Mister 8

If you’re working on a secret agent themed design project and want a genuine retro feel without resorting to overstated curly serifs and slants, why not turn to the fonts used by the originals? We’ll start with a bit of James Bond:

From Russia With Love Poster

The second James Bond movie asked you to “Meet James Bond” in what I believe is a variation of Cooper Black. Note the single tiered ‘a’ in the poster, however, compared to the double-tiered ‘a’ in the sample below:

Cooper Black

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By Francesco Francavilla, artist of Zorro, the Black Coat, and the spy comic Left on Mission that will one day be reviewed here, a poster for Quantum of Solace:

Quantum of Solace by Francesco Francavilla

And following that, one from the original James Bond film, Dr. No:

Dr. No by Francesco Francavilla

Francesco writes on his sketch blog that a limited number of prints will be available for purchase. For information, write him an email at his official site. I’ve bought art from Francesco in the past, and think he’s an all-around swell guy.

Greg Hatcher at Comics Should Be Good has written a nice overview of James Bond comics, with a few other tidbits about album and paperback art thrown in for good measure. He also points out this lovely-looking book by Alan Porter which will debut next week:

James Bond: History of the Illustrated 007

On Her Majesty's Secret Service Poster

Music by John Barry, lyrics by Hal David.

Within the spy music canon, there are few festive Christmas carols. Singing about the ho-ho-ho-iest of holidays doesn’t usually fit in with a job that involves all sorts of things that put you on the naughty list.

   A          D        A
e|--------------------------|
B|-----5----5--/7-5---------|
G|--/6---6------------4-/6--|
D|--------------0---7-------|
A|---0-------------------0--|
E|--------------------------|

[See the full tablature]

But in the spirit of the season, and thanks to Petter Bengtsson, we’re pleased to bring you the chords to the Barry/David composition, “Do You Know How Christmas Trees are Grown?” that was featured during the ice skating scene where Tracy saves Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The song was sung by Danish singer Nina, aka Nina Van Pallandt, and a chorus of children.

See the song in action in the following YouTube video, which pairs the song with the trailer for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. To play along with the video, skip to the bottom of the tab where we’ve transposed Otis’ transcription to the original key.

Presented without much commentary on the actual content, the 1985 James Bond children’s book, Blackclaw’s Doomsday Plot, written by John Albano, illustrated by Rudy Nebres, cover art by Howard Bender and Sal Trapani, colors by Judith Fast. I begged my mother to buy me this at a Big Lots circa, probably, 1989 or so, and dug it up again when I was home for the holidays.

Albano was a comic writer, achieving the most fame for co-creating the cowboy anti-hero Jonah Hex. He passed away in 2005. Nebres is a Filipino artist who made a name for himself at Marvel Comics and through his Conan-related fantasy art. More info on Nebres can be found at his official site. Howard Bender is a cartoonist and comic artist who also has his own official site. Trapani was a journeyman inker, having worked for most comic companies, including my favorite, Charlton, and passed away in 1999. He also worked on the Get Smart comic, allegedly with art by Steve Ditko. I can’t dig up any info on Judith Fast — anyone have a background for her?

As far as I know, only one other of these was made…I believe Stormbringer. I’ll check with Bender and Nebres to see if they have further information. For now, enjoy: Blackclaw’s Doomsday Plot!

Blackclaw's Doomsday Plot Cover

Title Page

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The Best of James Bond 30th Anniversary Collection

Music by Monty Norman, arranged by John Barry

e|------------------|
B|------------------|
G|------------------|
D|------------------|
A|-2---3---4---3----|
E|---0---0---0---0--|

[See the full tablature]

There are probably hundreds of tablature versions of the James Bond theme on the internet. So why bother putting up a new one? There are two reasons:

Because many, if not most, of the tabs aren’t even close to sounding like the Bond theme, or only feature little bits, or get wrong the EmM79 (thanks to Spy-Fi for the correct name! see comments below) chord at the end. This one at least sounds mostly right.

And because, though it’s overplayed, overexposed, and perhaps overhyped, it was the original. Through all the imitators, the James Bond Theme remains one of the best, most memorable pieces of film music ever.

For detailed information on the lawsuit over who actually created the song, check out the John Barry Resource.

Soon, very soon, we’ll be writing about other secret agents, but here’s another Bond bit, a commission by comic artist Tim Sale. This one’s from the collection of Bill Nolan, who shared the art on ComicArtFans.com. According to Nolan’s write-up, this was an anniversary present for his wife, the “Jen” noted at the bottom.

Tim Sale is, of course, the famed comic artist and often partner of writer Jeph Loeb, together responsible for acclaimed comic series like Batman: The Long Halloween and A Superman For All Seasons. What’s great about this piece is that Nolan also supplies an in-process pic of the pencils, so we can see the behind-the-scenes of how Sale creates the pin-up.

Pencils by Tim Sale

Finished Tim Sale Art

Dr. No Soundtrack

(Ignore the fact that yesterday I said we’d be moving on from James Bond, and bear with me one more day!)

e|---8---s8-6-8-6-----------|
B|---8------------8-6---6-8-|
G|---8----------------8-----|
D|---10---------------------|
A|---10---------------------|
E|-8-8----------------------|

[See the full tablature to "Dr. No's Fantasy"]

[See the full tablature to "The James Bond Theme"]

One of my guilty spy soundtrack pleasures is Monty Norman’s score for Dr. No. Though most of what is heard on the soundtrack appears only there and not in the film itself, I enjoy the Carribean style flair that Norman provides for the first James Bond adventure. Norman tells his version of the creation of the James Bond theme on his website, and this includes how he came to work for the Bond producers. Long story short, Cubby Broccoli was a producer on a musical called Belle, or The Ballad of Dr. Crippen, for which Norman had provided the music and lyrics. The production failed, but Broccoli admired Norman’s work, and so hired him on to produce the soundtrack for the first film made from the recently acquired James Bond rights.

And so, in Jamaica, surrounded by tropical atmosphere, Norman composed most of the score for Dr. No, including the song Underneath the Mango Tree, sung by both Ursula Andress and Sean Connery in the film. But the James Bond film still needed a theme. The legend, from Norman’s viewpoint at least, goes that, working with a young orchestrator named John Barry, Norman turned a song from an abandoned V.S. Naipaul musical into the classic Bond theme.

But the legend also goes that this wasn’t his first attempt. There on the soundtrack is a song called “The James Bond Theme” that is not the familiar tune.

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According to defense attorneys for the Sunday Times, during the infamous libel lawsuit filed by Norman, the song titled “Dr. No’s Fantasy,” was the original submitted theme for 007. Norman dismisses this as a myth, saying that he considered, but rejected this song without submitting to producers, and that he had nothing to do with the titles used for the final album. However, “Dr. No’s Fantasy” was cited by Norman and his attorneys as influencing the middle section of the final Bond theme.

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In any case, the riff appears multiple times on the album, in the two songs above and in the well-known “Twistin’ With James,” which is in the same key as “Dr. No’s Fantasy,” with intense sax solos that…well, I didn’t feel like figuring them out. If you want to play “Twistin’ With James,” then improvise!

A new month, a new theme! February’s theme: spy surf rock.

Surf rock is a genre of instrumental music, where the lead reverb-drenched melody is usually played by an electric guitar or saxaphone, or occasionally a Hammond organ or electric piano. Perhaps the most well-known surf songs are Miserlou, the Dick Dale track prominently featured in Pulp Fiction, Wipeout by the Surfaris, or Pipeline by the Chantays.

One sub-section of surf rock is spy surf, or spy rock, typified by jazz-influenced melodies in minor keys (many in E-minor), and twangy riffs played on the fat low strings. Influenced primarily by the work of Vic Flick (guitarist on the original Bond theme), and those who followed him in creating spy themes of the 60s, spy surf bands like Spy-Fi or Seks Bomba often mix covers with originals.

To kick off this month’s theme, I wanted to spotlight some covers of the various Bond themes as an introduction to the genre. What follows are spy surf versions of every Bond theme from the 1960s, the heyday of both Bond and surfing, with information on the artist and album from which the track was taken.

The Playboys – Dr. No (James Bond Theme)

Originally recorded for their 1965 Sound Award Album, the Playboys’ version of Dr. No is now only available, as far as I know, on the massive Board Boogie: Surf n’ Twang From Down Under. Information on the band is scarce, but here’s what I could dig up: The Playboys were formed in Melbourne, Australia, in 1963, and featured Bill Billings (Lead), Phil Blackmore (Organ, Piano, Guitar), John Cartwright (Rhythm Guitar), Neil McArthur (Bass), and Graeme Trottman (Drums). Later, the band included  Trevor Griffin (Organ), Brian Peacock (Bass), and Mick Rodgers and Rod Stone (Guitar). Their albums were released on the Australian independent label Sunshine Records, and they also served as the backup band for other Sunshine vocalists. The band split in 1967, with members joining the Librettos and the Procession. More information on the Playboys can be found on the Milesago page on the Procession.

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The Charles Napiers – From Russia With Love

The Charles Napiers version of From Russia With Love can be heard on the 1999 One Million Dollar Records release The Sinister Organization. The Napiers hailed from the U.K. and throughout their 14-year career (1991-2005) featured guitarist Dan Whaley, bassist John Skittles, guitarist Clive Pearman (1991-1995), drummer Danny O’Brien (1991-2000), guitarist Lee Duggan (1995-2005), drummer Sophie Skittles (2000-2003), and drummer Mark Braby (2003-2005). In addition to this version of From Russia With Love, The Sinister Organization also features a cover of You Only Live Twice, and they also made a cover of Thunderball for a compilation called Licensed to Hear that I’ve never run across before. The three founding members of the Charles Napiers (which I desperately hope was named for the American character actor / voiceover artist, and not the British admiral) now play in the McDeath Trio.

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Man Or Astro-Man? – Goldfinger

This version of Goldfinger was originally on the 1995 7″ Return to Chaos, and was later included on the fantastic compilation Secret Agent S.O.U.N.D.S. Man Or Astro-Man were a fantastic punk-surf band from Alabama / space that featured extraterrestrials Star Crunch (guitar), Birdstuff (drums) and Coco (bass). Their live shows were amongst the best concerts I’ve ever seen, and I continue to mourn their absence, though in writing this post, I discovered that Star Crunch, aka Brian Causey, wrote and provided vocals for The Theme Song For Jimmy Neutron, which I’ve been enamored with for a few years despite not feeling that thrilled about the actual show. I encourage you to buy the entire Man or Astro-Man back catalog.

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The Clee-Shays – Thunderball

From what I can figure out: The Clee-Shays recorded Thunderball for the Japanese market, where they released a number of spy surf 7″ singles. The album this song was ripped from, Dynamic Guitar Sounds of the Clee-Shays, was released in 1998, a collection of the best of these singles. I bought this CD in a thrift store a few years ago, where I found it in a case that had no booklet, and there’s little information about the Clee-Shays on the web. Here’s what I can find about them: Ed Fournier, John Anderson and Bob Edwards on alternating lead guitars, Buzz Carre on bass, and Delvy alternating with Larry Brown on drums. The band was put together in the studio by Richard Delvy, drummer for the Challengers, which also at one point featured Fournier, and the songs were recorded in the mid 1960s. A quality album, but still mostly a mystery. Anyone else have better information?

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The Vultures – You Only Live Twice

This one is a complete mystery. I got this in MP3 form from a forum discussing James Bond covers. From the low-fi quality and the general ambience, I’m wondering if this is a recording of a live show. I believe the primary suspect should be Joe Weed’s The Vultures, who recorded a one-off album of instrumental classics on Appalachian / bluegrass instruments. Again, I’d love any input from the readership, because I love this version. I can offer that the album listed in the MP3 track information is Surfing, that this is track 15, and the year of release is listed as 1999. Thanks to Spy-Fi guitarist Tom Pervanje, I can tell you more about the Vultures who were responsible for this track:

The Vultures were from Erie, PA. I had their album, but gave it to Tom Hinders, from the Tsunami Soul show in Oberlin, OH. Spy-Fi shared the bill with them in 2000 in Twinsburg, OH. They located in Columbus, OH at that time, then relocated to Florida, that’s the last I heard. The version of YOLT is live and did come from the Surfing CD.

Tom also provides a link where you can purchase the album from which this song was taken. Thanks, Tom!

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Big Ray & The Futuras – Casino Royale

Did I not say every Bond theme from the 60s? This song comes from the otherwise disappointing album That’s New Pussycat – Surf Tribute to Burt Bacharach, where the only other decent offering was the Aqualad’s version of The Blob. Big Ray & The Futuras hail from Massachusetts, and may now be extinct — their website is, at least. I believe that the band consisted of Big Ray, Chris Neff (guitar) and Paul Wilson (drums). In any case, this track is the bee’s knees, and I believe additional Big Ray albums can be purchased from Double Crown Records. I wish I could say this album was worth buying for this song but…I’d only go that far if you can find it cheap somewhere. Like I said, though, this track, and the Aqualads’ Blob are king.

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Dr. Frankenstein – On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Of this track, available on the band’s debut album The Lost Tapes From Dr. Frankenstein’s Lab, surf-master Phil Dirt said, “Dark and espionage flavored, ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ is menacing and yet melodic. The unnerving structure leaves you looking for an exit, yet drawn into the track. Some very nice whammy chords enhance the track with a shimmer factor as it moves into and out of a great break. Heavy is an understatement,” and I agree with him wholeheartedly. The band consists of André Joaquim on guitar, Bruno Quintino on drums, Dave Gomez on bass, and Luis Sales on organ. Check their MySpace page for more information.

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As I’ve written before, Jason @ Spy Vibe is running a fantastic series on set design, part of the stylishness of 60s spy cinema that influenced the creation of the term for which Jason named his site. As part of this series, he’s asked a bunch of spy fiction experts and aficionados to submit their top five lists for publication on the site as well, yours truly included (in the aficionados category, certainly).

Now Jason didn’t specifically instruct us to choose from the worlds of film and television, but I’m willing to wager that most of his respondents did just that. But while giving my own list some thought, I wondered about spy fiction in other mediums, and began to think about my favorite non-film and TV “sets.” I thought I might make a series of posts here on the subject, presenting maybe my top two from each “other” medium, or at least discussing a few things, and to solicit your opinions on the matter as well.

Today, I want to spotlight two sections in two books that I love, to demonstrate different methods of scene-setting. Set in a book doesn’t work the same way as it does when it can be physically represented, as in a film, or television, or a play. Settings are filtered through the narrator, the tone of the book, the mood of the characters. The best scene settings read like poetry, as in one of my favorite sections from Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana:

He walked home. The long city lay spread along the open Atlantic; waves broke over the Avenida de Maceo and misted the windscreens of cars. The pink, grey, yellow pillars of what had once been the aristocratic quarter were eroded like rocks; an ancient coat of arms, smudged and featureless, was set over the doorway of a shabby hotel, and the shutters of a night-club were varnished in bright crude colours to protect them from the wet and salt of the sea. In the west the steel skyscrapers of the new town rose higher than lighthouses into the clear February sky. It was a city to visit, not a city to live in, but it was the city where Wormold had first fallen in love and he was held to it as though to the scene of a disaster. Time gives poetry to a battlefield, and perhaps Milly resembled a little the flower on an old rampart where an attack had been repulsed with heavy loss many years ago. Women passed him in the street marked on the forehead with ashes as though they had come up into the sunlight from underground. He remembered that it was Ash Wednesday.

This selection describes the atmosphere of pre-revolution 1950s Havana–the mixture of old and new world, the juxtaposition of nightlife and battlefields–and relates quite effectively the personality of Wormold, despite only mentioning his name once. I don’t want to spoil the book for you, because you should go out and read it. Greene has a knack, in most of his books, for providing only those perfect details of place, and no more. Writing is not a process of addition, it’s an exercise in subtraction, paring down the words until only the most essential truths remain.

For the more fantastic, and this certainly fits in more with Jason’s concept of “spy vibe,” turn to Ian Fleming’s Moonraker:

It was like being inside the polished barrel of a huge gun. From the floor, forty feet below, rose circular walls of polished metal near the top of which he and Drax clung like two flies. Up through the centre of the shaft, which was about thirty feet wide, soared a pencil of glistening chromium, whose point, tapering to a needle-sharp antenna, seemed to graze the roof twenty feet above their heads.

The shimmering projectile rested on a blunt cone of latticed steel which rose from the floor between the tips of three severely back-swept delta fins that looked as sharp as surgeons’ scalpels. But otherwise nothing marred the silken sheen of the fifty feet of polished chrome steel except the spidery fingers of two light gantries which stood out from the walls and clasped the waist of the rocket between thick pads of foam-rubber.

Where they touched the rocket, small access doors stood open in the steel skin and, as Bond looked down, a man crawled out of one door on to the narrow platform of the gantry and closed the door behind him with a gloved hand. He walked gingerly along the narrow bridge to the wall and turned a handle. There was a sharp whine of machinery and the gantry took its padded hand off the rocket and held it poised in the air like the forelegs of a praying mantis. The whine altered to a deeper tone and the gantry slowly telescoped in on itself. Then it reached out again and seized the rocket ten feet lower down. Its operator crawled out along its arm and opened another small access door and disappeared inside.

“Probably checking the fuel-feed from the after tanks,” said Drax. “Gravity feed. Ticky bit of design. What do you think of her?” He looked with pleasure at Bond’s rapt expression.

“One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,” said Bond. It was easy to talk. There was hardly a sound in the great steel shaft and the voices of the men clustered below under the tail of the rocket were no more than a murmur.

Drax pointed upwards. “Warhead,” he explained. “Experimental one now. Full of instruments. Telemeters and so forth. Then the gyros just opposite us here. Then mostly fuel tanks all the way down until you get to the turbines near the tail. Driven by superheated steam, made by decomposing hydrogen peroxide. The fuel, fluorine and hydrogen” (he glanced sharply at Bond. “That’s top-secret by the way”) “falls down the feed tubes and gets ignited as soon as it’s forced into the motor. Sort of controlled explosion which shoots the rocket into the air. That steel floor under the rocket slides away. There’s a big exhaust pit underneath. Comes out at the base of the cliff. You’ll see it tomorrow. Looks like a huge cave. When we ran a static test the other day the chalk melted and ran out into the sea like water. Hope we don’t burn down the famous white cliffs when we come to the real thing. Like to come and have a look at the works?”

Bond followed silently as Drax led the way down the steep iron ladder that curved down the side of the steel wall. He felt a glow of admiration and almost of reverence for this man and his majestic achievement. How could he ever have been put off by Drax’s childish behaviour at the card-table? Even the greatest men have their weaknesses. Drax must have an outlet for the tension of the fantastic responsibility he was carrying. It was clear from the conversation at dinner that he couldn’t shed much on to the shoulders of his highly-strung deputy. From him alone had to spring the vitality and confidence to buoy up his whole team. Even in such a small thing as winning at cards it must be important to him to be constantly reassuring himself, constantly searching out omens of good fortune and success, even to the point of creating these omens for himself. Who, Bond asked himself, wouldn’t sweat and bite his nails when so much had been dared, when so much was at stake?

As they filed down the long curve of the stairway, their figures grotesquely reflected back at them by the mirror of the rocket’s chromium skin, Bond almost felt the man-in the-street’s affection for the man whom, only a few hours previously, he had been dissecting without pity, almost with loathing.

When they reached the steel-plated floor of the shaft, Drax paused and looked up. Bond followed his eyes. Seen from that angle it seemed as if they were gazing up a thin straight shaft of light into the blazing heaven of the arcs, a shaft of light that was not pure white but a shot mother-of-pearl satin. There were shimmers of red in it picked up from the crimson canisters of a giant foam fire-extinguisher that stood near them, a man in an asbestos suit beside it aiming its nozzle at the base of the rocket. There was a streak of violet whose origin was a violet bulb on the board of an instrument panel in the wall, which controlled the steel cover over the exhaust pit. And there was a whisper of emerald green from the shaded light over a plain deal table at which a man sat and wrote down figures as they were called to him from the group gathered directly beneath the Moonraker’s tail.

Gazing up this pastel column, so incredibly slim and graceful, it seemed unthinkable that anything so delicate could withstand the pressures which it had been designed to meet on Friday-the howling stream of the most powerful controlled explosion that had ever been attempted; the impact of the sound barrier; the unknown pressures of the atmosphere at 15,000 miles an hour; the terrible shock as it plunged back from a thousand miles up and hit the atmospheric envelope of the earth.

Drax seemed to read his thoughts. He turned to Bond. “It will be like committing murder,” he said.

A perfect merger of science fiction and the thriller, encapsulated in a stroll through a rocket chamber. This is, perhaps, the closest to Ken Adams that Fleming’s writing ever gets, or perhaps later, when Bond and Gala Brand are…well, as I said before, I don’t want to spoil it for you! Read the book!