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Faster! Faster!

Gary Lucas — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 20:53:58 +0000

Faster! Faster! Gary Lucas February 14, 2024 - 15:53

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VANISHING POINT FOREVER is a sumptuous, handsomely assembled 576-page homage to one of Cult Cinema's critical touchstones in the "Existential Cross Country Car Chase, Crash and Burn Division" Category: 1971's Vanishing Point (d. Richard Sarafian), starring Barry Newman as the eponymous Kowalski (a nod to A Streetcar Named Desire maybe? Or to vegetarian ear-biting wrestling brute Killer Kowalski?). Kowalski plays a former race car driver/ex-cop hero/Viet Nam vet turned wheelman for hire delivering souped-up muscle cars (a 1970 Dodge Challenger) over the interstate for sketchy clientele while high on benzedrine. The film also features Cleavon Little as blind DJ Super Soul, who rules the roost on a desert-soul-music radio station and who can somehow directly communicate (when he wants to!), mano a mano, with Barry Newman via Kowalski's dashboard radio -- as well as crow about Kowalski's daredevil exploits outracing the fuzz to his sizable desert listening audience in real time -- turning Kowalski into a Living American Myth, a synecdoche for Freedom, Liberty and the Right to Drive Really Fast on his way to his ultimate appointment in Samara with a couple of interlocked dump trucks.

Vanishing Point Forever is curated by my old friend cultural critic/historian Robert Melvin Rubin, himself no stranger to fast cars. It contains essays by Rubin, former Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman, the late Cuban experimental novelist and essayist Guillermo Cabrera Infante, who wrote the Vanishing Point screenplay under the pseudonym Guillermo Cain, and my particular favorite, an essay on the film by the great Italian novelist Alberto Moravia; and much, much more. The book contains the entire original script, stills galore, coverage in automotive magazines of the day, Fox's marketing plan, and photos of actual biker babes in various degrees of deshabille - your cup runs over!

20th Century Fox, unfortunately, made them chop this film way down, including excising a pivotal scene featuring fetching Charlotte Rampling as a hitchhiker standing in for Death (shades of Fellini's 1968 Toby Dammit episode from the horror film anthology Spirits of the Dead).

But the film that survives is a lean, mean machine that has resonated over the years with everyone from Quentin Tarantino (Stuntman Mike drives a similar muscle car in Death Proof) to most recently stuntman turned director Chad Stahelski's John Wick 4, which features a black female DJ broadcasting Keanu Reeves's Parisian coordinates-on-the-lam to Reeves, assorted thugs, and seemingly the entire City of Lights at large over some kind of ethereal closed circuit radio channel (France Inter it definitely is NOT).

If you love Bullit, Ronin, Grand Prix, Easy Rider, Thunder Road, and other Hot Wheels to Hell cinematic fare, you have to see Vanishing Point the Movie, which was (hint hint) just re-released on Blu-Ray in a spiffy new upgrade.

And then you have to get this book!!

(Order book here.)

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Pulling No Punches

Gary Lucas — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 23:56:10 +0000

Pulling No Punches Gary Lucas February 11, 2024 - 18:56

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Cover modified by Rosita

My little town of Syracuse, New York, produced two world-shaking Bad Girls--iconic vocalist Grace Jones, who ran with the white biker gangs of Syracuse while I was attending Nottingham High School in the late '60s, and erstwhile Warhol Superstar Viva Hoffmann, a hysterical wit and a face so beautiful and brilliant she dominates the screen in every film of Andy's she ever appeared in (Nude Restaurant, Blue Movie, Bike Boy, et al.).

Now Viva's oldest daughter Alexandra Auder, former actress (Caroline Sinclair auditioned and cast her in Basket Case 2) and present-day internet yoga star, has written a memoir bringing it all back home entitled (haha) DON'T CALL ME HOME all about Growing Up with Viva (and eventually, with Alexandra's little sister Gaby) in the Chelsea Hotel -- with stops in Mexico, the Thousand Islands, Argentina, California, etc. A book so readable and compelling that I raced through it in two days (320 pages). The writing and the stories and the overall mordant, dishy vibe are so fearless and alive on the page -- Auder is SUCH a good writer -- the book makes for spellbinding "you won't put this down once you get started" reading. I can't think of another current writing voice from a female perspective I've been so moved by and engaged with since discovering the work of Elena Ferrante.

Seeing that so many of the transgressive art reprobates of the '60s-'70s NYC demi-monde are either currently dead or dysfunctional or in hiding, it's a pleasure to see many of them spring to life and caper across the page again here. And Alexandra Auder pulls no punches and names -- well, sometimes first names only, like famous photographer/artist Cindy...but you'll figure out who's who, if not by inference, then by a quick trawl through Wikipedia.

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Getting The Drop On Tarantino

Gary Lucas — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 01:10:39 +0000

Getting The Drop On Tarantino Gary Lucas December 26, 2023 - 20:10

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Quentin Tarantino: Cinema Speculation (Harper)

ON THE Q.T.: If you're a Film Lover, this book is definitely for You. The most engaging window into Quentin Tarantino's cranium you'll ever encounter. I read the whole thing, all 390 pages, in two days -- I couldn't put it down, literally (the last time I experienced THAT was inhaling Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One over two days some years ago). Chock full of autobiographical tidbits and boldly assertive assessments of many, many films and filmmakers, not all favorable (spoiler alert: Q's pretty scathing about titans du cinema Scorsese, Schrader and DePalma, although not entirely -- he essentially gives them their fair due and only calls bullshit on them when appropriate), backed up with a staggering knowledge of cinematic backstory / how the actual sausage got made detail-ia, this book will leave you, well... Breathless, as the song goes. Some of Tarantino's opinions are so jaw-dropping as to provoke bar-room brawls among various professional cineastes -- a pretty picky brood forever defending their various turfs in the groves of academe. (Jim McBride's remake of Breathless is better than Godard's original?? Puh-leeze!!) If you care one iota about cinema history, you won't want to / can't afford not to read this book. (Although, hey, I've only seen about 70% of the films he rhapsodizes on -- the book is heavy on 70's exploitation films, which seem to predominantly inform Tarantino's overall aesthetic -- and the chance of me ever "catching up" and viewing them all are just about nil--tant pis). There's also a lot of ground I wish he'd covered here that doesn't get an honest look-see 'except for a passing glance (spaghetti westerns, for instance). Also, after tearing apart Paul Schrader for buckling under studio demands (didja know that Schrader's original Taxi Driver script called for a Black pimp -- definitely NOT Harvey Keitel's "Sport" character -- and a general mow-down of exclusively Black pimps and lowlifes in the penultimate bloodbath sequence, which Columbia Pictures feared would result in demonstrations if not riots against the film in 1976?), I was hoping for the full Tarantella on Blue Collar -- perhaps Schrader's best and most radical film. No such luck. There is no mention here either of his pal and collaborator Robert Rodriguez, who can really hold his own with T in the genre sweepstakes. But maybe they'll be addressed in Vol. 2 of Cinema Speculations, one can only hope another book is forthcoming sooner than later. (Also, Quentin will someday revive his superb Korean restaurant on Carmine Street, Do Hwa, where Caroline and I ate our way through many superb meals). 5 STARS

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The Amplified Come As You Are

Steve Holtje — Sat, 16 Dec 2023 15:26:28 +0000

The Amplified Come As You Are Steve Holtje December 16, 2023 - 10:26

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Michael Azerrad: The Amplified Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana (HarperOne)

Is it okay to review a book in which I am thanked? And the author's been a friend for over four decades? Maybe if I reveal that stuff up front, like I just did…

Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana was originally published by Doubleday in 1993 -- the year before Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain died. Azerrad had interviewed the members of Nirvana for a 1992 Rolling Stone cover story, and Cobain had approved of it enough that later in '92, when he and wife Courtney Love wanted someone to write a Nirvana book, they approached Azerrad, who of course said yes. There was some time pressure -- the book, it was eventually decided, had to be released in conjunction with the release of Nirvana's next album -- but Azerrad was nonetheless able to interview loads of people involved in the lives of the Nirvana members (including a whopping twenty-five hours of interviews with Cobain alone) and delivered a tome which has appeared on multiple lists of the best books on rock topics. In an age when rock albums regularly get expanded in anniversary editions, why not do the same thing with a rock book?

There are two ways of documenting a band: in the moment, or in retrospect. The Amplified Come As You Are is the best of both worlds. Anyone who follows Michael Azerrad on social media can see that he is strongly committed to making sure that assertions, received wisdom, etc. be fact-checked against reality, complete with citations. It turns out he's just as hard on himself. This thirtieth-anniversary revamping of what was the very first book on Nirvana ends up being about twice as long as the original version, and a lot of that additional length comes from Azerrad correcting himself. Much of what he is correcting comes from Cobain confabulating for comic effect or to pre-emptively stave off potential criticism (often deploying a tactic which Azerrad calls "smokescreening by exaggeration"), and flat-out lying about everything from his taste in music to details of his love life to, inevitably, covering up his heroin use. Courtney Love is guilty of image-burnishing as well, but is less of a focus, and Azerrad deliberately avoids detailing the many anti-Courtney stories while acknowledging that they're out there. She comes off as a complex person, intelligent and driven but undiplomatic, alienating people with her blunt behavior.

Most painful are the frequent foreshadowings of Cobain's suicide. Azerrad -- who calls himself an idiot multiple times -- writes, in one of the new bits, "It's excruciating to come across all the references to suicide in this book. But things like that can be difficult to see when you're right in the thick of it." Azerrad spends a considerable amount of space taking advantage of hindsight, which leads to an acute analysis of Cobain's psyche, especially his feelings of inferiority, the ways in which his self-defeating behavior reflects his ambivalence and his difficult youth, the ways in which he tries to have it both ways regarding ambition and approval, and the frequent foreshadowing of his demise.

Azerrad especially reproaches himself for his handling of the heroin topic. His most self-critical passage might be this one: "When Krist said, 'I was afraid of what I might see,' he probably spoke for a lot of people around Kurt: avoid confrontation, just get on with things, and maybe the problem will just go away. That's denial. I did that, too -- I was dimly aware that Kurt was doing heroin more than he admitted; I just didn't want to dig into it. It would have jeopardized my book. And I feared the wrath of their management and legal team… It would have betrayed the trust Kurt had for me -- but was it really trust? Or was it faith -- faith that he could play me, or at least that I would look the other way? Was it my place as a journalist to rat him out? Did I even know how to deal with such information responsibly and constructively? I just kept writing my Nirvana biography and left out the more sensational 'Kurtney' stuff."

On the other hand, Azerrad did get a fair amount of heroin discussion into the book, and he sometimes called out Cobain, as in this passage: "'I can't stand people who don't confront anyone,' Kurt says, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he himself is a prime offender in this regard." He also included Cobain making horrible threats of violence against some journalists who had offended him, and though Cobain apparently had no problem with those quotes being included, Azerrad clearly realized that they did not display Cobain in a favorable light (he refers to the "undeniable creepiness of the answering machine tapes"). One of the things I got from reading this new edition is a new appreciation for how well-rounded a portrait (warts and all) Azerrad delivered; true, things were even worse than he realized, but he still included much more negative information than most rock biographies done with the cooperation of its subjects deliver. (But not "authorized"; that is generally understood to include the subjects' right to control the text, whereas Azerrad's contract specifically disallowed that.) Yet he had to struggle with some difficult decisions: he had been told that Cobaine cheated on the urine tests he had to submit in order to keep daughter Frances Bean after Children's Services had taken her away from the couple, but he left that out of the book because "I was just not going to pursue it and perhaps be responsible for them losing their child again, maybe for good." I have never, in my three-decades-plus time in music journalism, had to make a decision with even a hundredth of the possible impact of that.

It's not all angst, though. Azerrad has a sardonic sense of humor that often comes out in passages such as, "So the real villains weren't people who never touted punk ideals -- it was the opportunists, the poseurs who hitched themselves to the indie community but didn't emulate its values. The villains were also those who originally embraced those ideals and then betrayed them. Someone had to police these people." It's no wonder that he shows sympathy for Love, who has a somewhat similar (albeit more overstated) sense of humor -- though he also, at one point, remarks on a quote of hers, "Actually, it's not penitence if your only regret is that you got caught."

Azerrad occasionally talks about the nuts and bolts of songwriting/music-making, such as Kurt's use of polytonality (using chords outside the key of the song), without getting especially technical even while explaining it well. Another example is how Cobain picks words that sound good sung more than working on making the lyrics make sense. This focus on picking words with vowels that work well in particular musical contexts is something that Burt Bacharach goes into detail about in his autobiography (which I highly recommend) -- that Cobain, barely musically educated and having learned songwriting through a combination of paying attention to others’ songs and seeing what worked in his own trial-and-error self-education, figured out by himself.

Do I find some faults in the book? Yes. There is a story about using a guitar drop-tuning, in which the lower of the two E strings is tuned down a whole step to D: "For 'Blew,' Kurt tuned down to what's called a 'drop-D' tuning, but before recording the song, the band didn't realize they were already in that tuning and went down a whole step lower than they meant to, which explains the track's extraordinarily heavy sound." This doesn't quite make sense. First, it's unclear whether Kurt or "the band" (Kurt plus Krist) erred. More to the point, when listening to the recording, it's clear that both bass and guitar are tuned down even further than another whole step, C, as they are both playing low Bs, so both bass and guitar were tuned down. That cannot have been an accident. It also is revealing that the guitar part is all riffs, no chords -- Cobain perhaps didn't want to (or couldn't) deal with figuring out chords with one string tuned differently than usual. Instead, this story seems like Kurt making up an entertaining explanation instead of going with the more mundane reality of the situation -- a tactic that Azerrad calls out repeatedly in the "amplified" sections of the book.

There are also contradictory passages regarding the Vanity Fair/Hirschberg article: "Hirschberg couldn't confirm either statement because they weren't true: Kurt was on record -- in my Rolling Stone cover story, for instance -- as saying that he'd started doing heroin long before he even met Courtney." And again: "…various factual errors throughout the piece would seem to compromise Hirschberg's accuracy. For instance, she wrote that Danny Goldberg was a vice president at Polygram Records, when in fact he was a vice president of Atlantic." Three other errors are mentioned in the same paragraph. But later, in one of the new passages, Azerrad refers to Vanity Fair as "a major magazine with a diligent fact-checking department."

But obviously a 618-page book that only contains two inaccuracies has a pretty good batting average. Even Homer nods, as the saying goes.

Or three: Azerrad states that Lemonheads' It’s a Shame About Ray is merely "a decent album." I know that the following Lemonheads release contained the group's biggest hit, but It's a Shame About Ray is by far my favorite Lemonheads record to put on. De gustibus non est disputandum. I kid, I kid.

But enough of my frivolity. A final, post-Cobaine-suicide, chapter was added to a reprint of the original book; I had never read it until now. Anybody who can get through it without shedding tears is probably too dispassionate to have appreciated Nirvana's music. But the most stunning thing about the book in its present state is that it seems like it would be a good read even for someone who doesn't care about Nirvana, because as now presented, it is a fascinating examination of a band's rise and demise; life and death, personality flaws and mistakes and the ways in which someone in the public eye deals with them; the psychological journey of that band's leader, and for that matter of the other players; the intricacies of the music business at a crucial turning point; and the tricky issues a journalist must face in the moment and the later reflections on those issues. Even, I would say, the psychological journey of that journalist: Azerrad is unabashedly emotional at times, especially in the last few chapters.

Given the time of year, this book will make for an excellent stocking-stuffer -- if it's an XXL stocking.

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Steaming and Streaming: The Wondrous Rants of Laurie Stone

Brandon Judell — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 17:21:38 +0000

Steaming and Streaming: The Wondrous Rants of Laurie Stone Brandon Judell June 27, 2022 - 13:21

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Simone de Beauvoir notes in the opening of All Said and Done, the fourth volume of her autobiography: "[S]ometimes I wake up with a feeling of childish amazement -- why am I myself? What astonishes me, just as it sometimes astonishes a child when he becomes aware of his own identity, is the fact of finding myself here, and at this moment, deep into this life and not in any other. What stroke of chance has brought this about?"

And by what chance, after finishing de Beauvoir, are we lucky enough to be able to jump into Laurie Stone's own explorations of self through sex (with both strangers and known quantities), film, womanhood, feminism, Sex in the City, the joys of catering, dogs (both dead and alive), life with "the man I live with," plus the invigorating power of Nature:

"Alongside a roadside, I dug up a clump of wild rose, soaked the roots in a tub of water for several days, and planted it in the front yard. Most of the branches turned brown, but a few spindly ones retained their leaves, and after some time one of the tiny branches sprouted new leaves. It was thrilling."

Little deaths. Little births.

Streaming Now: Postcards from the Thing that Is Happening (dottir press) is an oft-laugh-out-loud collection of Ms. Stone's daily Facebook takes on the world’s carryings-on as prismed through a staunch feminist's eyes. One should also be aware that this, the latest of her memoirs, coincides somewhat with the emergence of COVID and the author's move from New York City to more rural environs with a gent quite brilliant in his own right.

If you are not excited by now, you might for some reason be unfamiliar with Ms. Stone's muscular prose. For decades, her take-no-prisoners judgments have brightened the pages of the Village Voice (1974-1999), The Nation, Evergreen Review, and numerous tomes such as Laughing in the Dark: A Decade of Subversive Comedy. Ms. Stone was even honored by The National Book Critics Circle. More acclaim should be forthcoming.

Ms. Stone began recording these daily thoughts while her sister was slowly passing away. These were in a way "postcards" to her sibling, a desire to show where she, Ms. Stone, had landed and how she got to where she was. Each section is labeled with a date, and a locale, and sometimes a mere word or phrase such as "Give Peas a Chance" or "Apartment."

I never read more than one entry a day, spacing them out over 60 days, so I could enjoy savoring this volume for as long as possible. . . and delight in it I did.

Of course, sometimes reading a nonfiction book by someone you know is a bit unsettling -- and I do know Ms. Stone, although distantly in recent years. Why? Because you can't respond as you would over a latte at Starbucks.

I found myself highlighting a sentence or two on nearly every page as I did with her other works, making comments or doodling stars in the margins. Places to return to. Then if she mentioned a composer (e.g. Scriabin), I'd listen to the same, trying to perceive that Stoned moment as she did herself.

Other times, when she had me laugh, for example with The Rabbi Joke that begins on page 92, I couldn't wait to phone someone and share.

Each section of Streaming often tops or at least equals the previous one, but wait until you get to page 142 where "Friend" begins, a remembrance about an impassioned friendship gone wrong, a dead dog, a story written about a dead dog, and so much more. You can't help but chortle through Laurie's tears. She has that type of talent. If this tale had been written as fiction, it would be making one of those annual collections of best short stories. Which reminds me that Audre Lorde once wrote: "When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak." And speak this author does on Facebook, relentlessly adding by the hour new reminiscences, cultural critiques, and ripostes to the day's political shenanigans.

Only a person as self-assured as Ms. Stone would be so brazenly verbose, so fearlessly uncensored. Yet often she lets us know that she can get hurt and she can hurt as when she quotes Joan Didion: "Writers are always selling somebody out."

Or after reading a friend's obit who was quoted as saying "feeling love had been the best of life," Ms. Stone recalls:

"Reading the obit made me happy. What a great way to look back on a life! Then I remembered I love hating. Or am I good at it. Who knows the difference?"

Last week, at an SRO reading in the Fulton Street McNally Jackson bookstore, a young woman praised the author as "brave" for being on the frontlines of the feminist fight for decades, not just with words but also in her daily actions. Ms. Stone, sitting in front of shelving hosting bios of Hitler and Stalin, and not far from Eleanor Roosevelt’s, tried to argue that she wasn’t brave at all. She lost that battle.

However, more memorable that night, at least to me, was the conversation my two godsons had after the event. The brothers had listened intently as Ms. Stone read a metaphorical, tongue-in-cheek tale of her supposedly having sex with Orthodox Jewish men who washed her female sexual residue off their penises while admitting they would never have children with a woman like her. "We [women of that era] thought it was so sexy!" What follows in the same paragraph is a detailed putdown of the doggy-style approach to lovemaking: "This was supposed to be the hottest of hot sex positions -- it said so in all of the movies and all the TV shows -- and we knew it was the worst, but hey, who were we to argue?"

The elder brother noted in awe, "I never heard about sex from a woman's perspective." The younger sibling nodded. Once again, Ms. Stone, who might not have sold as many books as she should have that night, had continued to transform lives.

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The Masters of Musing

Dusty Wright — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 08:58:16 +0000

The Masters of Musing Dusty Wright August 3, 2014 - 04:58

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Touched By Grace: My Time with Jeff Buckley by Gary Lucas (Jawbone Press)

Über rock guitarist Gary Lucas's loving homage to his pupil Jeff Buckley is chock full of fascinating details and minutia that apparently doomed their creative coupling from the get-go. There is no question that they are two tremendously gifted individuals, and that by joining forces they added magic to the world. And it is also quite apparent, especially when you listen to the music they created together, that theirs was a partnership that should have afforded them both so much more. Had Mr. Buckley not taken his solo flight, leaving Mr. Lucas and their Gods & Monsters to soldier on without him, who knows what magic might have been created from their continued collaboration.

At first glance some might misconstrue that Mr. Lucas and his tome are ego-tripping -- waxing poetic about his time spent with the venerated singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley, son of the legendary and vastly superior singer-songwriter Tm Buckley, who both died way too young. But that is not so, Mr. Lucas is merely setting the record straight about his involvement with the young singer-songwriter's career and about his own critically lauded career. Ego is paramount for the super id to flourish and manifest in super-creative ways. And even more so for performing on the live stages -- whether theatrical or musical. For you see, Mr. Lucas and young Mr. Buckley could wow a crowd on a live stage. (Mr. Lucas continues to do so to this day.)

Knowing Mr. Lucas as well as I do, I can honestly say that his book is more about the journey of two creative souls and the roads they traveled -- both together and apart. It's as much a story about Gary and his career trajectory, too. And, it's the story about the master and student, the student who leaves the master, and ascends and then descends while the master can only look on and shake his head. An arduous journey that is full all of the pitfalls -- tears of joy and rage and confusion and hope and.... And in the end, it was, by Mr. Lucas's account and ours, as sad a way for Mr. Buckley's journey to end so abruptly.

Drawn from diaries and writings of Mr. Lucas, this book details their first meeting and on-stage performance at St. Ann's Church in Brooklyn in 1992 for the Hal Wilner-produced homage to his estranged father Tim Buckley, right through their final awkward meeting and impromptu performance at the Knitting Factory five years later, perhaps Jeff on the cusp of superstardom. One can only imagine what might have been, if these two supremely talented musicians had continued making magic together.

As compelling a rock bio as you'll ever read and one that lets you gaze in wonder inside the mind of a genius guitarist, it is unequivocally well worth the read.

All Mod Cons!

Dusty Wright — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 14:54:37 +0000

All Mod Cons! Dusty Wright October 14, 2013 - 10:54

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Boy About Town: A Memoir - Tony Fletcher

(William Heinemann/Random House)

Many of us of a certain age were informed by rock music. It permeated and dominated our free time; time away from school studies, our parents, our siblings, the man! And we were heavily rewarded. From the utopian music of the late '60s/early '70s to punk and new wave in the late '70s/early '80s, we were privileged to ingest some of finest music ever created in the vortex known as rock 'n' roll. Author Tony Fletcher's excellent new memoir draws from that well in this charming page-turner about his experience in London from 1972 through 1980. So charming is his narrative that I forgot I was reading about his life during his most formative teenage years. It reads like a work of fiction by Nick Hornby. And Mr. Fletcher's matter-of-fact style draws you in and never lets up until you reach the final chapter -- No. 1. (His chapter headings are actual song titles from the era and count backwards from 50 like a record chart!) Unbelievably Fletcher not only sees The Who in concert as a pre-pubescent teenager, he chats up Keith Moon at a Who retrospective while pitching him his gloriously intentioned fanzine Jamming and then, after Keith invites him to interview him, shows up at his flat in Mayfair where he is stood up by one of his earliest rock heroes. (By the way, Fletcher's excellent Keith Moon biography -- Moon: The Life and Death of a Rock Legend -- is a must-read.) But that's only the beginning of his pursuit of sex, drugs (not really), and rock 'n' roll. Often picked on at school, he drifts deeper and deeper into his profession as a true music fanatic, not only meeting and becoming friendly with his other rock idol, Paul Weller of The Jam, but starting his own band and -- what else -- navigating the slippery slope of teen dating. Or at the very least snogging and trying to cop a feel. Learning the chords to The Undertones' classic punk rock anthem "Teenage Kicks" from the band's guitarist backstage after their gig? Are you kidding me?

You will shake your head in disbelief, laugh, cry and applaud his moxie as he awkwardly navigates the treacherous waters of junior high and early high school years, dodging bullies, skipping school to score rock concert tickets, buying and playing vinyl (45s and albums), making deals with dodgy print houses for his handmade fanzine, meeting his rock 'n' roll heroes, loads of wanking, and finally being deflowered by an "older" model. You will find yourself reaching for your own records from this time period and wiping the cobwebs from your own teenage memories while doing so. This was the modern world, indeed.

Mr. Fletcher can be reached via his website iJamming.net.

The Prolific Georges Simenon

Brandon Judell — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 05:48:50 +0000

The Prolific Georges Simenon Brandon Judell August 15, 2013 - 01:48

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The Belgian-born Georges Simenon (1903-1989) was a literary phenomenon of the 20th century, giving Balzac a run for his money, at least in terms of output. According to Wikipedia, he wrote over 200 novels plus many shorter works. The New York Times estimates that number (including his memoirs and nonfiction works) as being between 400 and 500. Not unexpectedly then, Simenon is considered by some to be the most successful author of the 20th century, and his creation, Inspector Jules Maigret, who appeared in about 75 works, "ranks only after Sherlock Holmes as the world's best known fictional detective." (I'm not sure how Poirot feels about that.) In preparation for viewing and reviewing six of the celluloid offerings in the series Cine-Simenon: George Simenon on Film, presented by Anthology Archives with Kathy Geritz and the Pacific Film Archive, I nestled down with the textural Simenon, and within a week, I had plowed through five of his works, four featuring Maigret. An addiction had been born.

In No Vacation, Maigret escapes Paris, his home base, for a few weeks in Les Sables d'Olonne when his wife immediately has an appendicitis attack. While he's visiting Madame in the hospital, a nun slips a note into his pocket urging him to chat with the girl in Room 15, who "accidentally" fell out of her brother-in-law's car while on the way to a dance concert. Before Maigret can do so, the young woman dies -- or was she murdered? And who's next? And can the brother-in-law, a doctor and one of the most respected citizens of this small resort town, be culpable? Vivisecting both cultural and economic prejudices, while side-slapping nuns and the press a bit, here's a truly pleasant crime novel.

Inspector Cadaver (1944) follows along in a similar vein. Maigret, now as a favor, unofficially travels to the provincial town of Saint-Aubin-les-Marais to decimate the rumors that his friend's brother-in-law, Etienne Naul, the richest man in the locale, had anything to do with the untimely death of a young man fatally run over by a train late one evening. But to his uneasy surprise, Maigret finds that Naul, his wife, the victim's mother, and most of the residents want the crime specialist to depart as rapidly as he arrived. Leave well enough alone, Monsieur. Of course, Maigret cannot. Once again finances play a role in how much justice a populace actually deems appropriate for the loss of a life.

Maigret and the Killer (1969) plays off Simenon's prime strength, besides his capability to instantly hook in a reader. Few writers, indeed, have his ability to lay open the psychology of a soul that murders not for personal gain but to fulfill some emotional vacancy. Here a hippyish "tall, thin fellow in a suede jacket," with one of those huge tape recorders on a strap around his neck, is stabbed seven times in the back in front of witnesses on a rainy Parisian night. He's heir to a mega perfume fortune. Is there a connection to his dad's eau de toilette? Or did he accidentally record a crime on his recorder? Or...? The culprit here could give Norman Bates a run for his money.

In the latter work, take a moment to note how the everyday Frenchman constantly reflects on every gent having long hair. Besides Simenon concocting a delicious crime or two or three in each of his tomes, he also captures the charms and prejudices of each of the five decades in which Maigret is trying snare his killer(s).

Maigret and the Madwoman (1970) renders Maigret at his most guilt-ridden. A highly ingratiating, elderly lady arrives at his office and complains, "At least four times in the past two weeks, I've noticed that my things have been moved."

"What do you mean? Are you saying that after you've been out, you've come back to find your things disturbed?"

"That's right. A frame hanging slightly crooked or a vase turned around. That sort of thing."

"Are you quite sure?"

"There you are, you see! Because I'm an old woman, you think I'm wandering in my wits. I did tell you, don't forget, that I've lived forty-two years in that same apartment. Naturally, if anything is out of place, I spot it at once."

But nothing has been stolen, so what are the police to do? Not much until this pleasant oldster is strangled to death. Expect a pimp, a manly masseuse, two dead husbands, a musician, plus a crime boss or two to get involved before Maigret can solve this one.

But many of Simenon's novels are not crime-ridden, and the majority lack his loveable commissaire. A classic example, and apparently his last effort in the non-crime milieu, is the superb The Innocents, one of the best portraits of a marriage you'll venture across. (It might be mentioned here that while Simenon was wed several times, he was a constant adulterer, often with the live-in help, and he claims to have bedded over 10,000 women, many of them prostitutes.)

The hero here is Monsieuer Georges Celerin, an exceedingly happy man. He's been blissfully married for 20 years, he has two delightful children and a perfect live-in maid, and is a co-owner of a distinguished jewelry concern that is acclaimed for the designs he himself creates.

Then on page seven, a policeman comes to his office and announces, after touching his cap, "I'm sorry, Monsiuer Celerin, I have bad news for you. You are, are you not, the husband of Annette-Marie Stephanie Celerin?"

"That is my wife's name, yes."

"She has met with an accident."

"What sort of accident?"

"She was run over by a truck on Rue Washington...."

"Is it serious?'

"She was dead on arrival at the hospital -- the Lariboisiere."

"Annette? Dead?"

Suddenly, Celerin's life is put into a tailspin. During bouts of extreme mourning, he realizes his wife was everything to him, she and his job. Even his children were secondary. But as he starts going over his past memories, he begins to realize there is another way to recall each of those events.

Reminiscing about the early days of his honeymoon and marriage, Celerin realizes he "had been happy. He had been full of his own happiness. From now on he would be living with her. He would see her every day, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and he would be sleeping next to her at night.

"That same evening, they had taken the Blue Train to Nice. His happiness had persisted. He was living in a dream, in spite of his wife's frigidity."

Maybe he and Annette hadn't been the ideal couple. Maybe when there were tears in her eyes while they were making love, those weren't droplets of gratitude. And what was she, a social worker, doing in a rather wealthy neighborhood in the middle of the day when she fatally slipped in front of that truck?

Brick by brick, his past two euphoric decades are dismantled, and Celerin slowly gets to know the woman he loved far too late. Yes, there is a mystery of sorts here, but the type of mystery many of us have to confront daily. Do we actually know the people we are smitten with or are we examining the world in a way that alters reality?

Click on this link to read my article on his film career.

An Englishness at Home and Abroad

Robert Cochrane — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 05:00:51 +0000

An Englishness at Home and Abroad Robert Cochrane November 29, 2012 - 00:00

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Literary Review

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non-fiction

Tony Fletcher/Tom Hingley

26 November 2012

Waterstones Deansgate, Manchester

Just around the corner from this evening's Manchester proceedings, I once saw an elderly British actor make an early afternoon appearance in the hallowed arena known as the Royal Exchange Theatre. The thespian in question was Dirk Bogarde, who was promoting one of his self-seeking, closeted novels, with which he interspersed his equally closeted and self seeking volumes of autobiography. Bogarde wasn't averse to selling himself, although he was very particular about the parts he chose to throw into the marketplace.

Bogarde admitted that in his days as a matinee idol in the 1950s he had to resort to sewing up the button flies of his sharp suits with dark cotton. In the ensuing scrum of over-heated ladies, whose varnished fingernails immediately went for the area they weren't supposed to access, this was his only means of preventing over-exposure, although it didn't save his assets from being rather rudely explored. He also bemoaned the business of signing books. Once in Harrods, after an initial rush, he was seated at a table, alone and awaiting customers. An elderly lady strolled by, did a double-take, and then realizing that he was indeed who she had originally thought, turned to her friend and whispered loudly, "It's a shame when they come to that!" These two events, and the youthful handsomeness of their subject, have a sense of the ridiculous, an air of Britishness, that would rest well with the lyrics of one Steven Morrissey, who surprisingly never got round to using Sir Dirk, as he then had become, as a cover star on one of the singles by his band The Smiths.

Waterstones Deansgate was, in years gone by, a hive of literary events. A shadow of its former self, it now hosts as many signings in a year as it once hosted in a fortnight. Window displays and posters used to trumpet forthcoming authors, everyone from Norman Mailer and Anthony Burgess to Salman Rushdie at the height of the fatwa, and Adam West, who turned up expecting to sign a few books only to discover a crowd of almost two hundred on the ground floor. The former cloaked crusader immediately fled, where a friend of mine had to minister to him, as he was sick with nerves. She later remarked to me, "I never thought I'd end up helping Batman throw up in the staff toilet!'" West, when he did grace his audience was a seamless, charming performer. Tonight, in the store's readings room, about thirty people have braved the Manchester rain. Two authors are promoting new works. One is a rock biographer whose subjects encompass the likes of The Clash, R.E.M., and Keith Moon, whilst the other is a former frontman of a Mancunian band, an appropriate pairing both in subject and geography.

Tony Fletcher has turned his attention to Manchester's finest maverick export in A Light That Never Goes Out, the long overdue appraisal of the brief but staggeringly successful career of The Smiths. Although considered regional heroes, the band played London more often than on the stages of their home city. They were decidedly British in their subject matter and demeanor, but translated into a world-recognized brand. Fletcher remarks that although their nuances might have been missed by their overseas fans, the themes of the perpetual outsider developed and explored in Morrissey's lyrics shone through and struck at the heart of any disenchanted youth. The band in America, he explains, was perceived in a different light, and ranked alongside the likes of Depeche Mode, Yazoo, and Simple Minds, a category that their British fans would have scorned and derided, but in the States they were lumped together with other British imports by the burgeoning college radio stations. He is also gracious when questioned about the only other serious consideration of The Smiths' career, Johnny Rogan's Morrissey & Marr: The Severed Alliance, presenting his luxury of twenty years' worth of hindsight to clarify things with, and unlike Rogan, he has used a more democratic approach, focusing on the four individuals who made up the band, and not simply the songwriting partnership. Rogan's book was, and remains, a tribute to lumpen prose, whereas Fletcher writes with informed concision and manages to reference the bands' Irish roots without numbing the reader with a pointless Irish stew of a history lesson, as Rogan did, and still does. His tome has been revised and updated.

Fletcher also points out that The Smiths arrived as the vacuum left by The Jam was longing to be filled, and although he admits that it is a cul de sac he refuses to enter, is all too aware that there was something almost pre-destined in the swiftness and ease with which the band ascended the ladder of success. It is also easy to forget that Morrissey was an astutely controversial interviewee. He referenced, in his first American interview, the need for a Sirhan Sirhan (Bobby Kennedy's assassin) to rid Britain of Margaret Thatcher, which immediately put his parochial dislike into a context which his new audience could grasp. His years of bedroom contemplation had perfectly honed his ability to utilize the moment of gifted limelight when it arrived. Fletcher's book is a diligent and unhurried summary of a band whose influence is still resonating, because they broke the mold while referencing traditions: Morrissey by his lyrical borrowings, inspirations, swathes of naked emotional honesty, and his masculine effeteness and sexual ambiguity; Marr by his knowing nods and winks to the history of rock music, and his personal genius as a tunesmith and musician.

Tom Hingley has written a memoir of his life as frontman of post-Smiths baggy merchants The Inspiral Carpets. The sections he reads evoke their collaboration with legendary Fall curmudgeon Mark E. Smith, a law unto himself via his barbed wit and capacity to process any liquid or chemical he can. When, accidentally on purpose, he trips up the brat of a soap actress, he snarls, when she demands an apology, that he has some razor blades in his hotel room that might finish off her offspring properly. Hingley also reads a telling vignette about Basil Clarke, vocalist of neglected Manc funksters Yargo. When giving Clarke a lift to the studio, Hingley remarks that some kids are finger-pointing pretend guns at them; his passenger dives into a ball into shape on the passenger's seat. Hingley neglected to mention the pretend aspect, and realizes he has terrified his fellow musician, whilst gleaning an insight into the weight on his shoulders. Hingley has an eye for detail that is evidenced by the brevity of his book. He has astutely left more out than he has included, a rare talent in a world over-long with anecdotes.

And so the evening dwindles in a clattering of casually pushed aside chairs. Books are inscribed, and an Inspiral fan has brought some albums to be signed. He is accompanied by his teenage son, an indication of the new democracy of rock, which evokes a certain sadness in me at the loss of music as rebellion, and a means of inter-generational antagonism. Something Morrissey would doubtless acknowledge, but just as he refused to be involved directly in the labors of Mr. Fletcher, he also was equally apparent by his absence, and there lies the true nature and power of artistic influence.

Moody’s Seattle

C. Jefferson Thom — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:29:22 +0000

Moody’s Seattle C. Jefferson Thom October 20, 2011 - 08:29

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Literary Review

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non-fiction

Seattle and the Demons of Ambition

By Fred Moody

(St. Martin's Press)

Traveling, to me, is more than just going somewhere you haven't been before to take a bunch of pictures and possibly relax at a beach or whatever other amenities present themselves. It's an opportunity to step outside of one's self and, be it a neighboring city or a distant country thousands of miles away, ponder the different approaches to life that you could have taken and may still. In preparation for my travels, I always like to read up on the history and culture of my intended destination, and in all my pre-travel readings I have never read a book that excited me so much and primed me for where I was headed as when Seattle was in my sights and I happened upon Seattle and the Demons of Ambition.

Fred Moody, the author of this humorous and highly personal introduction to the Emerald City, documents the growth of his city from its formative years as a Boeing company town to the modern, international metropolis that it is today. Bearing uncanny overlaps with many of the crucial moments in Seattle’s recent history, Moody’s experiences make him an ideal individual to tell the tale from the perspective of someone who watched it all happened.

Moody resigned from his position as managing director of the Seattle Weekly in 1999 and walked directly into the Seattle Riots as protestors and police clashed in a violent conflict over the WTO Conference that was to be hosted in the city. That's where the story begins. From this key moment Moody looks back, remembering the Seattle of his childhood, and chronicles the rapid years of change that would soon render that city almost unrecognizable to itself. He did contract jobs for a burgeoning Microsoft before the rest of the world knew the name Bill Gates and worked in the same office building as the founders of Sub Pop, who used to pester him to cover the scene they were helping to create before Nevermind made Grunge a household term. These broader strokes of global consequence are juxtaposed with less monumental anecdotes about the peculiar driving habits of Seattleites when it comes to braking, and having mixed feelings about the Space Needle. The end result is a multi-faceted exploration of the Gateway to the Pacific Northwest, half struggling for world recognition while the other half desperately clings to the benefits of secluded anonymity.

Moody's voice is unique, holding some resemblance to a less drug-crazed Hunter S. Thompson due to the cross breed of his journalistic style and openly subjective approach. The story of Seattle is the story of his own life, and he strikes a perfect balance of integrating of the two, giving a human face to his narrative that makes it relatable, yet never losing sight of the main character: Seattle. There is also a charming wit and dry sense of humor that persists throughout these pages, painting an amicable, slacker-like image of Moody as a perfect drinking buddy/local historian offering to be the Virgil to our Dante as he leads us through the ruins and skyscrapers of an intriguing world that he knows all too well.

Since it is no longer in print, Seattle and the Demons of Ambition is easiest to come by through shopping on-line (not surprisingly, the Seattle-based Amazon.com is a viable option). Whether you’re interested in gaining some insight into the birth of the Seattle sound in rock or how such an idiosyncratic city could produce such corporate giants as Starbucks, or just fascinated by modern Seattle in general, Seattle and the Demons of Ambition is an essential introduction and an extremely enjoyable read.