Grant Morrison explores the underbelly of pop culture and modern society through the prism of comic books and his music tastes are just as thoughtful.
He stopped by LA-based public radio station KCRW (89.9 FM and KCRW.com) to share five songs that have inspired him throughout his life on the Guest DJ Project. Clever lyrics always catch his ear, from Morrissey to The Mutton Birds, and he reveals the track he considers the theme song to his cult favorite comic series The Invisibles – “Mogadishu“ by Baader Meinhof.
From Grant:
“This particular song is just so cool, for me this is the essence of cool, this song, and it’s a really sexy, slow, kind of iconic song. And what it made me feel, it was very much of a time where I was doing The Invisibles comic, which was about a group of sexy terrorists, you know occult terrorists. And this would have been the theme song of The Invisibles. You know I think it says everything about that outlaw glamour, the life lived on the fringes of the law, and on an international scale, and I really love it for that. It’s the sexiest song about terrorism that you will ever hear.”
He also praised the psychedelic hip hop of Dr. Octagon (“It sounded like comic books, it sounded like my favorite science fiction, it sounded like the weirdest television show you’d ever seen.”) and the Beatles parody group The Rutles. He says the work of Eric Idle and, in particular, songwriter Neil Innes resulted in “a parody that’s as good as the original, and in some cases better because Innes is such a genius song writer. He’s actually better than any of the song writers in The Beatles, as regards lyrics.”
“You know sometimes in my work I love to pastiche other writers. I kind of learned it all from Innes and The Rutles.”
Grant’s full Guest DJ Project set is offered streaming, for download and as a podcast (with a transcript) here: http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/gd/gd120104grant_morrison
Grant’s most recent release is a book analyzing superheroes called Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero. Available at Meltdown Comics
Grant Morrison Guest DJ Project Set List
1 – The Queen Is Dead – The Smiths
2 – Mogadishu – Baader Meinhof
3 – The Heater – The Mutton Birds
4 – Blue Flowers – Dr. Octagon
5 – Joe Public – The Rutles
About KCRW: KCRW 89.9FM is an NPR affiliate serving Southern California and licensed to Santa Monica College. The public radio station represents cutting edge radio at its best, presenting an eclectic mix of independent music, news, talk and arts programming. The terrestrial signal serves Los Angeles, Orange, and Ventura counties, as well as parts of San Diego, San Bernardino, Kern, and Santa Barbara counties and the greater Palm Springs area. KCRW’s programming is internationally renowned and available worldwide at KCRW.com. KCRW offers an all-music channel, Eclectic24, an all news channel and on-air simulcast. . Podcasts and archives of our locally-produced programs and live band performances are available on our website, as well as on our smartphone apps for the iPhone, Android and Blackberry. KCRW’s acclaimed Music Mine app for iPad is dedicated to music discovery.
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