149: Tom Verlaine // Tom Verlaine
Tom Verlaine
Tom Verlaine
1979, Elektra
We must consider the possibility that Tom Verlaine was a himbo. The kind of lanky, blue-eyed bone machine with lockpicker’s hands who makes a plain short-sleeved shirt look like runway apparel, and has the sort of innate social reserve that makes you blushingly work to fill in his silences—though the truth might be that most of the time there is nothing really going on behind his Mona Lisa smirk, only the faint urge to go back to fiddling with his guitar by himself. You can map anything onto a quiet man like that when he is beautiful, and when he plays his instrument like (to quote Verlaine’s one-time paramour Patti Smith) “a thousand bluebirds screaming.”
Much has been made of his nicking the stage name ‘Verlaine’ from the French poet, but by his own admission he just thought it sounded good! I mean, skim this 2000s-era interview about books from Dusted magazine; he clearly likes and is curious about art, and he’s admirably uninterested in impressing anyone (as established though, he wouldn’t need to!), but he doesn’t seem to think about any of it in a particularly analytical way. I mention all this because, due to its urbane effeteness, Verlaine’s output is always read as intellectual music, when there’s an equal possibility he was actually more of a sweet, slightly spectrumy goofball with intuitive cool. That’s not to privilege intellectualism over intuition; many of our greatest painters, composers, and even poets are hopeless at explaining the compulsions that shape their output, and a lot of the ones who can do the ‘splainy part well would be better off as critics.
At any rate, the trigger that set off this line of himbo inquiry/conspiracy theory was the duo of “Mr. Bingo” and “Yonki Time,” the songs that close the first side of Verlaine’s self-titled solo debut. They are simply put, two of the dumbest ass songs I have ever heard in my life. How to describe “Yonki Time?” A tuneless soundcheck goof replete with raspberries and fart noises that someone decided was funny enough to work into a full song, it’s the kind of musical non-sequitur that makes you wonder whether sequitur is Latin for “funny.” Lyrically, it’s full of jokes that probably made his friends shrug and say with an air of apology, “Well, Tom has a unique sense of humour.” The fact it wasn’t relegated to a B-side, its existence at all, really, forces a slight reappraisal of how much irony there was to songs like “Venus di Milo” and “Prove It”; how do they hit us if they were more goofily sincere than they seemed? To me, it lends them a certain charm, makes the otherwise inscrutably aloof Verlaine a little more human.
Tom Verlaine has taken me a while to get into compared to the first two Television records that preceded it. It’s not wildly different; Verlaine wasn’t anyone’s idea of a musical chameleon. He discovered his style as a vocalist, guitarist, and arranger almost immediately, and never meaningfully deviated from the trebly, drifting update on the Velvets established on Marquee Moon. Some of this is surely due to the absence of Television’s co-lead guitarist Richard Lloyd, whose comparatively rugged attack gave that band a more rocking vigour. Without him, Verlaine’s sound is dreamier, and it requires more attention to appreciate the brilliance of how he’s playing these diffuse pseudo-pop songs. Some songs, like the regal “Last Night,” clear out space for Verlaine to do his meditative guitar wizard thing, but often it’s the more propulsive songs like the jangly “Red Leaves” or the groovy “Souvenir from a Dream” that produce the real moments of wonder, when on a sixth or seventh listen you realize no one else on earth would’ve thought to put a song together in just this way.
There’s a story that David Bowie brought him into the studio during the Scary Monsters sessions to record some guitar parts, and Verlaine spent the entire allotted time trying out the many available amps without being able to settle on one and ended up leaving without having recorded anything usable. The Bowie connection was a huge opportunity for Verlaine, who had just recently begun his solo career. Television had been critically revered but had had little commercial impact, and Tom Verlaine wasn’t a brisk seller either—Bowie’s choice to cover the album’s “Kingdom Come” was a coup, but Verlaine was unwilling or unable to capitalize on the moment. His next LP, 1981’s Dreamtime wasn’t any more or less commercial than the albums that preceded it: it was another Tom Verlaine qua Tom Verlaine album, and if he couldn’t make any other kind of record, nobody else could make exactly his kind either. He was after all a uniquely beautiful man.
149/365
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Hello Mr. Jade Prideoftheline, you may be reconized me as @Susan363 who's often posting hcs, incorrect quotes and ideas on Olivia's blog. I send this message to you because I wanted to say that I really adored your Anpanman oc, Kaitojishaku. Despite not knowing much about him, I can see that he's a very funny character, and the idea that he and Horrorman are just a "dumb@sses in love" couple? Mwah! Chef kiss. 💋🤌
I really wanted to know more about Kaito, I would like to resquest that you put on his design, I know that he is suppose to be a magnet but I can only picture his head as a U size magnet. I hope that this isn't much to ask!
Oh yes yes of course! I can give a whole damn infodump about good ol' Kaito!
For posterity's sake, though, I'm slappin' this under a readmore. This is a long dang infodump!
Name: Kaitojishaku... or, that's their alias as a thief. Their real name is... last name Jishaku, given name Kaito. How creative. However, each "Kaito" is spelled differently in Japanese. The "Kaito" in their alias means "phantom thief" and the "Kaito" in their actual name is spelled in the way a given name might be spelled. Different kanji.
Pronouns: he/she/they. Albeit I think they'd be open to more. In Japanese, I think they'd tend toward the neutral and formal watashi for their "I" pronoun, just to amp up their dramatic phantom thief vibes.
Kaitojishaku was conceptualized to fill in a niche I didn't think was filled in the Anpanman 'verse: a gentleman thief/phantom thief archetype!
And of course, what's better at grabbing shiny things than a magnet? So, Kaitojishaku was born! And I started by making them the very fun flavor of morally grey that the Anpan-verse tends to lack. It's very black-and-white there, so I thought, let's throw some well-intentioned light grey in there!
Now onto design. Here is the very first piece of Kaito art, I'd say circa... August o' 2022?
Their design has changed a little since then due to interpretations from my good pal @olivias-hyperfixation-corner. Olivia interpreted their thiefy mask as cat-eye glasses, and I loved the thought of these being sorta... both! Kaito's metal body that isn't made of magnets and just metal got reinterpreted into a turtleneck sweater. So they just... kinda don't wear pants, ig.
But I did once draw them in an alternate outfit to show further limb motion and further establish their disproportionately long arms as intentional!
Oh, and their eyeshadow(?) changed a bit.
Kaito's two-tone design was definitely inspired by ENA.
Now, onto lore!
Kaitojishaku was created by a smithing fairy (think about how Uncle Jam is a baker and a fairy) named Anvil in a steampunky city that'd be a solid sleeper train's trip away from the main town in the show.
She was given two powerful gifts by Anvil. One was a jacket filled with pockets upon pockets. He can basically cartoonishly pull larger objects outta 'em. Bag of holding style.
The other gift he was given was a staff/cane of sorts in order to help him push off from any metal surfaces he encountered, but he didn't really seem to get it, instead getting frustrated with the world around him being something he just kept getting stuck to.
She left in the night, climbing up a nearby mountain as a thunderstorm raged. Yelling to the heavens on a cliffside, they were struck by lightning.
They fell down the cliff. For months, they were just... dead. In pieces. Magnet bits. All that was found of them when the town looked for them was their cane.
But... THEY LIVED. Kaito's pieces clicked themselves back together, but when they came to, their memory was scrambled, only a vague visage of a shiny city left in their thoughts alongside their name.
Their first place of residence was an abandoned baikin-lair they turned into a bunker of sorts. They decided with their name and their tendency toward shiny things, their purpose in life must be stealing. So, that's their thing for a little bit. Until it starts upsetting people. So now their thing is stealing and then immediately giving it back if they weren't supposed to take it.
Their first encounter with Anpanman involves her just grabbing a piece of his head very casually, and then when Anpanman's rightfully confused and distraught, she's just all "oh, did ya want that back? Sorry, here ya go." And then she just presses on. Anpanman says something along the lines of "How strange... nobody else just takes like that except... Baikinman."
Upon hearing this name, Kaito decides that this Baikinman fellow is worth meeting. A fellow thief! They make their way to the Baikincastle and introduce themself to both Dokinchan and Baikinman. Baikinman tells Kaito of his plots against Anpanman, and Kaito thinks it's all in good fun, so he agrees to help. He wants Kaito to go steal an anpan head so he can screw it up and replace Anpanman's head with it.
Kaito proceeds to leave and take WAYYYY too long at the bakery just having pleasant conversation with the bakery gang. They even end up politely asking to take some bread with them!
And they do! Off they go sneaking an entire head of anpan and not sneaking some additional bread for their new friends Baikinman and Dokinchan!
By the time they get back, it's been hours. Horrorman now pops in calling to Baikinman and Dokinchan because he made lunch and he's the only competent cook in this house, before he goes "oh, who's this, hora?"
And then Horrorman and Kaitojishaku hit it off immediately. Horrorman's willing to be nice to literally anyone and go with their plans until it turns out That's Bad and Kaitojishaku is willing to steal from literally anyone until it turns out That's Bad. They've a lot in common in that way, lol. This Is Relevant Later.
Baikinman baikinsciences the anpan head into a messed up one. He lures the bakery gang out and gets Dokinchan and Horrorman to guard all the entrances so Anpanman can't get a new head.
But this Messed Up And Evil Head is... not working as intended. It kinda just gives Anpanman an existential crisis. It was supposed to, y'know, make him evil for a bit, maybe.
Kaito realizes, hey, wait, that's just a dick move! Ain't that, like, psychological torture. So, time for a bit of counterstealing!
They go to the back door and... just ask Horrorman to let them in, because they need a favor. And "every good thief has a few accomplices!"
So he does. And Kaito gets a new anpan head! But Dokinchan notices and tries to put a stop to this. And her and Horrorman bicker a bit over this before Kaito throws a smoke bomb and with their epic phantom thief skills, scurries off.
They replace Anpanman's head after asking a very "distracted with trying to figure out how to improvise an anpan head" Jam and Batako if they would rather do the honors (and is ignored because they're absolutely frantic rn), they chuck the head onto Anpanman, typical genki hyakubai, anpunch, baibaikin.
Things calm down, and Anpanman says they really don't have to steal.
But Kaito argues that it's his purpose in life.
Anpanman says it doesn't have to be.
Kaito just asks why Baikinman is allowed to have his purpose be defeating Anpanman, if that's the case.
The truth is, Anpanman thinks Baikinman's too dead-set, but Kaitojishaku seems more receptive to change.
But Kaito's not ready just yet. They say that maybe their stealint will benefit everyone next time, and with another smoke bomb, they disappear.
Then the Hoshi story ensues! You've already seen that, but I'll link it for everyone else reading.
During that, Kaito has resolved to their new "stealing with permission, mostly" outlook, such as... "stealing" free samples. Or rocks off the ground. Or Hoshi back from Baikinman.
After that, there's the plotlines Olivia mentioned such as sleepovers, but I also have plans for another plot where Kaito meets their maker - literally! In Anpanman movie fashion, heheh. Good things happen there, worry not.
Oh. And I forgot Kaito's houseboat. Alongside their bunker, they have a houseboat they found abandoned and took up after realizing how big the world is. They name it the Kaito Go after the Anpanman Go, but, Sailorkun tells them most boats usually have SS before their name... so now it's the SS Kaito Go. It's just a tidy little vintage houseboat. Cozy!
But lastly, let me talk about their personality. Kaito tries to be very cool and sneaky and stylish, but they're also just silly at times. Their magnet hands will get stuck to their magnet body, for example. They have a knack for dramatics and tend to be very bombastic and energetic. But they also have a more caring, calmer side. That's the side that tends to get philisophical and all that. And in truth, they're more naive than one might think. They were created an adult, but barely had anyone to teach them... a lot, really. they don't have the basics down. They have random strings of advanced concepts known, though, so it's a big ol' scramble of things.
Kaito tries their best, honestly, and they don't mean harm. But they do wanna go grab loot and break into places and look cool doing it. And who can blame 'em?
So, that's Kaito.
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