Leap In The Dark

Would it surprise you if I were to tell you that Israel was not the first Jewish state to exist since the time of Christ? That in the deepest, darkest days of the dark ages when European Jews were as welcome most places as the Plague that was blamed on them, for one brief moment a spark of hope was kindled that there was a haven for them in the area we would now know as Georgia by the Black Sea.

One of the tartar races, the Khazars, around 800 AD converted to Judaism and established a Jewish state on the borders of both the Eastern Christian empire of Byzantium and the new Islamic empire. While legends talk of visitations by angels convincing the King of the Khazars to convert, in all likelihood it was more real politic than religion that brought about the change.

With his kingdom pressured by both sides to convert, he shocked them both by choosing the third option, which appeased both sides temporarily. At least he hadn't become a Christian/Muslim the hated enemy of either one of his neighbours, and he could deal with them from a place of neutrality.

But according to the history provided in Marek Halter's novel The Wind Of The Khazars the conversion, at least among the rulers and the nobility was in the end sincere. They became strict adherents of the teachings of the Torah and received instruction from rabbinical scholars of the Eastern world.

Monsieur Halter has used as the basis for his novel correspondence that has survived down the ages between a Rabbi from Cordoba, in Muslim occupied Spain, and Joseph King of the Khazars.

His main character is a contemporary novelist, Marc Sofer, who becomes captivated by a mysterious beauty at a discussion/lecture on his work. She throws down a gauntlet of challenge to him – find a cause worth writing about. She leaves before the end of the lecture so he is unable to pursue the matter further with her.

But it makes no difference, because she has ensured that he will be hooked like a fish and reeled in. All it takes is a mysterious stranger to accost him after the session and present him with a silver coin stamped with the symbols of the Khazar Empire for him to be snared. The same man also spins him a tale of mysterious caverns in the Caucasus Mountains on the border of Georgia and Chechnya containing a synagogue hundreds if not thousands of years old.

Sofer the novelist and the romantic is hooked. First he investigates and tracks down the copies of the correspondence between the Rabbi and Joseph of the Khazars. At that point both he and our author, Marek Halter, recreate the story of Isaac the young man entrusted to carry the original letter from Spain to the Khazars. As Isaac struggles to cross a hostile Europe, Marc Sofer is making his own parallel journey to the Khazars' legendary redoubt in the Caucasus.

While in the present are the familiar obstacles of multinational corporations and terrorist groups, the past is filled with deceptive Greeks and duplicitous Russians both looking to conquer and subdue the Khazars. When Isaac falls in love with Joseph's beautiful green eyed and red haired sister, Sofer finally catches up to his own mysterious green eyed and red haired beauty from the conference.

It turns out that the synagogue in the mountain caverns does exist and she is part of a group of scholars trying to preserve them from the oil companies looking to suck the oil out of the ground in the same area. But it's not just a synagogue that is preserved under the mountains, but absolute proof of the Khazars' existence and that the myth of their conversion was not just an idle tale.

A library with thousands of books, a mikvah (the traditional cleansing bath for Jewish women before marriage) with ancient statuary, and countless other relics including chest upon chest of the mysterious silver coin he had been given. But to the oil companies it is nothing, and they will destroy the final remnants of the Khazars Empire without a qualm.

It all sounds fascinating and to an extent it is. The history and Monsieur Halter's imagining of the events of the past are interesting enough, as is the modern part of the story. But for something that had the potential to be so stunning, a kingdom of Jews that existed in 900ad by the Caspian and Black Seas, the parts just didn't seem to be equal to the idea.

While everything is well written, the characters are interesting enough, if a little too stereotyped romantic figures and lacking slightly in depth, and the story is well paced and interesting. The problem for me is that it doesn't reflect any of the excitement I felt when I heard about the kingdom of the Khazars.

Perhaps that's unfair, but I expected more about the Khazars and less about a love story between a princess and a messenger in the 10th century and their equivalent in the 21st century. I wanted to walk the streets of the fortress towns and smell the markets and meet the people who had become Jews in the middle of a world that was still trying to rid itself of them. Who were these mysterious warriors that had fought supposedly with the Khans of the Mongol hoards, or might have been descended from the Sythians.

I would have liked the author to have stretched his imagination in that direction, instead of just giving us brief glimpses. I guess I was looking for a different wind to have blown through this book than the one chosen by Marek Halter and I was disappointed by his direction. It's a good book, just not the one I was hoping for.

Posted by Ashok at 11:06 PM | Permalink

Have you ever noticed that some books that you read are able to create such a feeling of time and place that you only have to think about the book to for an image of a person or locale to form? The author has managed to create such a vivid world that you continually want to be part of it, and you re-read the book endlessly for that reason.

Sometimes the feelings generated that way are so strong that the story itself is an irrelevancy, in fact the only reason you're reading it is so that you can be part of that world again. However the author has managed it, she or he has created a world that seems to exist as an entity on to itself separate from the story, even though it only exists because of the story being written.

That to me is what separates the truly wonderful from the okay books. If when I read a book the first that happens is I want to re read it right away, or I find myself wishing it would continue on and on, that is a good indication the author has been successful in generating that atmosphere. It's funny to read a story for those reasons, because I find myself disappointed that the people are still doing the same things they were the last time I was in their world. (I'd hazard a guess and say this is probably what motivates so much of fan fiction – people trying to recreate a world they've come to appreciate, not very often with much success)

Now the conundrum becomes for me the author, instead of me the reader, is how the hell do you write a book like that. I've be re reading my manuscript with an eye towards wondering if I've been able to generate that feeling of time and place. If I'm honest with myself, I have to say while I think I've been able to capture the physical representations fairly well, it seems rather flat.

I've been reading quite a few pieces lately that rely far more on, for lack of a better phrase and bear with me if it sound pretentious, historical texture, for generating atmosphere then other works that I've read in the past. You can almost feel the weight of history in the characters and the settings.

I should clarify what I'm talking about when I say history. I don't mean a series of dates and things that happened in the past, although they can be important to the plot, but the fact that the culture has existed for thousands of years.

The people have their own legends, their stories that explain who they are and where they come from. They've developed a body of thought as per their analysis of their religion and a variety of philosophies to help cope with the exigencies of life. But the authors of these books haven't had to spell any of out; one way or another we know it's there.

It underlies all the action, it's in the way the characters talk, and it appears to shape the way they think. It's more then a simple history, it's a cultural identity that is never talked about directly but is always present. Everything from the way the characters walk to the food they cook has to be consistent with this identity for the atmosphere to be successfully rendered.

Now unless you plan on copying an already existing culture, which would still involve incredible amounts of research so you don't make any slips or show inconsistencies with what others may recognise, this means having to create a history for the people, or peoples, who populate your work.

It doesn't even have to be information that is used in the book, although I've been thinking of adding a preface to my manuscript as a means to introduce some of the most important themes. It has to be there for you the author to draw upon, as much as your characters need to be able draw upon it in their daily living.

I've started to think that when writing I need to create two outlines – one for the plot and all its intricacies and one for the cultural history of who ever it is you are going to write about. Obviously if you are writing about contemporary life you don't need to do too much except make sure you don't deviate from what the people of the class you're writing about would normally do in the circumstances you are describing.

But if you are creating whole cultures you need to know everything from the names they give the constellations of the stars to their preference in pickling processes on the off chance that the topic might come up in conversation amongst your characters. Does that sound like a ridiculous amount of work? Perhaps so, but I don't believe that you can create a believable atmosphere without it.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:28 AM | Permalink

When Hunter S. Thompson died a couple of years back it felt like the end of era just because of what he represented as an icon of the anti-establishment movement of the America in the 1960's. But in the years since his death I've also come to the realization of what else his passing has meant to the world of literature.

He represented one of the last of the larger than life literary figures who seemed so abundant in the twentieth century, but who now have gone the way of the dinosaur. When you add the death of Irving Layton last year to the Grim Reaper's harvest of writers it becomes even harder to think of any great characters left in the field of letters.

These were men and women, but primarily men the world being what it was in those days, who through dint of personality as well as talent were able to capture people's imaginations in ways today's best sellers couldn't hope to accomplish. John Grisham may sell millions of books but do you truly think he could inspire anybody to become a writer?

I'm not saying they're aren't great writers out there right now, because there are some truly amazing authors whose writings are not just illuminating but luminescent as well. But where are the personalities to capture our imaginations; where are the characters who added mystique to the writer's art?

Perhaps Paris in post World War one and Morocco in post World War two, and all the writes associated with those movements (whether they were ever there or not) are unique in the history of the written word. There have been very few other occasions when such diverse groups of talent were gathered together in a single place.

Of course there were other pockets, The Bloomsbury group of artists headed up Virginia Wolfe and her husband Leonard made their abode London and it's surrounding environs. Greenwich Village in New York City and parts of San Francesco came later, and were more part of the Beat movement out of Morocco then anything else.

Paris in between the wars was a favoured destination for writers, painters, dancers, and all the hangers on that go with an artistic scene, from all over the world. Ernest Hemmingway, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Morley Callahan, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hart Crane, Henry Miller, and Anis Nin were all to be found among the tables and chairs of Paris' cafes in the day, and her salons and bars at night.

Perhaps it was the whole circumstance that lent itself to creating the Romantic image of the writer that came out of that period. But the absence of any one of the above mentioned figures would have surely diminished the impact. Paris in the twenties without Hemmingway or Joyce doesn't even seem conceivable as they represent the two poles of personality and expression, boisterous emotion and cool intellect respectively.

For it was not only content that these wonderful writers wrangled with, but form as well. Joyce, and Wolfe in England, experimenting with writing as the mind worked. Leaping from thought to thought and letting a "story" develop from those thoughts. Similarly poets like Crane and e. e. cummings were taking apart the formal structures and producing new sounding poetry

At the other end of the spectrum was Hemingway with his big and bold emotional stories about war and life, and his big and bold emotional approach to his own life. The boxing match with Callahan, which he lost, was the only blemish on an otherwise spotless record for coming out a winner for most of this life. It was only when he started to lose his creative powers the depression that killed him set in, but even that only adds to his mystique.

Even in death they were figures of romance to emulate for the young writers who were to follow them, in the post World War two Beat movement. The Beats were probably the first almost uniquely American literary movement, in that not only were it's members predominately American, they also represented the best and worst aspects of the triumph of the individual.

From the selfishness of addictions to the brilliance of independent thought and free spirited action they epitomized individuality. The Beats and their contemporaries shattered conventions about morality, sexuality, and the other symbols of the staid and stable middle class to ignite a flame of passionate creativity.

William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Allan Ginsberg were at the centre of the movement that opened the way for people like Ken Keasy , Charles Bukowski, Richard Farina, and Thomas Pynchom. They also became the touchstone for whatever rebellion against convention that occurred in North America in the 1960s.

But who has there been since able to inspire or excite people in that way about literature? Yes there are individuals who people want to read and whose books provide pleasure to millions which is a great thing in of it's own. But there is no one, or group of people, out there who seem to have caught the public's imagination like any of those other authors did during their heyday.

Maybe they still have the ability to inspire new generations of authors years after their passing; I know they provided me with the desire to create, but how long can the force of their personalities endure? Where will the next great group of literary lions come from to inspire creativity and genius? Is it even possible for these types of people to achieve the acclaim they did in years gone by?

Will our formulaic and conservative publishing industry even allow for such original and creative individuals to flourish? Or has the environment changed so radically we will never see those days again? Perhaps I'm overly romanticizing days gone by because of my own personal biases, so take the thoughts expressed here with as many grains of salt as you wish.

But without an infusion of some sort of energy soon the contemporary North American novel seems destined to continue to obtain the heights of mediocrity at best.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:27 AM | Permalink

Does anyone really know how search engines work? I know in theory they are supposed to scour the web in response to commands given by the person using the service and respond with the addresses of web sites that have the information pertinent to what was requested. But the practice seems to be something else altogether.

Take for example the other night. Just out of idle curiosity my wife wanted to find out the history of the word pretty. As her search command she had asked for "history of the word pretty" (without the quotation marks). What she got in return was anything but pretty.

Not one site in the top forty offered had anything vaguely to do with the history of the word. Instead the majority of them were simply sites where the word pretty was being used and no mind being paid to the original request. After trying a number of variations using history and pretty returned pretty much the same results; which in turn resulted in various comments being made on the parentage and history of Google other search engines were consulted.

When it became obvious that this was not a Goggle specific problem, and that all search engines seemed to be particularly obtuse when it came to try and finding out "something as fu*king simple as the history of a goddamned stupid, word for fu*ks sake" she gave up the search. I didn't blame her, because although sometimes Google can be your best friend, on other occasions search engines are only as good as what they are capable of doing.

The first thing we always have to remember when using anything to do with computers is they can't think outside of the parameters that have been defined for them. Search engines are designed to pick out keywords from something published on the Internet and match them to the search query. They have very few ways of knowing the actual context of the words in question; so will simply return the addresses of sites where they find the words requested.

At least this is what I've come to believe, and to be honest I can't come up with any other reasonable solution. I've been looking at how many people are directed to my site based on the fact that a word in the title or body of the text has matched their search request. That the post in question has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of their search is irrelevant to the search engine.

Of course to further confuse the poor person doing a search is the fact that some web sites are given more weight in a search then others. This doesn't mean it will show up if it doesn't contain the required keywords, but a site with a high ranking will be receive priority so long as it contains key words, even at the expense of one more relevant.

Google, and I'm sure other search engines do the same thing, have created their own arcane system for the ranking of sites, but I've yet to meet anyone who really understands how they do it. Perhaps it's based on the number of times the site in question has had a high number of keywords show up, the number and turnover of material, or heaven forefend, maybe even the quality of the material comes into play.

What is obvious is that no one seems to be keeping track of how pertinent the posts are to people's search requests. Of course that may be an impossible task to perform; just as it's impossible to teach the search engine the difference between pretty awful and pretty good.

I've heard of people who will spend hours coming up with keyword listings for a post to optimize their search engine results, as the ads put it, but I can's see why they bother. There doesn't seem to be anyway to influence how search engines are going to decide what to choose beyond a word in a post matching a search request. Now that's scientific.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:00 AM | Permalink

Just slightly under two years ago, March 29th 2005 at 11:30am. EST. to be exact, I wrote the following: "A leap in the dark is an act of blind faith, trusting your judgment and instincts that whatever it is you're about to do is right and that your not going to end up, up to your ankles in dung."

I referred to it as the explanation for the title of my blog, "Leap In The Dark", but it could also be said to be my own personal mission statement. At the time the blog was just what I said it was; a step into the unknown as I was going public with my writing for the first time.

Ever since my early days of working in theatre I've believed it important as part of being creative to continually take risks – to take leaps in the dark – or stagnation would set in. When I started blogging it was with the intention of writing as much as possible in a public setting and risk my opinions and abilities in front of an audience.

It was with that goal in mind that I approached the people at Blogcritics about three months after starting "Leap In The Dark". It was one thing to write in the virtual anonymity of my own site, and another thing altogether to write for a publication that was already a recognised presence on the Internet and had a built in audience.

Now over seven hundred articles of various length, quality, and subject matter produced on a daily basis later I'm about to take another leap into relatively unknown territory. Sometimes you have to take life by the throat and shake it to effect change, and other times opportunities are just dropped in your lap. On really special occasions not only are opportunities offered you but life also makes damn sure you're paying attention by hitting you over the head with its equivalent of a cast iron frying pan.

Now I may not be too swift sometimes, but even I'll get the message when I'm offered two almost identical opportunities within a week of each other that taking advantage of one of them would be in my best interest. The problem is recognising what's in your own best interest.

There are a lot of things that can get in the way of that, but the biggest obstacle is fear. Fear of change and fear of the unknown have probably prevented many a person from discovering their full potential. It's far easier to stay doing the same thing, and doing it well, than risk doing something new where the results are uncertain.

Worry about a new job is probably something a lot of people have in common, so I'm sure most of you can understand that trepidation. But I also have to throw into the mix the consideration of whether or not I'll be able to manage whatever that position entails, and being able to maintain my daily output of writing. With neither of the opportunities requiring anything close to a major time commitment it wouldn't normally be a concern, but it's been a number of years since things have been normal for me.

For reasons that are too tedious to bear repeating, I've only limited energy in any given day. Some days I've more then others, but it's usually pretty consistent. The major problem is that I can work pretty steady for a couple of hours. But then have to stop and have a nap. Occasionally work means things like taking care of life away from the computer (yes it does exist believe it or not) but the results the same. My day is broken up into chunks of working time and chunks of naptime.

So when Aaman Laamba of Desicritics emailed me and asked if I would consider joining his team of editors I was a little hesitant but willing to give it a shot; but when Ashok Banker emailed me two days later to ask me to take over editing his Epic India web site with the goal of making it less Ashok Banker and more literary, I stalled.

For the past week while I have continued to write my daily posts, and helped out with editing chores at Desicritics I mulled over Ashok's offer. It was easy to come up with reasons not to take him up on the offer, but after a couple of days the reasons began to sound like excuses. The problem wasn't even so much that they were excuses it was the fact that I was making the excuses to me not to anybody else.

After a week of this I figured out that my real problem wasn't any of the excuses I had prepared about not having time to write, or not knowing what the hell it was I was doing, but that I was scared of making any changes in my life. The irony of that is of course change is exactly what I need after close to two years of doing pretty much the same thing day in and day out.

What made me clue into that fact was for the first time in two months, instead of only being able to write for the web and then feeling too drained to do any other writing for the rest of the day, I've been inspired to work on my novel. Since I heard first from Aaman and then from Ashok, I've had more creative energy then the last three months combined.

A friend of mine who taught Yoga once told me something very interesting about the concept of transition. In Yoga muscles are never at rest and so are always in transition from one position to another. We normally tend to think of transition as the time in between doing one thing and then another, a period of stasis where nothing happens.

Of course that's impossible because we are always in motion whether we know it or not, moving from one place in our lives to the next. It's just, that unlike in Yoga where you see the muscles move, we're not always aware of the fact that we are in motion. That's what causes us to become frustrated and to stagnate.

The closer we get to the point where we become aware of our need for change, the more frustrated, stagnated, and less productive we get. The resistance to the necessary change comes from the fact that we haven't been accomplishing near what we know we're capable of, so we don't have much confidence in our own abilities. Not exactly the most ideal of mental conditions to be in when contemplating a change is it?

Hence the self doubts that plague most people just before they do make any sort of change in their lives. The human mind can be such a treat some times can't it? Anyway I finally figured out what was going on and decided to take my own advice and take the leap.

I have no idea what's going to happen or even if I'm going to like editing, but I'm not going to know unless I try. So as of today as well being a writer I'm now editor of the web site Epic India. Whatever else happens, at least I know I won't be bored for the next little while, and that's always a positive.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:39 AM | Permalink

I've been thinking about the word myth a lot lately. Maybe its because of some of the books I've been reading have talked about some of the ancient stories of our culture and others have had reference to stories from outside my range of experience.

I think about how some people use the word myth now as the equivalent of the word lie. They protest their innocence by claiming the accusations against them are a complete fabrication, a myth. Who told them that a myth was a lie, or make believe? Somewhere, somehow that impression has been developed and generally accepted by people if its use in sound bites by politicians on a regular basis is anything to go by.

A word that used to have such rich and varied connotations: the Gods and Goddesses of Olympus; King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table; Beowulf; The Norse Gods of Asgard; Rama, Sita, and Ravana; the heroes of Ireland; Coyote and who knows how many other heroes and heroines. Myths were the stories that glorified us, helped us rise above our day-to-day mundane existence. They also offered us explanations of who we are and where we came from.

I know there are plenty of people who made a career out of explaining and analyzing the place of myth in our lives, mixing it in with stuff about archetypes to form some sort of intellectual stew. For some reason I've never really been able to make myself interested in the academic/intellectual aspect of myth; my reactions have always been on a more visceral level.

I read a story and it either means something to me or it doesn't, analysis doesn't enter into it that much. Perhaps that's more indicative of laziness on my part more then anything else, I don't know, but I do know that no matter how much I may find the accademic approach a little to over the top for me, at least they recognise that myth is more than just another word for lie.

According to my handy Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary the word myth is derived from the Greek word mythos, which literally means, word, speech, and story. The primary definition they give is " A traditional story usually focusing on the deeds of Gods or heroes, or in explanation of some natural phenomenon." The secondary meaning supplied is the one about "An imaginary or fictitious, person, thing, or story."

What bothers me is that the latter meaning has been able to take root so easily as acceptable usage of the word myth. Why did they have to steal such a wonderful word that has the potential for such poetry and turn it into something ugly? I hate it when I hear someone being accused of myth making as if it were a bad thing.

How can the act of creating a story be bad? The contents themselves may be evil or a lie, but that would be like saying cake making is bad because one person bakes poison into a cake. But the way they go on about myths being misrepresentations of facts, or outright lies it leaves a strong negative impression.

Where does that leave today's storytellers? Where does it leave yesterday's stories?

To me it feels like they are in a kind of limbo with the great stories of the world's cultures being confined to the narrow pages of the fantasy novel. Or even worse showing up as recycled and watered down pabulum for the New Age cultural appropriators. Without a care as to the nature of the real story they take bits and pieces from everything and add them to a patchwork quilt of beliefs that they can cover themselves with and call enlightenment.

Is that to be the fate of our original heroes that they end up as Tarot decks and wall ornaments for those looking for easy solutions to the problems of life? Or to lie between the covers of a book that diminish them as fantasy equivalent to the latest instalment of Star Wars?

What about today's story teller, what stories are there for him or her to tell? Is there even a need for stories that offer up explanations or pose questions about whom we are and our place in the world. Maybe I shouldn't say need, but willingness to listen to those types of stories.

After all aren't we at the pinnacle of our development as civilizations? What could simple stories have that would improve our lot? Especially ones that aren't even real. What can you write for a world that would rather be reading about the true-life recovery of a drug addict then a story about their ancestors?

Maybe something will happen to change that attitude. It can't be all pervasive anyway, not yet at least, because books are still being sold, and some of those are fiction. Perhaps there have been other times in our history which has seen a falling out between myth and society; I'm sure the Spanish Inquisition was as equally unimpressed in their time as so many of us are today with the beauty of myths and their place in our lives.

With all that's going on in the world I can't think of a time when listening to the old stories is as needed. For all our sakes lets hope things change soon.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:55 AM | Permalink

Almost two years ago I reviewed a really wonderful CD for Blogcritics called Greetings From Cairo Illinois by a man named Stace England. He used a variety of styles of American music to trace the history of what should have been a major industrial hub of the Midwest that has turned into an echo of its former prosperous self.

He researched and found old songs dating back to early settlement days, and wrote original music in styles that reflected the era of the events depicted. All in all it was an impressive effort to recreate time and place in music. After listening to the CD I was able to come away with an impression of the history of the city of Cairo Illinois.

I mention this CD as a means of comparison for a disc that is being released this coming week on the Virgin label called The Good, The Bad, And The Queen featuring the talents of Damon Albarn, Paul Simonon, Tony Allen, and Simon Tong. The reason the comparison is appropriate is that according to Damon, who appears to have been the driving force behind the disc's creation, the disc is about West London and why he thinks it is such a special area to live in.

According to the promotional material that although the disc is specific to a geographical area, it draws upon the multitude of musical influences that have sprouted up in British popular music over the past century. From the Music Hall tradition of World War Two through to the modern sounds of Punk, Afro-Beat, and Reggae. All of which was supposed to culminate into a depiction of what it is to be English now.

Having heard Stace English and his approach in the aforementioned Greetings From Cairo Illinois I was interested to see what these gentlemen came up with. London is such an ethnically diverse – especially that neighbourhood which includes Portobello Market – mixture and has such a fascinating history that the possibilities musically appeared endless.

Unfortunately they must have only seemed limitless in my mind.

When I hear the words, Punk, Reggae, Afro-Beat, and even Music Hall I expect music with a little life in its soul. Instead what you get on The Good, The Bad, And The Queen is what sounds like a series of songs slightly more energetic than your average dirge. Even making allowances for artistic licence and a figurative rather than literal approach to the depiction doesn't explain away the lifelessness of the material.

Have they even been to Portobello Market on a weekend; it's insane. Everywhere you look are colours, sounds, and people of all shape, sizes, and race talking at the tops of their lungs. Either buying or selling, or just having a conversation the place is virtual cacophony of accents and music from across what used to be the British Empire. Even that pishy movie Notting Hill with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant managed to instil some of that energy into an otherwise forgettable movie.

It's not that the music is bad, because it isn't. The first song on the disc "The History Song" features some really nice guitar work and feels like the perfect song to start off with. But instead of being a prelude to something more, nothing much happens from there on in musically except for some minor variations on the same theme.

There's synthesiser on some tracks, or a little bit of base on others, and maybe echoes of something that could be Music Hall on another. But these songs have a lot in common with the stereotypical bachelor, a failure to commit. Instead of making a decision to either embrace a genre or to supply its flavour to a song, the music ends up sounding wishy-washy and uncertain of direction.

As an idea the concept is great, take an area and define it with music to give the listener an impression of the atmosphere and the ambiance. If one were to judge West London by The Good, The Bad, And The Queen one would think of it as perpetually raining and depressed. I don't honestly think that was their intent with this project.

They did say they like living there, it's mighty hard to tell that by listening to this CD.

The Good, The Bad, And The Queen will be available from most outlets on January 23rd 2007.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:42 PM | Permalink

Every family has its attic, its storehouse, or genizah as its named in Hebrew, where the past is documented through papers, artefacts, and memories. You don't even have to have physical space; a genizah can be the memories and the stories of the family that have been passed down. It's whatever form the repository of the family's history comes in.

In Tamar Yellin's first novel The Genizah At The House Of Shepher the genizah in question is both a musty, dust hole, in the rafters of the Shepher family's last home in Jerusalem. Miraculously in amongst old moulding newspapers and notebooks a treasure has been unearthed. A heretofore-unknown Codex of the Torah has come to light and with it the possibility to reverse the family's seemingly perpetual decline in fortunes.

The history of the Torah (Old Testament in the King James version of the Christian Bible) is like that of any ancient document that was copied by hand from the original over the early part of its life. Very few copies, or Codex, from those times are the same. Here a character changed for another, or a word order different there.

While in a language like English that may not seem to make much difference, with biblical Hebrew changing a few characters could change the meaning of a whole chapter. Or at the very least a verse which in itself can have serious implications to biblical scholars, especially when you consider that rabbinical scholars will spend their lives debating and dissecting the various meanings and connotations of words in a specific chapter of the text.

According to Jewish myth the Torah existed for nine hundred and forty-seven generations before the creation of the world, and when God created the world He used it as His blueprint and guide; for what better tool to use to create and imperfect and cryptic world, then an imperfect and cryptic Torah. According to Ms. Yellin's recounting, some scholars believe that at the end of time Elijah will return and sort out all the textual difficulties.

Of course until then that means there will be lots for religious scholars to debate to their hearts content. From what I understand this seems like an ideal circumstance, since it appears there is nothing more that endearing to the heart of a rabbinical scholar then arguing the minute points of textual interpretation of the Torah with their fellows.

Don't worry this is pertinent to the story, which as I mentioned earlier revolves around this previously unknown Codex. Shulamit Shepher's father had left Israel in the 1930's to live in England, where he proceeded to marry an English Jewish woman and raise two children. While her brother Reuben fled the family to escape the oppressive depression of his father and the suffocating love of his mother, Shulamit followed in the footsteps of her grandfather and great-grandfather in becoming a biblical scholar.

However unlike her fore fathers it's not her faith that motivates her study of the holy books, rather a sense of duty and the need for a vocation. Still this does nothing to lessen her love for her work, or the texts that she reads and recites to her students. For it also her means to connect to her family and its history, as the texts are filled with reminders for her of the stories about her great-grandfather, and her grandfather his only son.

But it wasn't even the Codex, which would have been a great temptation to a biblical scholar like herself, which brought her back to the house of Shepher in Jerusalem. It was a letter from her Uncle Cody telling her that the old house was to being given up now that the final resident, Aunt Batsheva, had died. So it was sentiment and nostalgia that brought her from England for one last visit to the house she had spent summers in until her father died.

It's not until she gets to the house that she even finds out about the Codex, as her Uncle Saul has taken up temporary residence and almost the first words out of his mouth are to accuse her of being one of the vultures after the Codex. When she finally convinces him she's not after the Codex, and to kindly explain what he's talking about she's thrilled. What biblical scholar wouldn't be to find out that her own family owned an unknown variation of the Torah?

But it's not that simple, or course. It seems that Uncle Cody has decided it should be given to the people, and has passed it on to an educational institute who are supposed to be checking it for authenticity. There are all the other members of the Shepher family who either claim ownership of the Codex or want it sold at current market value and the proceeds divided up amongst them all.

And who is the mysterious Gideon who also lays claim to the book, saying Shulamit's great-grandfather stole it from his people long ago and it needs to be returned. Since the provenance of the Codex claims that its origins lie with one of mythical lost tribes of Israel Shulamit has a hard time not only believing him, but can't believe her ears when he asks her to steal it for him.

Tamar Yellin's The Genizah At The House Of Shepher is a beautifully written book redolent of the spice of Hebrew legend. Interspersed with the story line of the Codex is the history of the family dating back to her great-grandfather Shalom Shepher and his strange quixotic obsession with the lost tribes of Israel. So obsessed with them in fact that he set out on a two year quest in search of them and returned claiming to have stayed with them for a good deal of the time.

It's a story about exile, from one's land and from one's dreams. Shulamit's parents are restless people whose lives are disturbed by reality not living up to their dreams. For her mother it was Israel not being the land of Milk and Honey but of intolerable heat, bad plumbing and a family who she couldn't speak to because she had no Hebrew.

Her father was discontented with life in prewar Israel and left to start a new life in England. But he became the ultimate exile there for his passport read he was the citizen of a country that no longer existed – Palestine- as of 1949. The irony is not lost on Shulamit that her father was a Jewish, stateless, Palestinian. It's not till their death that they both find peace in Israel, buried beside each other in the family plot.

Like the Codex each new generation of the family contains a variant that changes their meaning ever so slightly from the generation before them. Shulamit's brother Reuben completely rejects his past and claims to be the first generation. Reuben, now Mike, and his beautiful wife and angelic child will have nothing to do with the sadness and pain of being exiles.

But it also means they will know nothing of the wondrous myths and stories that have been the legacy of Shalom Shepher the scholar and his great quest for the lost tribes and his claims that through numerology and the proper Codex of the Torah one could figure out the exact date of the Messiah's arrival and the apocalypse. Somewhere among all his papers there might even exist the answer.

Even though Shulamit was born in and raised in England and finds the history and the weight of Jerusalem oppressive it's where her history is and it can't be forgotten. The introduction of the Codex and it's variants, a different blueprint to shape the world with no matter how slightly, has released her from the sadness and pain that dogged her parent's lives. She can travel between her two worlds easily; Jerusalem and England, and not feel like she doesn't belong.

The Genizah At The House Of Shepher is a story of wandering, exile and how difficult it is to find out where you belong. Moses never made it to the Promised Land, his God had ordained otherwise. He was allowed a glimpse into it, before being asked to give up his soul. She would not come willingly and it took all of God's love and strength to gather her to Him. Nobody likes not fulfilling their dreams.

Shulamit has seen the Promised Land and it is in herself and she can live there everyday. She only needs to have the strength to keep her promises to her self. The Genizah At The House Of Shepher is a story of choices and how, like the variations in the Codex, even the smallest can make a huge difference in the way our world turns out.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:39 AM | Permalink

"Only saints were gassed?"

Is the first note of disquiet that enters into the lives of Effi and Amir. "Only saints were gassed?" Why of course, how could the victims of the gas chambers be bad people? Crazy Hirsh must be crazy, why else does he live in the woods in his hut and wander onto Katznelson St. and yell such a thing?

Effi and Amir may not be "Old Enough" to be told about Shoah (The Holocaust), but they certainly know enough to know that he must be crazy. Look at them, they don't even have real family; they borrow people from here and there who become Grandfathers and Grandmothers, Uncles, Nieces, and cousins, because their families have so few of their own left that they have found people to play the parts for them.

If this is what our family is like, and every family similar, what kind of question is "Only saints were gassed?" It's a question that will have to wait until later to be answered because their priorities are to find out what happened first. Grandpa Lolek who fought with the Polish army, first charging tanks on horse back, then fleeing to join a Polish regiment that fought with the allies for the rest of the war; has no problems regaling them with tales of what he did during the war.

But of the camps, nothing, nobody wanted to tell them about it. Not even Grandpa Yosef who could tell them the name of the longest river in the world, and arbitrated disputes about everything else on any topic. Like their own personal Talmudic scholar he could resolve anything on any subject, but not even he could be drawn out to talk about the mysteries of "What Happened?"

In Grandpa Yosef's neighbourhood, Katznelson St. on the out skirts of the Israeli port town Hafia, nearly everyone was a survivor of the camps. One foot in the present and one foot in the past it was Grandpa Yosef who helped them all straddle the line in safety. But it was also Grandpa Yosef who made sure that no one told the children the stories they wanted to hear.

But have you ever known children to be stopped or have their enthusiasm for a subject curtailed because they've been forbidden or told to wait for later? So it is with Effi and Amir in the recently translated Amir Gutfreund novel Our Holocaust. Being the resourceful types they try any means at their disposal up to and including bribery and theft, but nothing could break through the impenetrable walls erected to keep them from what they considered of vital importance.

On their visits to Grandpa Yosef's they could see the results of the Holocaust on display in the faces and the actions of the people who lived on the street with him. Aside from Crazy Hirsh, who in the end is not so crazy, each of the survivors wears the camps like an extra suit of clothes that they are unable to take off and hang in the closet.

Of course eventually they are old enough to be told the stories, but by then Effi has lost interest – she's a doctor now – but even though Amir is married and raising a son and built a life for himself, he is still moved to attempt to document what happened to the family at the least, and maybe even the neighbours of Grandpa Yosef.

It starts with Grandpa Yosef; almost like a generation letting go of a breath they didn't even know they'd been holding, they begin to tell Amir what he's wanted to hear for years. From the ghettos, to the camps, to the death marches, and finally liberation, but never really freedom, he bears witness and writes it down.

Grandpa Yosef knows the why behind Crazy Hersh's question, but can't or won't answer it. Others are far less reticent when it comes to the question and have no hesitation in describing the things Jews did to each other. Some of it was in the quest for survival, but some were just men who worked willingly with the Nazis for the sake of the power it offered them. But it was not enough to save them from the fate of their brethren who they betrayed as they too ended up in the gas chambers.

Amir Gutfreund carries his namesake through an odyssey of obsession that turns him into as much a survivor of the holocaust as those whose stories he is documenting. He fumes over those responsible that are living lives of peace and prosperity, while their victims have no escape from their memories save in madness.

He worries that every year, even the year he is living in now, could be 1939, the year before the Holocaust spread its wings. Jews in 1939 lived their lives not expecting anything just like they do today. But he can also see how within everyone, including Jews, is the potential for being the perpetrators of a Holocaust.

It's the ordinariness of evil that is so terrifying, how anybody, anywhere is quite capable of carrying out orders without question. Rounding up the undesirables, placing them in camps for the good of the country. That part of human nature is everywhere, and he sees it in the people around him. One day he thinks it could happen.

Without being a survivor, he turns into one. His obsession with the past and the Holocaust makes him want to raise his son to be capable of surviving anything. He must be able to survive a winter without shoes like his grandmother did or what will become of him. Amir can't understand why his wife can't see that?

What had started out as childish interest and almost humorous descriptions of the children's attempts to discover more about their family's history, during the war, becomes, as the stories are revealed more and more serious. Even though the author has tried to avoid graphic details, it is not possible to narrate stories of the Holocaust without including details of the unspeakable evil that men can do to each other.

Personally I've never been one for wanting to read about the details of the Holocaust, so it was with a great deal of trepidation that I even began to read this book. Amir Gutfreund's approach of leading us into the actual stories by introducing us to the people who the stories are about without just tossing us into the camps head first goes a long way in cushioning the blow. But at the same time because we have gotten to know those people in advance of the stories and understand their connection to the Amir of the story we can understand his obsession with the past and the way it is affecting his present.

It is still not an easy book to read, I don't think it is possible to write a book on this subject and make it pleasant. In fact in some ways that which eases us into the story in the first place makes it all the harder to continue as the personal tales of survival are recounted. Knowing the people involved, and listening to them recount their near death experiences makes them all the more gut wrenching.

The author also makes sure that he doesn't take the easy way out and leave us stuck in the past with the stories. Instead he shows us that although the Holocaust is not something that can be forgotten, it is something that needs to be accepted and placed in a proper perspective. It can't dominate the lives of those of us who were not in the camps like it does the direct survivors, but for those who had family in the camps knowing their stories is important.

Amir Gutfreund's Our Holocaust is beautifully written document about one family and their coming to terms with their place in history. If you are willing to make the effort, this book will go a long way towards offering an explanation for why even people born well after the war are in some ways survivors of the holocaust as much as those who lived through the camps.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:41 AM | Permalink

I've written quite a number of pieces that have been, to put it mildly, scathing when it comes to the so-called "New Age" movement. I think I've referred to it as everything from cultural appropriation to inane. But unlike other critics of the people who comment on the issue I've shied away from the whole question of spirituality.

Many people insist that the rise in interest in all things "New Age" is due to the failure of the conventional religions to fill the spiritual needs of their traditional congregations. According to proponents of that theory, mainly those involved in the selling of "New Age" products, the baggage that accompanies Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism, is what pushes people away from them.

Whatever excuse they want to use doesn't really matter all that much, the implication is that people are turning to alternatives for their spiritual comfort, and that is what's offered by the "New Age" folk. The thing is though if you walk into a "New Age" emporium you won't find anything that is specifically a "New Age" bible. You'll find books on Celtic, Native American, Tibetan, Hindu, Jewish, Ancient Egyptian, and every other kind of spirituality you can think of with Guardian Angels and Faeries thrown in for good measure.

But are the people haunting those stores really looking for spiritual enlightenment or is it something else they're searching for; maybe even something they can't identify. They have the feeling that there is something missing in their lives but aren't quite sure what the void is. They label the emptiness spiritual because it feels like their spirit is being deprived of something, but I think it's something a little more concrete

In North America we celebrate the cult of the individual; we all strive to get ahead for our own purposes and create ourselves to fulfill the goals that we have established for ourselves. Even if we join with someone and bear children together you are only creating an extension of yourself.

Not to long ago, relatively speaking in terms of the planet's history, man existed in tribal groups. We lived to together in small communities in the Mohawk Valley in New York State, the convergence of Tigress and the Euphrates, the mountains of the Himalayas, and the steppes of Russia. As a member of a tribe you belonged somewhere, and played some vital role ensuring the continual existence of your people.

As today's world gets more and more impersonal; communication done through third party instruments like portable phones or email programs, perhaps we are increasingly made aware of our lack of real community? Even if we don't articulate it as such the need for a sense of identity and the feeling of belonging somewhere provided by community appears to be growing in the face of the world's uncertainty.

A church's congregation is supposed to be a meeting place of people of like minds; people who share the same sense of purpose and belief. While it could be easy to say they once were places that tied people together through those commonalities, I wonder if the unifying factor was more circumstances then anything else.

Church, or whatever you want to label it, used to be the only social activity for the vast majority of people. If you were no longer in school, the only time you ever met up with everybody in the neighbourhood was at the church, or at a church sponsored event. I know there are some small rural communities around where I live where that is still the case.

But as alternatives to the church became available as a social focus, these communities dissolved in the face of competition, weakening their claims at being a unifying force. Perhaps some people still belong to churches but their numbers are far less then they used to be.

In the mid to late seventies when Cults were in full swing, organizations like the Moonies would seek out people who looked like they were lost and would promise them a home and a sense of belonging. Much the same motivation is now used to recruit the young men and women into terrorist organizations around the world. They become members of a tribe that works together – they belong and have a real purpose in life that nothing else has been able to offer them.

I recently had a conversation with my mother about her relationship to Judaism. She was raised in a family that were the epitome of secular Jews, in that they never set foot in synagogue except for the usual triad of Weddings, Funerals, and Bar Mitzvahs. At one point in her life she became a member of a Reform synagogue, but that only lasted for a year.

But she said what Judaism does give her is a place in history, a sense of where she's come from as part of something greater than herself and her family. Even though she doesn't participate in the religious life, or even hang out with very many Jewish people, she can still say I'm a Jew and feel like she belongs somewhere.

This wasn't something she picked up in a book from a bookstore; this was something she inherited from her parents, who in turn, well you get the picture. For my mother it's an unbroken line stretching back through more then five thousand years of tribal history that she is a continuation of. It's the place in the world where she belongs that has nothing to do with geography, politics, or religion.

Human beings need to have the sense that they belong to something bigger then themselves. Some find a kind of comfort in patriotism, while others find it in fighting for a cause, and others in religion. Still others are left searching for something external in the hopes of finding their place in the world.

But in reality, with a few exceptions, the trade off for our civilization and our lifestyle has been the loss of our connections to others and the past. We truly live in the age of the individual and we all feel just a little bit lost and lonely because of it.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:13 AM | Permalink

Do you remember as a child when you would get words that had two meanings confused? The adults around you would be talking about something and you'd hear a familiar word but in a context that made no sense to you. I'm sure it's happened to most of us so I'll just assume you know what I'm talking about. Things are going to get complicated enough as it is without me having to worry about that part of the story.

First off I need to explain my mother's extended family to you a little for this to make any sense at all. Her mother's family were Polish Jews who settled in Toronto in the early 1900s. They had been your typical Fiddler On The Roof type farming/peasant people who managed somehow to get the heck out of Poland with what they could carry on their backs and made their way to Canada.

On the other hand her father's family were Romanian Jews; well-educated city dwellers that probably never got their hands dirty in their lives. According to my grand father they came to Canada because his father had an altercation with a Cossack – he knifed him – and the family was forced to flee forthwith. They settled in Montreal because they were fluent in French but spoke very little English at the time.

Even during the times our family lived in Toronto we always seemed to end up seeing more of our Montreal relatives than our Toronto ones. Part of it was that my Grandfather wasn't that thrilled with what he called "the dumb Polacks", (even among the downtrodden there is a hierarchy: with European Jews the only thing lower on the scale than a dumb Polack, was a Litvack – Lithuanian) and my mother was closer to her cousins on that side of the family than on her mother's side.

So we usually ended up in Montreal at least once a year, more if by chance we happened to be living in Ottawa at the time. (My father worked for the Canadian government in the Justice department, so he'd be transferred between Toronto and Ottawa every three to four years until he quit) Ottawa was only about an hour's drive from Montreal so it was easy to even just go up for a day visit if we wanted.

For some reason I remember a period of a few years when we seemed to end up in Montreal every year for Passover. I don't know if this was accidental, but I do know that they always would invite my grandfather and grandmother to come from Toronto, and I think it was a good excuse for all of us to get together when we were living in Ottawa. My grandfather was the last of his generation alive for the Montreal family, he had been the youngest child, born in 1900, and all of his brothers and sisters had died young.

It was during one of those Seders, traditional Passover meals where the story of the Exodus is retold. (Not the movie starring Paul Newman – the original one featuring Moses and a cast of thousands) Before the actual stuffing of the faces could begin there were certain ritual foods that had to be consumed with the readings of passages from the story, but eventually we were all able to settle in and begin eating.

For most of the family this meant a lot of talking and very little eating. The seating was worked out so that the older the generation the closer to the head of the table you sat, and us young folk were usually seated at card tables that were attached like an extended kite tail to the main dinner table.

There is one year in particular that stands out for me, because of word confusion and its nature. That year it seemed we younger folk were even further away from the head of the table, in fact we had to watch people in the middle of the table to know what to do because we couldn't hear anything the reader was saying that year. It wasn't until we all began the regular eating of the meal that we found out the reason for our being even further away from the centre of things.

The first words that trickled down the table to us exiles were that there were some very special guests in town. They were first cousins of our mom's cousin's wife. Of course she wasn't really part of our family, so these first cousins weren't related to us except by marriage and if was rumoured they might actually be Litvaks.

"Mary's family," the voice's drifting down into our outer provinces, "God Bless them, are sweet people…" No words: I don't know, maybe it's because Hebrew has no vowels that Jews are so good at saying so much without using words. An eyebrow, a tilt of the head or a lifting of one hand says plenty for those who can read.

Even I, who was almost illiterate in that strange language of gestures and silences, could read something about cousin Mary's family wasn't what it should be…I craned my neck to try and see these cousins who weren’t cousins…who might not be all they should be.

They were sitting near the very top of the table, almost in the place of honour where my grandfather was ensconced, but for two chairs that contained his eldest niece and her husband they would have been seated beside him. From where I sat they didn't look much different than those folk across from them except they weren't nearly so fleshy. Aside from my grandmother who had something wrong with her thyroid, they were the only two who didn't have the sleek look of the well fed.

If forced to guess I would have said that maybe they would have been a few years older them my mom, but I couldn't be sure; something about their faces could have taken it either way. They looked both like young children and aged wizened elders. There was a quality about them that made you feel protective and wanting to keep them from harm. Just like any other orphans.

While I was looking up the table something was making it's way down; its passage was marked by a head turning to one side to present a good ear to the mouth beside it, a lifting of shoulders and splaying of hands, or even the slightest of nods. You just knew that everyone was watching, awaiting their turn to be passed whatever morsel was making the rounds, so they to could chew it over and add it to their hoard of information that they could hand out over the coming year.

When the words "the camps" finally made it down to me, and obviously in reference to the two who weren't anyone's family really, I didn't know what to do with it. The only thing the word camp meant to me was the place I was subjected to for two to four weeks each summer.

They didn't look like the type of people who ran a place where kids slept together in log cabins, and had pretend Indian stories and rituals foisted on them. They had none of the heartiness or pretend friend to every child attitude of all those camp directors whose hands my parents entrusted me too each summer. I couldn't see either of them, for one thing, getting up and leading everyone in rousing choruses of "Johnny Appleseed" before each meal as thanks for mass-produced slop.

I looked around to try and get some clue from my younger cousins on what it could mean and saw they had looks of awe, and something close to fear on their faces as they talked together, in little whispers. Not for the first nor last time did I htink about the unfairness of having a gentile father. If not for him perhaps I would understand more about these mysteries that my cousins all seemed to be understand without trouble.

It was while I was thinking these confused thoughts, feeling even more being a guest at a party where you were the only person who didn't wear the right clothes, I caught an inadvertently thrown lifeline: Auschwitz. I knew that word – the camps – must mean concentration camps. So those cousins who weren't cousins except by marriage had been in a concentration camp – surviving things far worse than having to sing "Johnny Appleseed" before each meal.

The rest of the meal, as I remember, was spent trying to grab surreptitious glances up the table as if we hoped, or at least I hoped, to gain some insight into what they had experienced by merely staring at them. They did exist in a space of their own up there near the head of the table. It was as if they had extra room for the memories that were part of their permanent state of being.

Something had changed about them since the information had been passed around. They'd gone from being possible Litvaks to almost celebrity status. Most of us had never seen survivors before; all of our families had been in Canada long before World War One to have to worry about being caught up in the fires of the Holocaust. Our parents and grandparents had lived out the war in school and the war factories, so this was the closest any of us had ever come to tangible contact with anybody who had been through those horrors.

We all wanted them to be special, and might have each been a little disappointed in how ordinary they were. Two very quiet people in normal clothes that didn't quite fit properly who were quieter then the adults we were used to. I don't know what we expected for our first survivors, but being raised on images of fighters, two little mice like creatures that leaned into each other for protection, were a slight disappointment.

We were driving home that evening after the meal, with no staying around afterwards to talk with anyone so I was left alone with my confusion. Why did we use the same word for where I went to spend weeks during the summer, as was used to describe those places where millions – a number far too big for anybody really to understand – of people died.

Obviously not all of them who entered the camps had died, some of them had walked away, somehow or other, and I saw two of them that night. Two very ordinary people who unless you saw them in the company of others really were no different to look at, which made it even harder to understand what had happened to them.

The lights of the oncoming cars as we travelled down the highway back to Ottawa that night could have been the search lights in a camp, or the flashlights of campers out on a walk at night in the woods. Sometimes it was so hard to tell things apart.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:43 AM | Permalink

When you've been reviewing a lot of music in one genre in a short space of time you start to run out of ways of saying the same thing over and over again. Just how many ways are there to describe how good a harmonica sounds or adjectives are there available, and applicable, to blues music?

So I have to admit to a little trepidation when I slipped my copy of the latest Holmes Brothers' release State Of Grace into my disc player. I had listened to the disc once about a month ago and had liked it, and now that it was time to review it I was going to need find ways of saying so without feeling like I was just spouting clichés.

Thankfully the Holmes Brothers made that easy, because they aren't simply a blues band, or any such easily identifiable label. Their music contains elements of the blues, but also the easy flow of the soul/jazz music that could be called be a New Orleans sound; more then a smidgen of Gospel influences in some of their arrangements and definitely Soul and Rhythm and Blues.

They've distilled three or four genres of African American music to make a flavour that's uniquely their own. They're not afraid to cross over genres as well and tackle music that you would think wouldn't fit into the repertoire of a band of their make-up and turn it into their own.

There are far too many bands out there that have been promoted as "defying easy definition" and when you hear them they're no different from six hundred other bands that have defied definition in the past. But the Holmes Brothers genuinely make it difficult to place them neatly anywhere.

What are you going to do with a band that is as comfortable doing a cover of Cheap Trick's song "I Want You To Want Me" and George Jones' "Ain't It Funny What A Fool Will Do"? Call them a Blues band? I don't think so.

Now they obviously don't do direct imitations of either old George or Cheap Trick, and unless you knew the lyrics you'd be hard pressed to recognise "I Want You To Want Me" as the same song that Cheap Trick had so much success with. Which only serves to make their version all the more impressive. To be able to take such a distinctive song and make it your own is an accomplishment in it's own right.

None of the songs they cover suffer any for their Holmes Brothers treatments. Nick Lowe's "What's So Funny About Peace Love And Understanding" has never sounded so good, and as they prove with their rendition of John Fogerty's "Bad Moon Rising", which they perform more like a jug band then anything else, they know how to put zest into something you've heard done by a million other bands over the years.

While the Holmes Brothers are great to listen to they have augmented their sound on this disc with some voices that couldn't compliment them better if they had been chosen to be in the band from the start. Roseanne Cash adds her sweet tones to Hank William's "I Can't Help It If I’m Still In Love With You", Joan Osborne lends a hand on the old Bill Monroe number "Those Memories of You" and on "I've Just Seen The Rock Of Ages" Levon Helm and his daughter Amy sit in. (this marks Levon's first recording since his recovery from throat cancer)

But this is still a Holmes Brother album; Wendell and Sherman Holmes and Popsy Dixon, make music that's both soulful and sweet. They're not going to fit anybody's definitions of what their music should or shouldn't sound like except their own. But there aren't many bands out there that can make you want to spontaneously start to dance just listening to their music because it seems more natural than standing still or walking when you hear it..

State Of Grace might just describe the state we're in when we listen to a Holmes Brother's CD. It went on sale in stores yesterday so do yourself a favour and pick it up. In this day and age all of us could use a little grace.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:07 AM | Permalink

There has always been something that has left me a little uncomfortable about the Quebec nationalist movement. I don't just mean the idea of a separate Quebec from the rest of Canada or any of the number of compromises offered over the years to give them a degree of independence. I've never had any argument with recognising them as a distinct society within Canada; they are one of many.

I don't hesitate in accepting the claims of any of the aboriginal nations as distinct and it would be hypocritical on my part to accept their claims and not those of Quebecois. With it's own civil code of law, language, and a single dominant faith (Roman Catholic) French Quebec is most defiantly distinct from the rest of Canada.

What has left the taste in my mouth is the fact that it is a nationalist movement based on ethnicity. Whenever you start pitting yourself against the rest of the world based on something as emotional as ethnic background you're lighting a fuse on a potential powder keg of hatred and intolerance.

One need look no further then the ethnic cleansings of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda to see what happens in extreme cases of ethnic nationalism. I'm not saying that Quebec nationalist are capable of carrying out those types of activities, but there have been indications that some nationalists who see ethnic minorities as a threat have some extreme views.

When the Parti Quebecois were first elected to office they passed a series of laws that were designed to guarantee that French stayed the predominant language of the province. Aside from Bill 101 that made Quebec officially French speaking only, there were laws pertaining to immigrants and where they could send their children to school.

If you already spoke English you would be permitted to send your child to the English language Protestant school system. In all other instances the children of Immigrants would have to attend school in French, no matter what their mother tongue was, in the hope that they would become part of the French only society.

While some of the measures could be called draconian and definitely are infringements on civil liberties, the law making it illegal for any signage to be in any language but French for instance, they do not single out anyone in particular for attack. All non-French speakers are equally affected by the proposals. Canadian provinces are allowed to set their own educational standards, and Quebec has had control over it's own immigration policies since Canada came into being, if not earlier.

In fact there had never even been a hint of anything like antipathy against other ethnic groups, in the early days of the Parti Quebecois. They were actually considered quite a socially liberal government when they first took power in the mid seventies. It was only later that their leadership began to swing to the right, in the mid eighties. Coincidently or not that's when the first indication came that there might be any sort of racism within the party.

It was late in the evening after probably the closest ever vote in a referendum on the sovereignty issue and the crowds had gathered to hear Jacques Parizeau's concession speech. As leader of the Parti Quebecois it fell to him to console them after their loss by the smallest margin yet. He had come within a hairs breadth of being given permission by the people of Quebec to begin negotiating the terms for separation. A swing of a few thousand votes could have made a difference.

Maybe Parizeau knew he was done for and was going to have to step down as leader anyway, or perhaps he was just angry and frustrated enough to let his real feelings show. He launched into a blistering tirade where he accused immigrants of not being real Quebecois and it was their fault that the referendum had been lost. If it hadn't been for foreigners living amongst us we would have won the referendum.

No amount of damage control or apologies could save Mr. Parizeau from a well-deserved trip to the scrap heap, but the Parti Quebecois managed to hang on and run one more sovereignty referendum that again lost by the smallest of margins. According to exit polls it was obvious that the majority of immigrants voted against the initiative. When asked most of them admitted to some fear about how they would be treated in a sovereign Quebec.

Of course those running the pro-federalist campaign had played on those fears in their efforts to ensure that the referendum was defeated. What was significant was that it was the first time this had even been an issue in a referendum.

When the Parti Quebecois went down to defeat in the provincial election that followed the referendum, the immigrant vote, which is mainly confined to Montreal the largest city in the province, went predominately to the new Liberal government. But as so much of Montreal already would have voted that way, it was not seen to be a sign of anything significant. Besides, all across Canada the Liberal party traditionally receives the immigrant vote.

With the Liberal Party now seemingly safely ensconced in power, doing the tricky balancing act of keeping both nationalists and federalists within the mainstream of the province happy, the whole ethnic issue looked to have faded away. That is until yesterday when Mario Dumont, the leader of the conservative provincial political party l'Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ) released a letter warning about the dangers of bending over backwards to accommodate minorities.

In the letter he says that Quebec must take measures to protect its national identity and the "values that are invaluable" (Dumont's word in quotes not mine, who else but a politician would say values that are invaluable with a straight face?). Of course he makes no mention of what those values might be or how immigrants pose any sort of threat to them. But that's not the point; the point is to whip up mistrust and hatred against those who are to blame for our troubles.

In the letter he says that Quebec needs its own constitution that would define what compromises should be made to minority ethnic and religious groups. It is his contention that recent allowances granted to various minorities present a threat to what he terms "old-stock Quebecois". It's hard to imagine that anybody in this day and age would actually say things like that in public while holding political office. It sounds far too much like something out of Nazi Germany and their whole purity of blood obsession.

The ADQ are not a fringe party in Quebec provincial politics. They won't be forming a government at any time in the near future it's true, but they are a legitimate political party who win seats in the Quebec parliament. Their leader wouldn't say something like that without believing there is some measure of support for it.

When you think about it I guess it's not that much different from what any conservative politician says about family values. But they aren't usually talking about creating a constitution that will outline restrictions to be placed on the rights of ethnic and religious minorities. That sounds a little too much like Jim Crow laws and official segregation. One set of rights for the majority and another for the minorities is not a democracy.

Quebec nationalism as envisioned by its earliest founders in the 1950s and 60s was to make French Canadians equal partners in Canada. Somewhere along the line the concept of equality has been lost and been replaced with the notion of separate and better.

Calling depriving people of rights, protecting your own rights, doesn't make it any less reprehensible an action. For all our sakes lets hope that Quebec nationalists aren't serious about going down that road.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:33 AM | Permalink

Anyway I thought the novelty of his submission merited keeping it intact. I'm sure our readers will be able to discern his meaning without too much trouble and that his insights into one of the greater comic writers of the early twentieth century would be intriguing. So I'll just let him tell it in his own words

boss I must tell you about this guy don marquis
but before we get started I want you to know how hard it is for me to type not able to use punctuation or the shift key as I'm forced to jump on each key with my head
why you are still using an old manual typewriter when everyone else has computers is beyond me
anyhow back to don marquis he was a newspaper guy back in the days when newspaper guys were writers as well as being journalists yes I know that sounds hard to believe but it was true back in the early days of the twentieth century
don was born in the real dark ages before electricity in 1878 and ended up in new york city writing for the newspaper trade in the teen years of the twentieth century
thats when archy the cockroach the reincarnated vers libre poet was first introduced to a disbelieving world
you see boss they were a lot more sceptical back then than people are today so they had a hard time believing it was a cockroach typing those columns every other day or so in the same plucky manner you see me doing here for you now
you dont believe me boss well hell all you have to do is check out your local bookseller for one of them penguin classic books theyve just put out a whole new version of archys work under the pen name of don marquis of course cause like you some people have a hard time believing that a cockroach can write anything
even in these supposed enlightened times a cockroach is treated like something that needs to be crunched under the heel do you know how many poetic souls are being scraped off soles every day
I digress and Im sorry boss but it makes my blood boil to think of all those souls who will have to transmigrate again to another body maybe not even as evolved as a cockroach
the book the book alright alright the book its called the - help me out somebody boss do the keys for html or will never hear the end of it the annotated archy and mehitabel you lazy so and so you couldnt stretch yourself to consider putting a higher case letter on either dear old archy or poor old mehitabel
you know there was never a finer feline thats lived according to what archy wrote for his boss then mahitabel she used to say that she was the reincarnation of cleopatra which was quite a funny but archy was a gentleman and let her have her vanities because she was his friend in an aside id also say that archy was probably just a little more then a little in love with mehitabel
well if you think people have a problem with same sex spousal things today cross species would have just been too much for the likes of the world back then
even me liberal free spirited cockroach that I am would be hard pressed not to be a little upset by that idea.
but I think archy knew it were a hopeless cause and he wasnt one for an overt amount of brooding
well he must have done some sort of brooding on occasion because he did commit suicide to become the cockroach
oh well thats for bigger minds or ones that arent being bashed against the keys of an old remington every night to figure out
you know that their relationship didnt exactly get off on the right foot with mehitabel mistaking archy for a late night snack and forcing him to hide in the keys of the typewriter
but once she found he was a writer who could properly immortalize her why she was a lot less keen on eating him and keener to talk about herself
toujours gai she'd say always happy arhcy toujous gai and shed give him that big toothy smile that would probably have made him nervous as much as anything else and go off into the night to try her luck
she was your regular society girl was our mehitabel boss
only being inconvenienced in a minor way by her natural inclinations like motherhood
but if she had one weakness aside from her pride and desire to always be a lady it was for the men folk of her species
ah boss the stories shed tell old archy about her men whod leave her high and dry but she kept her tail up proud and plump and it was always toujours gai archy toujours gai

now of course archy working at a newspaper as he did had to give his readers more diverse reading matter than only that pertaining to the live of a cat no matter how interesting mehitabel thought herself there was news happening in the world at the time as important as her story
periodically archy would go into the field to report
from washington d c he found that the insects there were so plentiful that nobody even noticed another cockroach
he reported that in the capital building no attention was paid to him because there were so many other insects around
it gives you a great idea of the american people he said when you see some of the things they elect
he discovered what we all know too well today that everything is going great and that anybody who says things arent are spreading propaganda of the enemy the department of publicity is doing its best to suppress all rumours that it didnt start itself
washington sure doesnt sound much different today then it did back in archys day does it boss
you know it seems like this don marquis fellow got quite famous off the back of my distant ancestor archy all cockroaches are related boss havent you noticed the similarity yet
sure he may have written a couple of plays and other books and a screenplay or two but who would have heard of him today if it werent for archy and mehitabel the book isnt called the annotated don marquis now is it
they even made an animated movie about the life of archy and mehitabel-
boss I really need your help this time be a pal- Shinebone Alley and you can't say they did that about old don marquis can you.
Well I guess theres no use complaining as thats usually a cockroaches lot even if they are remembered somebody else is taking the credit for their work but as mehitabel would have said to archy if he had complained to her about it
toujours gai archy always smiling toujours gai

Well that's where it ended, this epistle from my mysterious visitor in the night who felt the need to write about the Penguin Classic's release of The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis. I did some checking up and found that such a book does exist and it includes a really good biography of Don in the forward by Michael Sims.

This collection is the first time all the poems are gathered together in the order that they were first published in the New York Evening Sun as part of Don's column "The Sun Dial". It would appear that in spite of his cockroach bias my anonymous contributor knows his stuff. So from now on I'm going to be keeping a eye out for a slightly stooped cockroach around the house; one with the high forehead the result of an unusually large intellect, or from having your head beaten against a solid object repeatedly. I can only hope none of our cats come upon him while he's typing, there's not much room in a computer laptops keyboard for a cockroach, no matter how small, to hide.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 11:14 PM | Permalink

He's been called everything from a legend to larger then life. He's played rock and roll music since before it was rock and roll and some of the best rock and roll musicians in the world having been members of his band. He's been friends to everyone from Bill Clinton to John Lennon.

He's watched the kids who came to him as part of his band go on to achieve the fame and fortune that's always eluded him, that he keeps saying is only just around the corner. He has a well-deserved reputation as a hard liver and partier, but he's been married to Wanda for close to forty years. Anyone who has ever come in contact with him are charmed by his character and warmed by the glow of his heart and his smile.

But in 2002 all that mattered was a malignant lump was found on his pancreas. When it became obvious that surgery wasn't going to be an answer, the lump was intermingled too tightly with a major artery, it was as if he had been sentenced to death. When word leaked out he was dying, no one wanted to believe it; Ronnie Hawkins "The Hawk" wasn't supposed to go out like this

Somewhere along the line Ronnie and his long suffering wife Wanda made the decision to go public with the way in which this affected their lives, and allowed a documentary film crew into their lives for even the most personal of events. (I don't know about anyone else but those hospital blue gowns they give you as a patient are embarrassing enough as it is without being filmed in one) The result is the highly emotional, and very scatological (this is Ronnie Hawkins we're talking about remember) documentary Ronnie Hawkins: Still Alive And Kickin' which is now available on DVD.

Since they thought they were documenting the last days of an icon the DVD gives us a wonderful history of the Rompin Ronnie. Starting out at Sun Records in Memphis with all the usual suspects –Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and more, Ronnie never quite caught on to the extent the others did. Whether it was because he was always a bit of a rebel or just one of those quirks of fate is impossible to tell fifty years latter.

What we do know are the incredible numbers of people whom Ronnie has influenced and touched throughout his career. Probably the most famous version of The Hawks, his back up band, was the one playing with him that became better known as The Band: Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and Levon Helm, and who achieved far more success then their former boss ever did.

Then there are all those whose lives have intersected with Ronnie's and have in one-way or another been affected by that meeting. One of the hardest moments in the film to watch was Kris Krisstofferson finding himself having to give a speech about Ronnie only moments after finding out about the tumour. He's half way through his speech when he breaks down in tears unable to continue.

That's when you remember what the reality is for Ronnie at this time in his life. He might be putting on a brave face in public, being his usual bigger then life self, but away from the crowds it's a struggle. It's during these times away from the limelight that director Anne Pick and her crew show their real talent for being the fly on the wall listening in and recording.

In the approximately two years from the initial diagnosis to the miraculous recovery Anne and her film crew have created an agonizingly real record of a family struggling in the face of horrible adversity. Not only is Ronnie thought to be dying, there's no money coming in and their bank account is being bled dry.

In fact things are so tight that when the pump for their well breaks they don't have the money to replace it and are reduced to melting snow on their stove for water. Even without that calamity the strain on everyone was finally beginning to show. Ronnie is almost perpetually angry; Wanda looks like she's barely keeping it together, and their children are walking around like automations.

Just as you think that your heart can't take any more of this, comes the news that the most recent biopsy came back benign. The Cancer had vanished. Even more shocking was that a CT Scan showed that the tumour, which had been growing, had completely disappeared. Refusing to believe their eyes the doctors order a MRI scan which only confirm the results. The tumour and the cancer have magically disappeared.

Nobody wants to say it, but it looks like this was the work of a sixteen-year-old young man named Adam in British Columbia. Adam had offered Ronnie his services as a "dream" healer to attempt to break up the Cancer and the tumour and clean his body of the disease. Ronnie had agreed, because as he said what did he have to lose, and Adam had set to work.

Ronnie would simply lie down in bed and try to relax as much as possible, and Adam, nearly 3,000 miles away would visualise the area in his body where the tumour was in terms of a disruption and blockage of energy, and attempt to break up the block to allow energy to flow properly again. However it happened, the one thing everyone agreed on was it was a miracle.

There is an absolutely brilliant scene where he's telling Robbie Robertson the good news, and Robertson is just stunned. First he says, "Well it must have been all that clean living" and they both start laughing. Then latter in an interview, still not having completely absorbed the good news, he says something to the effect of, "Oh great you go around telling everyone you've got terminal cancer, and now you say, "Just kidding". Don't expect any of us to believe you the next time you say you're dying".

Pancreatic Cancer is a death sentence from which no one is supposed to recover. Somehow or other Ronnie Hawkins managed that impossible. It's not something that's easy to believe when you just hear about it, even without the "faith healing" element involved. But we know it happened because of the amazing record of the events that was kept by director Anne Pick and her extraordinary documentary Ronnie Hawkins: Still Alive And Kickin'

If you know who Ronnie is you'll want to see this film to get to know him a little better as a human. What's great about Ronnie is that it turns out that he's pretty much what you thought he was like. He really is rough and tumble with a heart of gold.

For those of you who don't know Ronnie, all I can say this is a great opportunity for you to make up lost time, and to count your blessings that he's still around for you to get to know. Whether it was the "good clean living" or "the whisky, pot and faith healin'" that kept Ronnie with us, we will never know. All I know is the world is a lot brighter a place with him in it.

Bill Clinton summed it up best when he said, "If more people were like Ronnie Hawkins, the world would be a lot better place to live in"

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:59 AM | Permalink

There are fewer and fewer living connections to our musical past still alive today. Of those that are many are living lives of quiet desperation, struggling to hang on with meagre social security pensions and no medical insurance. Some months that might mean having to choose between having their electricity shut off and eating.

These aren't people to whom retirement planning was a serious consideration. You show me a musician who thinks beyond their next gig even when they're in their sixties and I'll be surprised. It's just not in their nature to believe they'll ever stop playing, because they don't want to. Music has defined their existence for so long that living doesn't seem possible without it.

Tim Duffy, founder of the Music Makers Benefit Fund, said something in an interview on the DVD part of their recent release Drink House To Church House: Songs & Stories From The Roots Of America Vol. l that confirms that. He talks about the artists on their label that haven't performed sometimes in forty years, getting up on stage and blowing away the other acts.

It won't matter how long it's been since they've played in front of an audience, that's what they were born to do is make music, and given even half a chance that's what they would do until they are carried off the stage with their toes in the air. I've had the privilege of knowing one or two people like that in my life, and watched one of them grow despondent when his health has prohibited him from playing.

It can be a vicious circle for these people when they can't perform; the longer they go without being able to perform, for whatever the reason, the worse they feel. The worse they feel the harder it is for them to get up and do the very thing guaranteed to make them feel better – perform music for an audience. Any kind of music for any kind of audience, but in the case of the artists working with Tim and Denise Duffy of the Music Makers Relief Fund primarily the Blues.

The Music Makers Relief Fund has given numerous musicians the opportunity to not only get back on stage in front of audiences but to record their music as well. While anyone of us can get our hands on these recordings either through Amazon or the Music Makers web site very few of us are probably every going to have the chance to see any of these artists in concert.

Thankfully there is a partial solution to that problem parts one and two of Drink House To Church House: Songs & Stories From The Roots Of America. If I've understood things correctly these are the first two of a four part CD/DVD series featuring the artists associated with the Music Maker record label.

Some of the performers, Captain Luke for instance, on Volumes I and II of the series have already gained some notoriety around the world through tours of Europe and Argentina. But some of the others aren't even known in their own backyards or been seen performing by anyone but their neighbours and friends in the last twenty years.

So these discs work both ways; for the performers letting people know who they are and for us letting us see the people whose voices we've been listening to on CD. How else am I ever going to get a chance to see Drink Small perform, watch John Dee Holeman play his guitar, witness a performance by the incomparable Adolphus Bell (you haven't lived until you've seen the leader of a one man band introduce the band), Pura Fe sing Gershwin's "Summertime" accompanied by Cool John Ferguson and his band, or Haskell "Whistlin' Britches" Thompson too name just a few of the amazing talents crammed within these two sets of music.

Of course some images are stronger than others; there is no way I'll ever forget the feelings that were generated the first time I watched Captain Luke sing "Rainy Night In Georgia". Looking at this small black man and wondering where that smooth as silk baritone voice is coming from and almost crying from the beauty is not something I want to forget to be honest. Thankfully I now have a permanent record of it that I can watch over and over again.

And that's the thing really that makes these discs so special; they are permanent records of one time only moments. None of the recordings on either the CD or the DVD are done in a studio, they are all done on location, and all live. No shots from three different angles with multiple cameras, just one camera, a microphone, and whoever is going to be performing at that moment.

Sure on occasion the sound quality might suffer on both the CD and the DVD, but the compensations far out weigh that drawback. In some instances it's like the camera, and by extension the viewer, are another guest at a jam, hanging out and playing some tunes. I mean how many times are you going to get invited over to watch Pura Fe play and sing outside in a clearing in the woods? Or go to a dance where the above-mentioned duet of Cool John and Pura Fe takes place?

Moments like these are treasures that can't be replicated or replaced by anything. Listening to the Alabama Slim recounting in story/song how he and Little Freddie King escaped the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is a piece of modern American history that will never be written down in books. But it relates the reality of so many people's experiences far more accurately then any book could ever hope to.

Some people when they see or hear about these collections, Drink House To The Church House: Songs & Stories From The Roots Of America Volumes I & II may just think of them as a collection of music and videos. But I think they are of far more cultural importance then that. These productions are oral histories of the Southern United States from before the turn of the nineteenth century until the present day.

Each day that these people are among us and singing about their lives another day of America's history is being told whether anybody is listening or not. Drink House To Church House is one way we can at least attempt to hear the that story.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:14 PM | Permalink

Over the years we've often heard of the African-American musician who got their start singing in the church choir. Aretha Franklin started off by singing in the church choir doing gospel music as did half or more of the recording stars who became big in the blues, funk and rhythm and blues genres in the sixties and seventies.

But how often have we heard it going the other way round? Okay sure there was Bob Dylan's much publicized stint as a Born Again Christian, and other musicians might have found God after they stopped shooting another version of enlightenment into their arms. But those who have had such a life change that they've opened their own church and become a full-fledged pastor? There can't be that many.

One man who has made that journey, and who is very sincere about it, is Bishop Dready Manning. For the past thirty-nine years he has been ministering to African American churchgoers in North Carolina's Halifax and Northhampton counties and playing the Bluest Gospel music you've ever heard.

Up until 1962 he had been a hard drinking, hard living,Blues musician playing joints all over the area. Then one day he started bleeding out of his nose and haemorrhaging. He says to this day he would have died if not for the intervention of prayer on his behalf by some neighbours. As he puts it "I had a converted mind right then"

But being a preacher didn't mean he had to stop playing the blues, he's just taken his music and begun to use it in the service of the Lord. And serve the Lord is just what he does too. Not only does he play in his own church, but in churches across the region, at prayer meetings and at revivals. He's set up his own little studio where he produces any number of home made cassette tapes, forty-fives, LP albums, and his Sunday morning radio show over Weldon's WSMY –AM.

Until now those of us who have wanted to hear Bishop Dready Manning and haven't been up to making the trip down to the Carolina's have been out of luck. But now the good people over a the Music Makers Relief Foundation have put together an album of Bishop's music on CD so we can all hear it.

Gospel Train is a collection of eighteen of the songs that he's been playing in the church houses and meeting places of the Carolinas. The band that plays with him is his wife Marie and their five children when they tour, but for the album its just his wife helping out on vocals, his son Zacchaeus on piano and what looks to be his grandson, Marquis, on drums.

Listening to them you realize you're not hearing what we'd call "professional musicians" because it's just not that fancy, more serviceable then anything else. The exception to that is Bishop Dready himself. He's as smooth as silk when it comes to his guitar and harmonica work. He could just be laying down a rhythm for his wife to sing to, or playing the lead to one of the songs he has written for himself. These songs have the simplicity and emotional wallop of Country Blues.

Although none of them sound anything like what we have come to expect of gospel music, there is something about the sound that makes you wonder why nobody has used this style for the church before. Listen to any of the tracks on Gospel Train and you'll see what I mean..

The first song on the disc, "What Was I Doing, When The Saints Of God Found Me?" is a Blues "testify" song where he tells of his great conversion moment. Using a talking/ singing style of vocals he recounts his former life and the moment he saw the light. It's this low-key personable style though that gets people to pay attention when they hear it.

Some of his songs are short little sermons about a specific issue dealing with what's wrong with the world; "Hard Headed Children" who won't listen to the good advice their momma's give them or "People Don't Pray', which aside from the title's regret lists a whole bunch of other problems facing the world; men with long hair, women with short skirts, and of course insincere preachers.

That's the benefit for the preacher when he uses the blues to sing to the faithful, the message comes through loud and clear. Unlike other types of gospel where it's easy not to listen to the lyrics and just enjoy the music, here you have no option but to listen to what you're being told.

Unlike so many other musicians who started their career in the church, Bishop Dready Manning was a rough and ready Blues musician of the old school right from the word go. It took a life threatening experience to change his life around and turn it in the direction of preaching. People say there's not much difference between being a good pastor and a good entertainer, in both cases you have to be able to hold the crowd's attention.

Judging by the quality and power of the music on Gospel Trains Bishop Dready Manning won't have any problem keeping his audience's attention. Getting them to stop cheering at the end of the sermon will be another problem all together.

Gospel Train is produced through the Music Maker Relief Foundation's label Music Maker. According to their mandate they are dedicated to helping the pioneers and forgotten heroes of Southern Musical traditions gain recognition and meet their day-to-day needs. They affirm to these artists that the gifts of inspiration and music they brought to the world are valued still. Through the production of records like these and financial aid programs their mission is to give back to the roots of American music.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 01:51 AM | Permalink

In all relationships there comes a time when you have to figure out matters of etiquette. It's no different for Tommy and Jody with only some slight deviations from what most couples have to work out. For instance who gets to feed first off the thirty-five pound shaved cat isn't something most couples have to worry about

No not the eat the cat you sicko, that would be gross, just suck enough blood from his veins to keep them alive, and satiate their blood lust. Their only vampires for goodness sake not some cheap thrill Satanists who get their jollies out of mutilating pets. I mean if they had meant the cat any harm would they have gone to all the trouble of shaving him? (And you don't know trouble until you've tried to shave a thirty-five pound cat who doesn't want to be shaved. Let's just say that a lot of duct tape was used in the end and it's a good thing that vampires have great healing powers)

The problem is that neither of them are that keen on finding human prey, Tommy doesn't even know that Jody has taken humans before (see the novel Bloodsucking Fiends for details of Jody's "kills" ) and even though she only took the terminally ill it still doesn't sit right with her either. But Chet, the naked or hairless cat, is only a temporary solution to their problem and they are really going to need a consistent supply of blood in order to keep, er… umm… alive?

Little do they know that very soon they are going to look back on having to chase a huge pissed off cat covered in shaving cream around their loft apartment with fondness as one of the good times. Of course they have more immediate problems they have to deal with, but there are also some doozies on the horizon they can't know about.

One of the first things they have to do is replace Tommy. No not literally of course, but get someone to fill his original job description of – do everything I can't during the daylight hours for me will you – better known in their circles as a minion. (Not to be confused with a minyen the number of people needed, or if your conservative about it number of men, to do anything official in a synagogue)

Who better then a servant of the dark, even though she's sixteen and her mascara tends to run more than it should (and has this perky thing happening which she does her best to suppress) named Abby Normal to fill the job. Once she gets over wanting to be converted and brought , like, you know officially into the dark side of life, and stops exposing her neck every time she sees Tommy and bowing to Jody, she turns out to be a better find than they could have thought possible.

Which is a good thing because trouble is about to find them in all sorts of weird shapes, sizes, and colours. First there's the fact that Elijah, the eight hundred year old vampire that started the whole party by turning Jody isn't quite so securely encased in a brass statue as they thought (again see Bloodsucking Fiends for details) and he's a wee bit pissed.

And why not; he had his luxury yacht trashed by Tommy and his former workmates – collectively known as the Animals, the night stocking crew from the Marina Safeway- who also stole all his priceless objects to art. The other trouble comes in the shape of the Animals, who took their share of the ten cents on the dollar the fence gave them for the art to Las Vegas for a week.

Not only were they stunningly unsuccessful at the tables, but they got addicted to a blue hooker named Blue ("We talked about and realized that ever since we were kids we wondered what it would be like to bone a Smurf) Using sex as a means of control over the boys she gets them to deliver Tommy to her and he accidentally turns her into a vampire.

That's when things start to get a little over the top for Tommy and Jody. Abby stands by them through it all, and thanks to her they manage to keep from frying in the sun when they lose their apartment. But even with Abby at their side will they be able to withstand seven Animal vampires led by a former Blue hooker vampire, and Elijah all out for their blood in the truest meaning of that phrase?

Well the only way you're going to find out is if you're willing to enter into Christopher Moore's alternate universe where all of this not only can take place, but does with regularity. Those of you who've read other books of Christopher's will recognise familiar faces from other books set in the streets of his San Francisco.

Once again not only does Moore show he is the master of creating comic sequences and turns of phrase that will have you close to peeing yourself, but also shows he can take what could easily have been a stereotype and make a real character. Little Abby Normal could have been hidden behind bad dress habits, mascara, and Valley Speak. But Moore pulls us under her skin and we get a real picture.

There are also the little things that he inserts into the story as sort of sideways social commentary without getting bent out of shape. Jody has taken to dressing provocatively and walking the streets of San Francisco at night by herself. Why, because for the first time in her life she doesn't feel afraid at all. She knows that she can handle anything that the street can throw at her.

Up until she was a vampire being a woman made her always a potential target for assault and violence. She had never been able to walk outside without a little of that fear guiding her steps and attitude. It's a sad world we live in if the only way a woman can feel completely safe is if she's one of the un-dead –and Moore gives us that thought to mull over without beating us over the head, just laying it out there for us to see.

That's the thing about Moore you have to be careful about. It would be easy to dismiss him as just a wiseass frat boy with a thing for tits and a gift for humour. In reality he is a subtle and manipulative bastard who is breeding awareness of the inequities in the world in such a way that you don't even notice you could be developing a social conscience.

He is the master of the sleight of hand, where while he is distracting you with scenes of turkey bowling and the results of hot monkey sex with one hand, the other is making you think. That's not an easy thing to accomplish, but Christopher Moore is a true satirist and comic, not just some guy out for laughs.

Read his books and be prepared to laugh yourself silly, but expect to have to pay a price as well – thinking and reflecting on occasion.

Christopher Moore's latest book You Suck will be available for public consumption on January 17th in the United States. Check your local book seller for it's release date near you.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:01 AM | Permalink

You and the rest of your band have just traveled half way around the world to tour across the United States. You count yourself lucky because you've been given the use of a studio for the week you want to rehearse before heading out on tour. What you'd really like to do is play some Blues music, but no matter how hard you try, what arrangements you work up, it just isn't coming together.

It turns out your host at the studio happens to know a bunch of old time blues musicians, they record right here in this studio all the time. So when he says how would you like it if I invite some of them over to jam with you, you might be a little intimidated but you still jump at the chance.

John Dee Holeman turned up…he picked up an old guitar and started to play… well like he'd been doing it all his life…All week we had been going over songs, arrangements…Arguing over this and that…When John Dee picked up that guitar and started playing it was the most natural thing in the world…as natural and easy as taking a walk …John Dee Holeman took a walk with his guitar and the Waifs tagged along… Vikki Thorn lead singer of The Waifs

The Waifs are folk group from Australia who have started to make a name for themselves at home and abroad. The last time Bob Dylan toured Australia he sought them out so they could open for him throughout the tour. But all it took for them to be reduced to awe struck children and students again – as evidenced from the quote above by one of the Thorn sisters who lead the group – was to spend the afternoon with John Dee Holeman recording the eleven tracks that have been released as John Dee Holeman & The Waifs Band

So who is this John Dee Holeman who can reduce a group of young professional, successful musicians to awe struck fans? Well obviously he's an old time Blues musician: his birth certificate and the way he knows his way around a guitar prove that. John was born in 1929 in North Carolina and was playing guitar by the time he was fourteen.

He learned the basics from his older brothers, but his real education came from listening to the music of Piedmount Blues player Blind Boy Fuller on records. Piedmount Blues is a smoother, more country flavoured sound that came out of North Carolina and areas similar. It probably came about as a result of the cross pollination of the spirituals sung by the black slaves and the Irish and Scottish folk music being sung by the white farmers.

However it was born it's sound is as smooth as silk and leaves lots of room for finger picking on the part of the guitar player, or just about any type of plucking, strumming, and or worry of strings that a player wants. John Dee will sometimes play with a claw hammer style, echoing the days he used to play banjo, but then again John has evolved his own way of doing just about everything to do with the Blues in the years he's been playing.

All you have to do is start listening to the music the Waifs and John Dee recorded and you'll see how special a player and singer he is. (He can't dance while playing guitar anymore, as he's had a couple of strokes and they've slowed him down a little, but he used to also be a pretty mean tap/clog dancer) From the opening track, his version of "John Henry" you just know you're in for a treat.

First off, for all Ms. Thorn's protestations, the Waifs are all pretty damn good players themselves, and provide some really sweet accompaniment all the way through the disc. I've always had a weakness for a well-played snare drum with acoustic music, so I personally appreciated the sound of brushes scrapping rhythmically during some of the swingier or mountain influenced tunes.

"Looking Yonder Comin'" (If you can't hear "Orange Blossom Special" or "Hear My Train A Comin'" in that song you need to get your ears checked) is a perfect example of a great meeting of musical styles. It starts off sounding like it could be country gospel, then John's voice starts moving into another emotional pitch and we're now in Blues territory.

Then they move into their final song which is a rousing version /jam of "Baby Please Don’t' Go". It becomes an extended jam of guitars, harmonica, base and brushes slapping across the surface of a snare drum, until John decides they've had enough and winds it down. Remember this is a very relaxed informal gathering, a group of talented musicians hanging out in the studio with the tape just happening to be rolling. (I thought I had imagined it the first time, but during a second listen I definitely hear a baby cry on the song "Country Gal", which makes sense as it's as mournful a blues heartbreaker as you're liable to hear anywhere this side of the Mississippi or the other.)

Everyone can say all they want about the fact that the Music Makers organization is preserving pieces of our past with their recordings. But as far as I'm concerned when I hear something like this disc and the music sung with such passion and played with such enthusiasm there's nothing remotely "old fashioned " or dated about this music. How can music that comes from the soul and speaks to heart have a date stamped on it?

John Dee Holeman & The Waifs Band is one of those rare occasions where you feel like a fly on the wall sitting in on a private jam sessions between musicians playing just because they've got the chance. Maybe there's a mistake or two that would have been eliminated if they had been "recording" but the immediacy and sheer enthusiasm for the music at hand more then compensate for any slip-up.

Take some time in your busy day and put this disc in a player and forget your troubles for close to an hour. It's easy when you hear people playing like this. It will make you feel that all is right with the world. I'm sure The Waifs do after that afternoon in the studio.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 01:33 AM | Permalink

A lot gets written about the early music of North America and its influences on today's music. We talk about old time holler songs that the slaves would sing in the fields and the Scottish and Irish roots of the music sung by the white settlers in the Tennessee Valley and the Carolina hills.

But all of us seem to forget that there was a third group of people living in the same area, who had been living there actually for quite some time before either the white people and their black slaves showed up. That would be the Native Americans, First Nations, Aboriginals, or whatever label you feel like affixing to them.

In the Carolinas it was no exception and the original people were the Tuscarora. Now for most people who have even heard of the Tuscarora it's only because they are known as the nation that was the sixth of the Six Nations to join the Iroquois Confederacy. The truth of the matter was that they were on the run and looking to escape white encroachment on their lands when they joined up with the Iroquois.

But for the Tuscarora who weren't able to make good on the escape up north to what's now New York state, they ended up sharing a lot of the same experiences as the black slaves, including being made into slaves right beside them. So there was a fair bit of co-mingling of music going on right from those earliest days of settlement. In fact according to singer songwriter Pura Fe the two people's shared so much in common that when the Tuscarora were free they became an integral stop on the Underground railroad helping slaves escape to Canada.

Pura Fe should know about things like this because she can trace back her maternal Tuscarora line far enough to know that she's the fourth generation in a row of seven singing sisters. So the singing style and music she learned from her mother, goes back to the time of her great-grand mother, which even at a conservative estimate would be the late 1800's.

When you listen to her sing on her latest album, Follow Your Heart's Desire on the Music Maker label, you can understand how she ties into their mission of supporting music that is in danger of being lost. You can hear elements of almost every kind of old time music wrapped up in her songs, but there's also an underpinning of something distinct.

I don't even mean the obvious inclusion of Tuscarora language lyrics, or even native instruments like turtle shell rattles or drums; unfortunately you can find those instruments a dime a dozen on new age CDs these days. (Although finding anyone speaking the Tuscorora language would be a lot more surprising as its one of the tongues that was almost successfully made extinct by North American government assimilation programs. You can probably count of your hands and feet the number of completely fluent native-born Tuscarora speakers left in the world, current generations are having to be re taught to speak it as a second language) It's more like there is a certain quality to her singing or an undercurrent to her music that makes it distinct from anything else you've heard before.

What I noticed first was her voice, one moment it would sound just like any other woman singer's voice that played around in the higher registers, the next moment there would be an almost rumble or growl in the back of her throat as some passion began to overwhelm her.

It may not be a traditional Blues voice singing a traditional Blues songs, but it’s a voice, and a song, born out of the same emotional base that inspired the men and women from that area to sing the blues and the stories of their lives and families. Pura Fe does much the same thing as those who came before her, singing about love and betrayal, about wanting the right person, and being with the wrong one.

But she also sings the stories of her people, and I don't mean the cute little folk tales you read in the anthropology books either. But of the heartbreak of being different and the hatred directed against them by those too scared to do anything but hate and envy. The song "Della Blackman Pick and Choose" is about her great aunt who was killed and raped by the Ku Klux Klan for daring to try and go see her family after marrying a white man.

Then there are the songs specifically about her nation the Tuscarora and how she first came back to the Carolinas, meeting her cousins for the first time in the song "Goin' Home". Like all good Blues songs these are full of pain, happiness and longing. But unlike so many songs the longing is for the land – to reconnect to where the spirit of her family resides.

On Follow Your Heart's Desire Pura Fe shows a remarkable talent for both song writing and singing. For those of you who have never heard her before this is an ideal opportunity. Not only is she in fine voice on this disc, but she is joined by some really fine musicians who provide both Native and Carolina style backing for her.

For those of you who know her from Ulali, the acappella group she founded, you will recognise the versatility of her voice if not the musical styles she is exploring here. For those of you who have heard Pura Fe before Follow Your Heart's Desire will be an experience you'll not soon forget.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:42 AM | Permalink

How do you go from being a young man who dreams of being an actor to being a cold blooded fundamentalist terrorist who thinks nothing of killing women and children without a seconds thought. To our minds it must seem unconscionable, but in the world created by Yasmina Khadra and in the head of Nafa Walid his protagonist in Wolf Dreams it's simply the path of least resistance.

Since winning it's independence from France in 1962 Algeria has been a secular state, but in the mid to late eighties fundamentalists are beginning to take over mosques in areas where they know they will be able to recruit. Initially keeping a low profile in the community at large, they gradually began to expand out from their power base in the mosque.

In the Casbah of Algiers where Nafa Walid lives the changes are only gradually noticeable. But when he loses a job yet again, this time after refusing to be party to covering up the murder of a young woman by his employer, he turns to the mosque for comfort of the familiar and to try and deal with his shame for having been involved in he believes is his complicity in the girl's death.

In his disillusioned and despondent state he is ripe for the picking by the fundamentalists. Like any cult, they find those who have been alienated and then move in to fill the void. They offer a ready-made purpose, a sense of belonging, and best of all they've reduced everything to a black and white equation. Something is either right or wrong and there is no room for debate or you are wrong.

But it's not until after the food riots of 1988, (Algeria was short of everything demonstrations turned to riots so bad that the army was sent in. Not trained in crowd control somebody panicked and they began firing at a crowd and nearly five hundred people eventually were killed with thousands more arrested) that the fundamentalists hit their stride in Algeria. Contending that they were the supporters of the poor and downtrodden, they said follow us and we will change the way things are run.

In their brave new world it would be the righteous being taken care of, while those who had been sucking the country dry would be gotten rid of. They offered a banner that people could flock behind and feel like they were on the right side. Those who would openly speak against them became fewer and fewer as it became less and less healthy to do so.

But it wasn't until the election of 1991 when the fundamentalist party were leading after the first round of voting, looking set to form the next government and the army declared the elections null and void and took power for themselves that the terror campaign began. Car bombs, ambushes, and any other means at their disposal, and always the same targets; the police, the army, the intellectuals, the scientists, women who wouldn't wear the wear the hijah (veil), and the artists. If you were not one of them you were the enemy and didn't deserve to live.

Nafa stays on the fringes, telling himself that he doesn't want to kill anyone. So instead he works for them. He takes on the job of ferrying packages through roadblocks. He drives a taxi and doesn't look identifiably like a terrorist so, even though his cab might have its secret panels filled with weapons or money, he's not given much trouble at the roadblocks. He learns the trick of not letting himself be provoked by the police and lets them do as they will even to the point of taking a beating on occasion.

All around him is terror and mayhem but he continues on thinking that he is staying out of it; he has become used to the sight of corpses, just like the children of the Casbah who have gotten use to the rows of heads left each morning on the spikes of railings. Informants, police officers, anyone who is considered a non-believer or has been fingered for saying anything that sounds heretical are all equally guilty in the eyes of the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS – Islamic Salvation Front).

Nafa is happy, for the first time in his life, he tells himself he is doing something useful for the community. The taxi he drives was once the property of an arrested freedom fighter, and the money he earns goes towards feeding the family of the jailed person. The salary he draws is sufficient that he is able to bring food into the house for his family, and finally prove to his father that he is not the wastrel he always took him for.

Of course it can't last forever and the police come for him one night when he's out. He comes home to find his family's apartment surrounded and only a hastily whispered warning tells him to leave. He is taken into hiding, until it can figured out what to do with him. On the second day he receives a visit from a comrade who tells him that the police killed his father when they came looking for him.

From then on he becomes a killer because he believes he must revenge the death of his father in any way that he can. The first time is hard, it's true, but it's not his fault. Why did the magistrate have to be the way he was so that he Nafa had to kill him? Why did the revolver keep shooting the man long after he was dead? There was no reason for it to do that.

The leader of his group says not to worry, after the third one it gets easier, and Nafa is relieved to find out that is true. Why he can even be present at the murder of someone he knows and watch him have his throat slit in front of his family calling out Nafa's name. Of course he did have a little problem sleeping that night, but it passed.

He is living the life he always wanted with his group. They are to pretend they are the children of upper class families and they live according to that lifestyle, with dispensation to frequent dens on iniquity in order to ferret out targets. Nafa even has his own room with a large screen television.

But even among the most paranoid of organizations betrayal can happen, and in one fell swoop the police manage to arrest the whole national leadership. After the dust has settled and all the infighting is done Nafa finds he has been transferred out of the city into the countryside. Someone who he had pissed off at some point in time is now in charge.

He has an hour to go and say goodbye to his mother and she barely lets him in the house. She accuses him of abandoning her and his sisters. He won't stand for that and gets indignant and exclaims I've been revenging the death of my father at the hands of the police.

She laughs in his face – "You killed your father. When he demanded of the police what they wanted of his good son who provided for his family they showed him proof you were one of the terrorists. He was so upset he dropped dead of a heart attack on the spot…"

In the countryside they are the kings. They are like armies of feudal lords who collect tithes from the surrounding villages through threats and intimidation instead of having to work. They hide out in their mountain redoubts kidnapping, murdering, and looting keeping the people in the surrounding villages "loyal" to the cause and safe from any retaliatory strike the local militias can mount.

Nafa works hard to prove himself, although his pride is injured that they won't let him kill people and only be a goat herder. It's not fair he says quietly to himself, knowing that any word of disquiet can have you killed as non-believer, hadn't he proven that he knew how to kill. He begins to sulk and feel hard done by again.

The inevitable happens and even though Nafa gets to prove himself time and time again when the army uses artillery and helicopter gun ships they haven't a chance. Hoping for something he and a couple other survivors head back to Algiers hoping to hide out in the Casbah; surely somebody will want to shelter heroes of the revolution? The answer is no and they are destroyed.

Terrorists aren't fanatical believers to start with, they are empty shells of people lying scattered on the ground waiting for something to come along and fill them with hope. If not hope than purpose will do, and if that fails anger. Nafa with his head full of unrealistic dreams which are constantly dashed, Nafa with no real hope of doing anything beyond menial work for people who despise him and don't even recognise him as being of the same species, is the perfect terrorist.

Like In The Name Of God before, what is so chilling about Wolf Dreams is how the author shows how easy it is to become something that has no sense of right or wrong anymore. No matter how much they bleat about God or the good of the people, for the average terrorist none of that really means anything.

If on the same day that they had taken the first steps towards becoming a terrorist somebody had been able to convince them of the virtues of male prostitution they would have done that instead. A terrorist is a person who takes the path of least resistance when it comes to living, whatever looks easiest and with the highest reward is for them.

Maybe that's why they call them resistance fighters?

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:42 AM | Permalink

Well I'm now going to do something I've only done a couple times before and that is combine the review of two discs into one piece. The times I've done it in the past has been when I've had multiple discs by the same band to review at once or there has been sufficient similarities to make two reviews redundant. That's pretty much the case with the two releases,A Living Past and Experessin' The Blues, under review here. They are so interconnected that it makes more sense to review them as a unit.

Both discs are among the first compilation albums released by the wonderful organization The Music Maker Relief Foundation a non government charitable group offering financial assistance to the generation of musicians who have been forgotten by the winds of time and through the capriciousness of fate have fallen through the cracks.

Well into their eighties a lot of them aren't looking for handouts, but just a chance to keep making the music they love and the ability to earn their own keep. But some times in order to do that they need assistance; whether it's to keep the car on the road, buy a lightweight amp they can carry to gigs, or to have enough of their own CDs to sell at a concert.

From the inspired genius and obsession of Tim and Denise Duffy to not let the music of that generation die unnoticed was born a collection of initial field recordings. Like a latter day songcatcher, Tim travelled the length and breadth the Carolinas. Instead of wax cylinders and a notation book he carried with him his guitar, two microphones and a DAT recorder in the hopes of at least preserving these songs before the musicians passed away.

But fate wasn't about to let him off the hook that easily, and in the shape of Mark Levinson, founder of Cello Music and Film services, sent him not only the means to turn his rough field recordings into high quality saleable songs, but his first fundraiser. Mark took it upon himself to circulate the tapes among the audio equipment maker and designer community to raise the seed money necessary to establish the Foundation.

If there was one musician among the many that Tim has worked with that had the biggest influence on him it was the late Guitar Gabriel. Gabriel shows up on both these discs and he's the heart and soul beating and pulsing throughout the both recordings. It was through Gabriel that Tim was introduced to the majority of the players and was able to record them in the early days of the Foundation's work back in the late eighties and early nineties.

You'll meet people like the late Preston Fulp, whose falsetto renditions of old traditional country blues songs eerily presages any number of male singers who work the upper registers, but Roy Orbison in particular. The only difference being that Preston's voice has a heartfelt quality that none save Roy, of our recent crop could achieve in their wildest dreams. With the death of Orbison, I'd say there was no one left who could have matched Preston Fulp for integrity and honesty of tone. He contributes "Careless Love" to both CDs and on A Living Past he adds "Farther Along"

One of the mainstays for the Music Maker foundation, especially since the passing of Gabriel, has been Capt. Luke. Born Luther Mayer he's been living and entertaining folk in the Carolina's since 1940. He sings in the most awesome baritone voice you've ever heard and near stops your heart the first time you hear it on record. I've never heard a voice that could be said to ring like a bell before, and now I know what it means.

But the Capt. is not just a singer; he's an entertainer, which means he does just about anything to amuse the people that have come see him. He plays a mean jaw harp and tells the funniest stories you've ever heard. It's not so much the stories are all that funny, but his characterization is right out of vaudeville and can have you in tears or worse if you're aren't careful.

On Expressin' you only hear the beauty, but on A Living Past you can hear him in full storytelling mode with "The Kingfisher Story" and "Dog and Cat Fight". If any of you have read Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, I'm sure you'll see the resemblance to the storytelling God from Africa. It sure seems the old Spider is alive and well in the form of Captain Luke.

Now I'm not going to be able to go through each and every artist on these discs, heck I couldn't do that if I were only reviewing one of them, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention two more names: Richard "Big Boy" Henry and Willa Mae Buckner, a.k.a. "The World's Only Black Gypsy", "The Princess of Ejo", "The Wild Enchantress", "Snake Lady", or even "Billie Raye Buckner". For entirely different reasons they both made a lasting impression on me.

The word irrepressible must have been invented with Willa Mae in mind, if there isn't a picture of her next to it in the dictionary there should be. Just judging by the variety of her stage names should be enough for you to go by, but if that isn't enough for you her two tracks on A Living Past, especially the traditional "Peter Rumpkin" which is repeated on Expressin' should tell the whole story.

You can hear the wink in her eye and smirk on her face as she sings these songs. You've got to remember that she's singing them into a microphone probably sitting in her living room or kitchen not on stage, but it still sounds for all the world like she's playing the room for all her might.

There aren't too many people who can get away with singing this type of bawdy song and not sound embarrassing, (think of Chuck Berry's "My Ding – a –Ling" without wincing) but she can. She doesn't even sound like a cute old lady being dirty with a coy hand over her mouth. She still sounds like she's living up to the titles of her past; you can definitely see why she would have been called "The Wild Enchantress"

Richard "Big Boy" Henry is almost as far from Willa's world of Burlesque as you can get without being in a Church. He does the old Hollar type of Blues, which were based on the call and response shout songs the field hands would sing in the fields to each other. You forget that the Carolina's are on the coast occasionally, but Richard was born in Beaufort a fishing village on the North Carolina Coast.

He typifies so many of the performers that Tim Duffy unearthed at this time in that he's worked tirelessly alongside his musicianship to get by in the day to day world. So many of these men and women have made some of the most beautiful music of the last century, creating the foundations for any of the popular styles you might listen to today on your I-pods or whatever, but have gone completely unrecognised. There is an air of authenticity and honesty to Richard's performances that no amount of electronics or publicity can manufacture.

Both discs fittingly take their names from Guitar Gabriel. "Expressin' The Blues" is the title given to a track featuring Gabriel trying to define what exactly the Blues are and when they happen. What makes it so darn important to be "Expressing'The Blues" in other words.

One of the things he does say that's so special about what he does, what compelled him until almost his death bed to keep singing and playing, was that singing the songs he did made him feel like he was part of "A Living Past". When he says that you realize why these records can't and shouldn't be looked upon as just mementoes of another time, because the past is living everyday in the music that is played everywhere.

If you deny the past, you deny part of yourself and a part of your heritage. These people and their music no more belong in a museum than anything you hear on the radio today, (although it does deserve to be remembered far more then 90% of what is played). Most of the performers aren't content just to be singing the songs they used to sing, and are continually writing new material to perform.

A Living Past and Expressin' The Blues are simply reminders that this music is worth listening to, no matter when it was written. If no one else is willing to play it, well there are over three hundred musicians now being supported by the Music Makers Relief Foundation and any one of them will be more then happy to sing you one of their songs or tell you one of their stories.

The world is little bit brighter a place for it.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 12:01 AM | Permalink

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About twelve years ago I stumbled across a book called Coyote Blue which I thought was great. I did what I normally did under those circumstances and looked in the front of the book to see if the author had written anything else. The other title listed was something called Practical Demon Keeping.

The title left me slightly taken aback, as it wasn't what I expected from the guy who had just written what I thought to be a really great "Coyote" story. I was even more nonplussed by the fact my library kept in the horror section. I've never been much for horror books, enough horrors in the world as it is thank you very much without us needing anyone to invent more, so I was having doubts about whether to read it or not.

The cover helped, as it was silly enough to belay the worst of my fears, and the story itself convinced me that the Kingston library needed to read books before they shelved them. Sure the book was about a monster that would, if given half a chance, devour people whole. But since most of those deserved it didn't seem like too bad a monster. Turns out of course it was only biding its time – but that's a different story and one that you can read if you want to some other time.

The story under consideration right now is the mind behind those two books and numerous others as well. With his most recent book, You Suck a sort of sequel to his classic tale of the undead Bloodsucking Fiends, soon to be stalking the aisles of bookstores across North America and around the world I thought I'd try to find out a little bit more about the author of all the above Christopher Moore.

What possesses him, literally or figuratively, to write about human eating, soul stealing, and blood sucking monsters anyway? Did he have a depraved (deprived) childhood, or were these books the product of a naturally deviated mind? Even if the interview only serves as a warning regarding his character for those considering attending a book reading or signing on his upcoming promotional tour for You Suck it will at least have served some purpose.

So without anymore preamble I present for your enjoyment and edification an interview with Christopher Moore. We conducted the interview via email so his answers are exactly as he wrote them except for some HTML augmentation as required….Christopher…

1) Well I suppose we should start with some biographical details. Were you a live birth?

I was supposed to be a miscarriage, but survived, thus starting down the path of being a disappointment to my mother.

2) What brought you to writing? Have you always wanted to write or was it just something that happened one day when you least expected it?

I started writing stories for school when I was about 11 or 12. I liked it a lot and started writing them on my own. I wrote my first novel when I was 12. It was sixteen pages long. It was basically about frogs taking over the world, which I still think is a good idea. Not for a book, I mean frogs taking over the world is a good idea.

3) You have an incredible sense of the bizarre. Did that develop over time as a reaction to anything in particular? Do you find it easier or harder these days to find the inspiration for it?

I've always liked imaginative stories and wild humour, going back as far as I can remember. I honestly never write anything just to be weird - my reaction is more, "Wouldn't it be cool if ______? And I fill in the blank with something fun.

4) Not all of your books have been specifically horror, but all have had elements of the supernatural in them, or at least the surreal. What first attracted you to those themes, and what continues to keep them fresh for you?

Probably a short attention span. Reality gets pretty boring. I've tried to write stories without a supernatural element, but not far in I'm usually saying, "This guy is a dick, I need to feed him to a monster." Then there you go.

5) Even though you have some fairly gruesome, some would say down right sicko, scenes in your books, you always manage to keep them funny. Is that a symptom of some serious character flaw on your part, or is there actually a literary reason for you to turn disembowelment into (if you'll forgive the term) side splitting comedy?

Well, you kind of have to do it, don't you? Laugh, I mean. It's simply what I do. As with the supernatural stuff, I've tried to write non-humorous stories, but I don't get far before I'm cracking wise.

6) Books like The Stupidest Angel and Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal could give people the impression that you are less then reverent when it comes to religion in general and Christianity in particular. I know you included a disclaimer in Biff, and I also believe you don't mean to insult anyone's beliefs, but what are your feelings about those two topics, and/or, is there any particular reason you picked them as targets for your humour, especially in the latter book?

Well, I assume you mean Lamb, which was actually written before Stupidest Angel, I wasn't setting out to attack anyone's faith, but to tell a great story. I'd read that there were thirty years of Christ's life that hadn't been covered in the Gospels. I though, "Some one should write those years." And since I knew nothing about religion or history, I was that someone. Once I did the research I realized that all of the people in the U.S. who were using Christianity to pursue a political agenda where going completely against the teachings of Christ, so if there was any point I wanted to make, it was that the thing Christ railed about, was hypocrisy, not prayer in school or gay marriage. But mostly I just wanted to tell a good story, and as I said before, funny stories are what I do. I didn't see either book as making fun of religion so much as having fun with religion.

7) Although your books are predominately humorous, you will occasionally interject moments of pathos or seriousness into the proceedings. Is this because you're trying to make a particular point (usually) or is there another reason?

Not make a point, just engage the reader. Humour can be a great device for disarming a reader, and then once their guard is down, you can break their heart. I just like to do that for fun.

8) Which comes first the title or the book? For example did you write the Lust Lizard's story first, along with the good folk of Melancholy Cove, or do you sit around inventing really weird titles to see if you can write a book about it.

Actually, that book was supposed to be called Munching Wackos, but my editor at the time didn't like it so I had to change it. I ended up having a contest with my readers for a title. Finally I chose components of suggestions. So, the answer is, I usually come up with the story, then think of the title as I'm working on the book.

9)Some of the creatures who terrorise your characters come from mythological or biblical backgrounds. Do you research them or have you extensive first hand experience with the majority of your book's inhabitants?

A lot of research. My only first-hand experience was with the humpback whales in Fluke

10)Your very accessible to the public. Aside from this interview taking place, what other regrettable incidences have occurred that may have made you rethink the practice of publishing an email address in your books?