Marvel Girl

From In the New Old-Fashioned Way

If you’ve ever scanned the internet for Fluid Ounces or Seth Timbs-related material, you may have noticed that it seems like nearly every review from the era of In the New Old-Fashioned Way seemed to make a point of prominently mentioning this song. I know of a couple of fans who place this song in their “Top 5” lists for the band, and although I really like the song, I can’t say I’d place it as high as they do or that I’d consider it one of the two or three most-mentionable songs on what is generally agreed to be the band’s pop masterpiece. It is another in the long line of songs that seem to hop out and greet you as only a track one song can, and I think it was entertained as being the opening track to In the New Old-Fashioned Way since it actually is the first song on the promo versions that were released.

But it is a very clever song about a comic book hero (who is also known as Jean Grey, the one played by the white Bond girl, for those of you who don’t know the X-Men beyond the movies—I always hoped this song would make it onto the soundtrack of one of the films…) with the clever lines, “Marvel Girl’s origin will be explained in the bridge,” pause, then whispers, “bridge.” Seth also exclaims, “Cities fall to rubble as her power unleashes,” which he later mentioned as fitting among the black-listed lyrics after the events of September 11, 2001. But they continued playing the song regularly anyway.

This one was played live regularly up until the latest (and probably final) line-up was christened, and it seems to have fallen permanently to the back-burner with all the new songs that Seth wrote and the large number of songs being considered for revival. Personally, I heard it live too many times and am happy that it’s strictly enjoyed at the beginning of In the New Old-Fashioned Way and remembered on live recordings now (like the video below, another from October 10, 1997, at Main Street).