" and "Invisible Touch". All of these songs are also available on Turn It on Again: the Hits. From Peter Gabriel's album So I chose "Red Rain", "Sledgehammer", "Big Time", "In Your Eyes" and "Mercy Street". All of these except "In Your Eyes" are also found on Shaking the Tree: Sixteen Golden Hits. From Phil Collins' solo work I included "Take Me Home" which has Peter Gabriel on backing vocals. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCHnLE0OxajGqMZSxsvhX-J1vhZG8xGpF&si=d7Di...