Blog: Songs For Superheroes

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This Friday Mr FA Machine and I are releasing a brand new EP called "The Swingin' Sound Of Sixties Marvel"! It features eight cover versions of superhero theme tunes, mostly for Marvel superheroes but also a couple of others what we are using for COMPARISON, for LO! it is all part of ACADEMIC RESEARCH!

The story of the EP is THUS: way back in 2018 Frankie and I did a presentation in Brighton where we discussed a bunch of superhero theme tunes at the Graphic Brighton conference, illustrating our Excellent Points and Incisive remarks by performing the songs too. It was GRATE fun, and we discussed recording them at some point, but didn't get around to thinking about it again until a couple of years later when I saw the Call For Papers for the 2020 Transitions conference. As discussed previously, I have done presentations solo at this in the past, and thought it might be a good excuse for us to do the show again. Frankie said yes, the organisers said yes, and then... well, you know what happened then, EVERYTHING got cancelled!

However, several months later the conference organisers got in touch to say that they were RESCHEDULING, and that they'd be doing the conference ONLINE with pre-recorded presentations. This gave us the IDEAL excuse to finally record the songs, and so we spent several weeks sending WAVs between us, with Frankie providing pretty much all the music while I made everything more JAZZ with my daring re-interpretations of tune and harmony (hem hem).

Alongside the WAVs were also DOCs as we shaped the presentation itself, until one evening we sat down together on a ZOOM chat and recorded the whole thing. There then followed several more weeks of VIDOE EDITING as I got a little bit over-excited and made a HUGE EXTRAVAGANZA of video effects, bringing together the talk, the songs, and all manner of illustrations.

You can watch the talk for yourself when it's shown as part of the conference next week - registration is FREE if you fancy it and, as you can see from the Conference Programme, there is a TONNE of interesting Comics Studies-type stuff going on.

The accompanying EP is out THIS week to coincide with Bandcamp Fees Free Friday, so prepare yourself for an onslaught of Me Going On About It, for LO! I think it is RATHER GOOD!

posted 31/3/2021 by MJ Hibbett

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