RED LIGHT BYTES: Red Light Roundup (7-24-2024)
Classics, Deep Cuts & All-New Killers in Art & Entertainment...
Take a few minutes, fill out that survey, and when you come back, we’ll get ya hooked up on our latest round of recommendations!
SONG: “King of Pain” by The Police
I have a habit of looking for things to toss onto the Spotify Megamix that speak to our specific niche of the mid-to-late 20th century. Lots of 80s music that exists in that strange speculative fiction space, between surreal lyrics and atmospheric instrumentals, and few bands are as qualified as English power trio The Police. For 9 years, frontman Sting, drummer Stewart Copeland, and guitarist Andy Summers stood as a premier rock outfit, genre-benders who hit it big in the States, ending their studio output with the 1983 smasher Synchronicity.
While we’ve all been blasting “Every Breath You Take” for the past 40 years, I recently rediscovered just how good the rest of the album (and its B-sides!) were, and appropriately, the song which has ascended to the track-list throne is fellow single “King of Pain,” a mystifying pop rock tune that has that strange desert ambience I find in songs like Mike + The Mechanics’ “Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)." A strange, dreamlike groover full of images of black spots on the sun and “dead salmon frozen in a waterfall,” moments of pain that mesh into a kaleidoscopic voyage upon the steady pulse of the band. No wonder it managed to hit No. 3 on the Hot 100 without a music video (the clip shared is from Aussie music show Countdown), it’s just that damn good! Give it a listen.
KICKSTARTER: The Hidden Emperor — An Alya Rin Adventure
“Ayla Rin, Agent Of The Terran Imperium, returns to face a new sinister plot against the Imperium!
Something is amiss with the Emperor of Mankind. Ayla Rin discovers he's been replaced by a clone who's intentionally sabotaging the Imperium on behalf of the evil Scorpio Alliance! But worse, the Scorpio Alliance knows she knows. And that means blackmail. Ayla is forced to find a secret superweapon that could unleash devastation on the Imperium.
Fans of Valerian, The Incal, and Saga epic science fiction comics will love THE HIDDEN EMPEROR!” — From the Kickstarter campaign page
Simply put, the man’s done it again! I was really big on the 2022 debut of Jon Del Arroz’s space-age agent Alya Rin, Overmind, and am glad to see her back in action in a brand-new graphic novel adventure. Between his lean, high-octane writing, Ms. Krimson’s snazzy art, and the impeccable coloring this series has been afforded, The Hidden Emperor continues to carry the torch of classic pulp sci-fi with Arroz’s bande dessinée inspirations well in hand. Fortunately, I got time to get my pledge in, and if this all sounds like your jam, get yours in too.
TV MOVIE: Walker, Texas Ranger: One Riot One Ranger (1993)
There is a frightening amount of this long-running action series’ DNA in 365 Infantry, and I say frightening because I had never actually seen Walker, Texas Ranger until earlier this year. With its B-movie roots in the dying days of Cannon Films, and that special level of filmic “polish” as afforded its first three episodes, action star Chuck Norris delivers a contemporary western like no other, and “One Riot One Ranger” was the spearhead that launched one of the cult heroes of 90s TV.
Before the formula had a chance to take hold, inveterate director Virgil W. Vogel dishes up a lean 90-minute slice of crime drama as the titular cowboy lawman and a fresh-faced ranger track down a crack-team of bank robbers who killed Walker’s old partner. While it uses a well-worn buddy cop plot, the telefilm shines brightest through its lovable characters, taut action, and rousing sense of neo-Western fun. Standouts include Floyd Red Crow Westerman as uncle Ray Firewalker, and a fresh-outta-Matlock Clarence Gilyard as new partner Trivette, who steals the show with a surprisingly touching monologue about why he joined the Rangers, recounting classic western heroes like The Lone Ranger and contrasting them with the dereliction of urban life. Feels like a word to the wise for all of us pulp-slingers who work to uphold the legacy of these beloved icons.
While it's easy to joke about Norris and his penchant for playing borderline invulnerable, emotionally vacant heroes whose martial arts and gun-slinging ways will get them out of anything, it's the much touted (and derided) moral core of the series that grants Walker something human to hold onto, allowing him to open the character up emotionally without sacrificing stoicism, and makes the occasional touches of Native American spiritualism ring a lot truer to the character than they otherwise might. The scene of him and the woman he’s protecting is astounding in its sensitivity in a way I don’t think I’ll be seeing during the weekly series.
From the on-and-off dusty fields of Texas to the neowestern image of a cowboy bucketing around in a muddied pickup, to the sheer amount of 80s action spilling over into the 90s, I’m honestly shocked this WASN’T in the pot when I was cooking up the series. It has a lot of the trappings of what I love about my series, but also manages to carry off its “Get Along Gang” diversity extraordinarily well. You can tell the series had to put an angle on its formula for network TV, but wholly refreshing that for its lack of idpol nonsense that plagues modern screenwriting. It’s just honest characters doing a job, working together to get shitbags behind bars. Chuck Norris orchestrating an ideal America, fighting the good fight, every Saturday night. Again, shocked to hell and back that this wasn’t in the melting pot previously.
All in all, a helluva debut for what would be come an eventide institution on CBS for over half-a-decade. From now on, expect a little more hand-to-hand combat, and plenty of loud rodeo shirts around here. Be seeing you!
