Leap In The Dark

I don't talk very much. That might come as a surprise to those of you who read what I write considering how verbose I tend to be, but I really don't contribute very much to conversations. There's probably a whole bunch of reasons a shrink could come up with for this oddity in my character, but I have found my own list of reasons.

Most conversations I hear are people talking about things that just seem pointless and a waste of oxygen. I can't think of the number of times I've wanted to say something like haven't you heard of global warming; pleas stop contributing to the CO2 supply. But of course I'm usually far too polite for that and if you put me in a social situation I can pretty much be guaranteed to be sitting by myself in a corner within half an hour.

Four magic words usually preclude me from 75% of most conversations: "I don't watch television". It's not that I don't have a television, because I do, in fact I even have 5.1 surround sound hooked up to it. It's just I don't have cable, a satellite dish, or even an antennae attached to the thing. My wife and I have a DVD player and a V.C.R. and bring in exactly one channel, sort of, that we never watch.

Part of the reason is expense; we just have never been able to justify paying for something that neither of us is really that concerned about. Anyway there always seems like there's something I'd rather be doing then watching television or even watching movies these days.

I don't know if you've ever noticed how much conversation revolves around what people watch on television – maybe you only notice when you don't watch it and you don't have a clue what people are talking about. Sometimes it will even take me a while to figure out that the people under discussion in a conversation aren't real, but are characters from a television show.

The way they talk about their lives they sound like they know and care about them more than their own children. Sometimes it's a real effort not to say something: "Hey they're fictional fucking characters people" But I know they'd think I'm the strange one so I just drift off into a corner and sit and drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, and them make my excuses and go home early.

I suppose I could try and change the topic of conversation, but what do you do: "So how about third world debt relief?" Yeah right that would go over real well – you try it sometime and see what happens and let me know all right? I frankly don't have the energy anymore to try and hold an intelligent conversation under those circumstances.

But then there's the other end of the spectrum, the half-baked intellectual complainers. By half-baked I'm referring to their intellectual development not their level of intoxication in case you wondered. These are the people that can find a million other things to blame other than themselves for their screw-ups.

They've been misunderstood because of their being so special by everyone from their kindergarten teacher to the last woman who dumped their sorry asses. Unfortunately these usually are men, although I've noticed a disturbing trend among women recently to start holding conversations in the same manner. .

If society would only give them a chance they would be doing so great, but they can't understand what this emphasise on doing anything is all about. Can't everybody see that we should all be grateful just to be allowed to bask in their wonderfulness? Quite frankly give me an in depth analysis of Gilligan's Island any day of the week over trying to hold a conversation with that type of person.

But even they pale in comparison to the intellectual/philosophical/spiritual/artistic conversations that mean absolutely nothing. I don't mean the innocent conversations that most young academics engage in when they've discovered the joy of hanging out with people of like mind for the first time in their life and so spend the night solving the world's problems

No I'm talking about people who don't let trivial things like facts get in the way of an argument, or who talk about the deep artistic meaning of Meatloaf's lyrics, or somehow or other make the war in Afghanistan the soldier's fault. They usually speak in sweeping generalities about topics they know nothing about and manage to make reference to chaos theory, existentialism, and any number of other intellectual sounding academic pursuits in every sentence whether its pertinent or not.

They are the painters who never picked up a paint brush, the writers who've never written a page of prose or a line of verse, and the actors and dancers who've yet to stand in front of an audience. But that doesn't prevent them from being experts in those fields or stop them from pontificating about what is lacking in them.

I don't talk about my spiritual beliefs because; they're really no one's business but my own and I don't think anyone else would be really that interested. But neither of those considerations seems to have crossed a lot of people's minds. I've actually heard conversations being turned into boasting contests about who is more spiritual.

Invariably these are the conversations, or slight variations on, that I encounter the majority of time when I'm away from home. Finding someone, anybody even to have a decent conversation with has become nigh on impossible. And people wonder why I'm so content to hang out at home and read, or write.

I don't think of myself as a snob or an elitist, but if I am I don't apologise for it. I enjoy reading and thinking, and think consideration of another person's feelings is usually a good thing. But somehow these characteristics seem to be a draw back in most polite society today.

Is it too much too ask to be able to find someone to chat with about a book I've just read or to have an informed discussion about a topic in the news. I'd welcome someone who disagreed with me intelligently with open arms right about now over anybody else. It's getting quite depressing the lack of people to talk to anymore.

Think about it; when was the last time you had a real conversation?

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:02 AM | Permalink

Since the industrial revolution of the 1800s the world has gone through massive technological changes. From the cotton gin of the 1800s to the assembly line of Ford motor plants of the early twentieth century to today's microchip technology the speed of production has increased. The faster the production schedule the faster our lives move and the quicker the world spins by.

What kind of changes has this imposed on us in the way we interact with our environment? Not just the natural world, although that is part of the equation, but with all aspects of the world around us. The people we come in contact with, our involvement in our work, and the way we see ourselves have all undergone changes.

In his new book, Devices Of The Soul, Steven Talbott sets out to examine how our relationship with technology, especially in recent years, has changed us. The subtle manner in which we have gone from an intuitive being who draws upon all the elements at our disposal to make a decision to being dependant on bodies of information that we access on purpose.

This is not an anti-technology book, far from it in fact, for Talbott doesn't deny that elements of technology have made our lives better. It's a matter of how we allow the technology to define us and define how we live that is the problem according to him. By letting machines make so many of our decisions, or relying on them for doing tasks we would have done on our own in the past, we have removed the human element from the equation.

Now this may not sound like such a bad thing on a certain level, but how about our relationships with other people? If we only experience humans and cultures at the remove of technology, and what that technology tells us about them, are we getting a true picture of who and what they are? Maybe in the past we wouldn't have had access to any information at all, but is that any worse to having the information we do receive filtered through someone else's opinion?

Why is it that nobody looks at the sky anymore to see what the weather is going to be like during the day? "How cold is it out?" "I don't know let me check the weather channel?" What about going outside and experiencing it for yourself and feeling how cold it is? Will hearing someone tell you what the temperature is actually tell you how cold you will be when you step outside?

The number they say it is might give you an idea, but it won't tell you whether or not it's damp, or how cold the wind really is? You won't know that until you're outside so why didn't you check that way first? Convenience: or has our reliance on getting the answers from someone or something else gotten to the point that we don't trust ourselves anymore?

Quick, where does the sun rise each morning? At which cardinal point on the compass does he come up in the sky? How about the moon, do you know the answer to that? East is of course the answer to both questions and to most adults I should hope it was obvious. But for far too many people of the next generation that answer is a mystery, as are many things that we take for granted in the natural world.

But think of the environment that most kids grow up in the West; television, computer games, computers, cars, and an urban landscape. According to Talbott what should we expect from them, that they be aware of things that they are never exposed to or think about? Maybe the question of where does the sun rise sounds a little extreme, but he sites knowing a high school graduate with good grades and very bright as an example of a person who didn't know the answer to that question.

I don't know about you, but things like that scare me and make me nervous. If we are raising people so out of touch with the natural world as to not know in which direction the sun rises, what will they care about the world outside of their own sphere of existence? Will we be able to entrust them with what little we haven't destroyed to keep safe for their children?

Device Of The Soul is not an easy read in any sense of the word. The language Mr. Talbott uses is heavy and specialized to the point of being nearly academic in places. But it is also necessary to use this language as it the only vocabulary capable of discussing the subject. Until you get used to it, and the dryness of the tone, you might have some difficulty reading the material.

But I think that's part of his point of how technology has taken away our ability to communicate complex ideas and thoughts because we are becoming used to a vocabulary that only allows for the expression of basic needs and wants. Higher intellectual ideas and concepts can't be put into text messaging short forms or cute smiley faces.

Devices Of The Soul challenges our conception of our self in an effort to make us examine our relationship with technology and how it has changed us. While change is inevitable, and there is nothing wrong with it intrinsically, blinkered acceptance of all aspects of it can be dangerous.

Steven Talbott has rung an alarm bell that is well worth our while to pay attention to and that we ignore at our own peril.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 12:32 AM | Permalink

You'd think they'd have got the message by now wouldn't you? That after nearly thirty years of fighting the so-called War On Drugs, with the only result being the near doubling of the inmate populations across North and South America and no decrease in the number of people using, they might be taking the wrong approach.

But if doesn't appear to have sunk into the thick skulls of the Conservative Party of Canada who are about to release their vaunted drug policy next week. They've already scrapped plans for decriminalizing simple possession of marijuana that had been on the table before the last election, and they've been making noises about a "Get Tough On Drugs" platform.

How you can get any tougher on illicit drug use then we already are in this country, where simple possession of marijuana can see you put away for up to ten years in jail, I don't know, but that's what they're saying. It doesn't seem to matter that this policy has shown itself to be totally ineffective in dealing with any sort of drug problem that we have in Canada, it's just all part of the right wing get tough on crime attitude.

Now there's no denying that there is a problem with drug addiction in Canada. According to a study released by the Canadian Centre On Substance Abuse the cost to the public, including treatment, disability, and missed work, from alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drug use is $40 billion a year.

Yet as a country we have no national treatment system with which to set standards for the treatment of addictions. We have a hodgepodge of programs that range from overnight stays in a detoxification centre to six-week hospital in patient programs. According to Patrick Smith, head of addiction psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, most Canadians with a substance abuse problem don't get help even if they want it.

Dr. Smith is part of a group of addiction workers from across Canada who are working towards a March 2008 deadline to draft a framework for a treatment model. They have gathered together a group of policy advisors, treatment specialists, and lawmakers to be involved in the process and hope to receive government funding to implement it.

The object would be to provide frontline caregivers, like family doctors, who are the first to deal with addicts in most cases, a means for helping them find the treatment their clients need. Right now if a person goes to their family doctor seeking treatment for an addiction to an illicit drug, there is no means of assessing what type of treatment the patient needs.

Unfortunately, judging by previous funding patterns, the government doesn't appear to be very likely to go for the idea. The HIV/AIDS Policy and Law Review published a report recently that outlined just how the government spends 245 million dollars annually on combating drug use. Using information obtained through the access of information act and data on government web sites their statement revealed that 73% went to policing, 14% to treatment, 7% to research and only 3% to harm reduction.

In other words we have an illness that is costing our economy 40 billion dollars a year and our government is doing dick all to prevent that illness from spreading. Putting somebody in jail does not stop them from using drugs, because no matter how much anybody wants to deny it drugs are just as, if not more, prevalent in our jail than on the street.

If the war on drugs has been such a failure the opposite can't be said for harm use reduction programs. Vancouver Canada operates the only safe injection site for intravenous drug users in North America if not our hemisphere. According to research conducted by the HIV/AIDS Policy people there's been a30% increase in the numbers of addicts who enter into detoxification programs among those who make use of the site as compared to the general population.

The study also determined that users of the site were more likely to reduce their Heroin intake, and to seek further treatment once they left detoxification programs than others. In other words they showed an actual commitment to recovering from their addiction as opposed to those who have entered such programs through court orders. (That's an unsubstantiated observation made on my part based on anecdotal evidence and personal knowledge of how the system works in Canada that people who don't enter addiction counselling voluntarily have a high rate of relapse.)

One would think that evidence like that in a trial program would be taken as an indication that there are better ways to proceed with helping people overcome their addictions. There is no difference between the mindset of a person who is addicted to alcohol, tobacco, or street drugs. The only difference is what they are addicted to.

Addictions are a symptom of a larger suffering within a person. Simply punishing them for the addiction will not do anything to change that. That doesn't mean that a person shouldn't be punished for the behaviour that their addiction causes- if they steal to feed their addiction they should be punished for the theft. But if nothing is done to solve the problem of why they stole in the first place you haven't accomplished anything.

By treating the causes of a person's addiction you will eliminate the addict, and the criminal behaviour that accompanies the addiction. You will also eliminate the market for drugs. The fewer addicts there are the less business for drug dealers and the less money made to offset the risk of the business.

The people who are making the real money from drugs are pure capitalists; if a venture starts costing them more then it's worth to them in profits how many organized crime groups do you think would continue selling? It's a simple matter of supply and demand. Take away the demand for a product and nobody is going to be bothered with supplying it.

Each addict we heal is one less client for the dealers; each person we educate to the dangers of street drugs is one less person who will become a client. If we took the amount of money that we spend on incarcerating an addict and spent it on a treatment program for him or her we'd be not only saving a person, we'd be saving money in the long run because it increases their chances of staying out of jail, and we decrease the demand for drugs.

That may sound like a long slow process, but if we had a national treatment program think of how many people could be potentially treated on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. The "War On Drugs" has proven to be a failure, isn’t it time we tried a different approach?

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:29 PM | Permalink

I'm pretty sure that in years to come if you were to look up the word exhaustive in an English language dictionary that all they will need do is put a picture of Clay Eals beside the word and everyone will understand the meaning instantaneously. I guess other adjectives describing how completely he covers his subject in his biography of Steve Goodman, Facing The Music are also appropriate, but when a book is 800 pages long and over a thousand people have been interviewed in its making you can't go wrong starting with exhaustive.

If you've never heard of Steve Goodman, and I'm sure there are a sizable number of people who haven't, you're probably going to be wondering why so much effort has gone into writing a book about this guy. That's probably a fair question and can be best answered a couple of ways.

First of all there are the people who were interviewed for this book; starting with Arlo Guthrie who wrote the forward and Studs Terkel who wrote the preface and then proceeding down the line to Steve Martin (Yes the Steve Martin) Kris Kristofferson, Bonnie Rait, Jackson Brown, Randy Newman, Lily Tomlin, Carl Reiner, Martin Mull, Marty Stuart, and some woman named Hillary Rodham Clinton. Of course there were like a thousand more then that but those are just some of the highlights.

This guy obviously had something in him that he could touch such a disparate group of people across generations and that's what Clay has taken great pains to study and understand. Who was this meteoric ball of fire that passed through the music world and left it long before his trajectory should have ended.

You see Steve's career was always going to be finite – he was diagnosed with leukemia when he was twenty but somehow held off the inevitable until 1984 – and played every song not knowing if it would the last time he got to play it. He was so successful at disguising what was going on with his body that it wasn't even until two or so years before he died and he had a major relapse that he even went public about his impending doom.

You might think you've never heard a Steve Goodman song, but if you've ever heard what Johnny Cash called the best damn train song ever written, "City of New Orleans" you've heard a Steve Goodman song. It was Arlo Guthrie who made the song famous and also kept Steve solvent. That song alone must have assured Steve and his family financial viability, especially considering his medical bills must have been substantial.

It would have been easy for Clay to write one of those valiant tales of the little guy who fought against great odds to fulfill his dreams and turn it into something sentimental and smarmy. But that's not the picture he draws of Steve, because obviously no one can be that kind of saint.

This is a warts and all portrait, with friends recounting that Steve was victim to a temper that could lay waste to a city block. Getting into fights with hosts at restaurants for not letting him in for being in violation of the dress code, or running down behind home plate at Wrigley Field and getting into a ferocious argument with the home plate umpire. (When the umpire proved he was right and Steve was wrong he was able to laugh at himself, but he was still mad)

It's Clay's insistence on accuracy that actually makes Steve Goodman seem that much more amazing an individual. While the accolades tell us what we already gathered from the fact that book was written, that Steve was a remarkable, it's the warts that keep him human and someone who it is that much easier to identify with.

Of course some of the anecdotes about Steve and famous people are a lot of fun; Johnny Cash walking on stage and taking his boots off when Steve said all he need was Johnny's boots and he'd look just like him, or Kris Kirstofferson and Steve Martin both saying the biggest mistake they ever made in their lives was having Steve Goodman opening for him as he would do such an amazing forty minute set that they couldn't compete with him.

In 1972 Steve and his wife Nancy adopted their first child Jessie. They had been warned that the possibility of Steve passing the disease along to a next generation was a real enough risk that they should consider not having children. According to people Clay interviewed once they began to raise children (three in total) Steve's obsession became to leave them a legacy.

"City Of New Orleans" ensured that the family of Steve Goodman will probably never want for much. It also seems that in the minds and hearts of thousands of people, all those interviewed for this book at least, that Steve created an indelible impression on people that will also be his legacy.

Clay Eals has created something unique in the biographic genre and it took me a bit to pin down what the difference was in this book from others of the type. Every single source is first hand. All the stories that you read, all the anecdotes that are retold, are told by the people who were there to see them. He didn't go to a library and read books about Steve, but he has written the book that people will seek out in the future.

Piece by piece Clay has built a picture of this remarkable singer whose music and person touched countless people. A proud man who never used his illness to generate sympathy for himself but lived with the fact that he only had a limited amount of to accomplish all that he wanted. There is information in this book and stories that offer insight into some of the fear that Steve must have lived with, and the courage that it must have taken him to get up every morning and to keep going.

Some might make a lot out of the fact that almost none of Steve's immediate family agreed to participate in the making of this book, only his dauter Jessie agreed to be interviewed, but I don't look on that as a slight against the book or the author rather a way of the family respecting Steve's desire never to put himself before his music and never to spotlight his illness.

For those of us who knew and appreciated the wonderful music of Steve Goodman when he was alive, and continue to do so long after he's left, Facing The Music is a treasure trove that you will continually want to delve into. If you were unfamiliar with Steve before reading this book, by the time you work your way through he will be forever engraved into your memory.

It seems that as the years have passed Steve Goodman's legacy continues to grow. The past year has seen the release of concert footage packaged into a DVD and the restoration of a club date he did at his favourite bar in Chicago, The Earl Of Old Town. It was at this bar that he told one of Chicago' most notorious mob bosses off to his face in song and … well read the book and you'll find out what happened.

Included in with each book is a copy of a CD of music recorded by folk musicians whose lives were touched by Steve Goodman's, either through song or personal contact. You might not have heard of any of these people, but that just shows how far and wide Steve's net was cast. The songs are originals written in his memory and honour.

Facing The Music by Clay Eals is a fitting tribute to an extraordinary man, and will hopefully help keep the name of Steve Goodman alive for many years to come.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:35 AM | Permalink

Some Facts:

• Each item served in an American meal has traveled an average of 1500 miles before it reaches the dinner table


• After automobiles food production ranks at the second biggest consumer of fossil fuels. Americans consume about 400 gallons of oil per citizen per year directly related to eating.


• Almost 75% of all antibiotics used in the United States today are used by Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations – 1152 chickens can fit into a 6 X 8 foot room


• If all the products with corn and soy included in them were removed from your grocery store the shelves would be next to empty – even packaging is now made from corn starch


• Over 70% of the Midwestern United States farmland now only produces commercial soybean and corn
  

When author Barbara Kingsolver and her family made the decision to try and survive for a year only on produce they either grew themselves or were able to buy locally they were committing an act of near food heresy in North America. Government policy dictates that tax dollars in the United States subsidize the system of food production that results in the facts listed above.

Attempting to swim against that stream of government endorsed eating habits is as difficult as salmon trying to swim upstream to reach the spawning grounds. The advertising dollars of multimillion-dollar corporations have inundated us for years with messages that quicker and more convenient is better, until we've almost reached a point of no return.

But it comes at a price; increase in type two diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and malnutrition. Still, could you give up your chocolate bars, your potato chips, your out of season fruit, and microwave dinners? Would you even want to? Why should you?

In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Barbara Kingsolver and family not only describe their year doing just that, but spell out the whys, wherefores, and the rewards for and from doing it. At the beginning of the book they clamber into their car and leave the American South West desert where they've relied on food from all over the continental United States to begin a journey that will take them further then just the miles they travel across the country.

While most of us would look upon this as a voyage of deprivation and hardship, the way Barbara lays it out for us it becomes a glorious and exciting adventure of exploration and discovery. Who would have thought that there could be so many varieties of Tomato? Or that it's possible to have a party for a hundred people in May only eating locally grown produce and stuff you pulled out of your garden?

Why do such a thing though? Well through out the book she builds her argument using facts like the ones I started the article off with of course, but there are even better reasons. I have a friend who runs an organic garden. He has an acre of land that he has cultivated and sells shares in each winter. As the produce ripens he harvests it and delivers to the people who bought shares.

I helped him out for a couple weeks one summer picking beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, and anything else that was coming into season. For lunch we'd wander the rows and pick something fresh off the vine or straight from the earth. Have you ever tasted a carrot that came out of the ground ten minutes before you've eaten it? What you buy in your grocery store might as well be carved out of wood for all its similarity in taste.

Now imagine you have that from April to Octobe, from the beginning of the growing season to the end. Leafy greens that haven't been frozen and shipped a thousand miles and actually taste green; (I swear I know what green tastes like after eating fresh lettuce just grown in my backyard one year) wax and green beans that are so crisp they snap like kindling when you chew them; tomatoes that are so juicy and sweet that you just want to eat slabs of them forever; and corn that tempts you to eat it uncooked.

Of course if you are fortunate like the Kingsolvers to have bought some land that has generations of fruit tree on it, a cherry that's just turned black the day you eat it is nothing like the pulpy things you would buy imported in mid-winter. Once you know how something is supposed to taste chances are you're going to be more than willing to wait for it to come around on the calendar again.

Preparing for winter is a time consuming task it's true; canning, freezing, drying, and preparing proper root storage will eat up days in the fall. But on a cold rainy September or October day standing in the kitchen with the fruits (or vegetables as the case may be) of your labour and imagining how much better they are going to taste than anything store bought can make even the nastiest job seem pretty attractive.

In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Barbara Kingsolver with an assist from her husband Steven Hopp and her daughter Camille Kingsolver have put together answers to all the arguments we all have been able to come up with about living a sustainable life. It's too expensive, it's too time consuming, and the food is so boring are all rebutted with a mixture of facts and anecdote.

Barbara has the zeal of a missionary but it is tempered with the soul of an artist and a woman who raised a child by herself. Not only does she advocate the lifestyle and share its wonders, she also has reams of practical advice on how it can be achieved no matter what your financial situation. Most of us don't have the options of raising our own livestock, or even growing our own vegetables like her family, but we probably all have access to a farmer's market where the produce from vegetable to meat is local.

This is a well written, fun, entertaining, depressing and optimistic book all at once. It's depressing to realize that while the government on one hand is telling us to eat a balanced diet they are propping up an industry that grows only two crops, both of which make up the lion's share of all pre-packaged food sold, The optimism comes from knowing that we can make a difference in our own lives and that we don't have to play by their rules.

If we are what we eat I would rather come from Barbara Kingsolver's garden or its equivalent than the shelves of my local grocery store.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:02 AM | Permalink

Nu; what's a person supposed to do? You're a cop, a shammas no less, and one who didn't use to be half bad at that, one time or another, before the booze and the divorce. Which is a story for another time, although it's also the story, but not right here and now if you get me. So, when the manager of the establishment where you are renting a room, comes to you and says I think there's something wrong with Mr. so and so in room such and such it's only polite for you to oblige him, seeing as how you're on the spot so to speak, and confirm that Mr so and so is indeed not well.

He's as not well as a person can get when the back of their head has interfered with the path of a rather small projectile whose size was somewhat mitigated by the calibre of the item that started the object on the trajectory that saw it reach its terminus so to speak in the terminal of Mr. so and so's brain pan. Judging by the holes in his arm, Mr. dead body in room 208, was just another junkie who made a bad mistake when it came to choosing friends.

But what kind of junkie uses the strap from his tefillin to tie off. Most of his fellow members of the black hat brigade put those straps with their little boxes to a different use, you know. Homicide detectives know their stuff and they know that the prayer straps and boxes of the ultra orthodox aren't a junkie's usual means for binding an arm so that a vein should stand out for its needle.

For Homicide Detective Meyer Landsman what looks to be such a simple case of just another junkie murder starts to smell like pickled herring gone off when he finds out the boy is the very late son of the head of an ultra orthodox sect of Hassidim who also are the biggest crime organization in all of the Federal District of Sitka.

Welcome to the fictional world Michael Chabon has created in The Yiddish Policemen's Union where Jewish settlers came to the federal district of Alaska prior to its being granted state hood in the years before World War two. When the nascent country of Israel lasts only three months the Jews of Europe descend on the land where settlements were already being established.

Instead of Alaska becoming a state, as we know it, Sitka was created, with the provision that its status be reviewed in sixty years. As the book opens the sixty years have almost run down and the current American administration has pulled the plug and the land is about to be pulled out from under the Jews.

For Landsman and his fellow officers life has taken on a sort of surreal quality. What happens to them in two months time? Do all of a sudden they cease to exist as law enforcement officers? What happens to their unsolved cases?

What the police department is feeling is of course a reflection of what every Jew in the district is going through. It looks as though at least sixty percent will be forced to leave and be put back on the treadmill of the wandering Jew again. It's easy to see how the promise of a Messiah could be so attractive at a time like this.

When the Messiah comes the Temple will rise again in Jerusalem on the place where Abraham the Father was prepared to offer up his son's blood to his lord; the place where both the first and second temple had existed prior to being destroyed first by the Babylonians and then the Romans. The exact spot where, the Dome On The Rock now stands, one of the most sacred sites in the Moslem world; a potential conflict of interest needless to say.

But what happens if the Messiah decided years ago he wanted to have nothing to do with the whole business? Can the Promised Land still exist without him? Will the people still follow? The question that concerns Landsman the most though is could his dead junkie be the Messiah?

I've never read anything else of Michael Chabon's so I wasn't sure what to expect; I do know that I didn't expect to find a whole book populated by characters that sounded like my mother's extended family. What he has done is imbue the whole book with the character of the Jewish people.

He walks the delicate balance of characterization and stereotype beautifully, without once ever slipping down onto the side of the pejorative. The clichés are all there on display but not once are they allowed to become real. Each time he seems to be in danger of falling into one of them he puts a little twist in our expectations of what a Jew "should" or "would" do in that circumstances and turns the cliché or stereotype in on itself.

One of the reasons he is able to escape this trap is his ability to create characters. From the smallest of cameos to his leads, every single one has an air of authenticity that ensures everything they do and all that happens around them is true. It doesn't hurt that he has an impeccable ear that has allowed him to recreate the nuances of Jewish speech patterns on the page perfectly.

These aren't vaudeville Jews; these are flesh and blood people whose place in this world has always been tenuous. What would have happened if the new state of Israel had failed in 1949? Where would world Jewry have gone then? Would they have been at the mercy of the whims of politics and fashion like they are in The Yiddish Policemen' Union in Alaska? Like they had been for centuries earlier in the various kingdoms of Europe? One minute welcomed with open arms the next expelled, threatened, forced to convert, or burnt at the stake?

These aren't questions that any of us have had to face, but remember in pre World War Two North America, in spite of the death camps, our governments were turning Jews away as unwanted. Michael Chabon throws that question in our faces and makes us deal with it, and in doing so offers the best argument for the existence of Israel that you'll ever hear.

He puts down the ultra religious who scorn the rights of others like those who would build settlements on Arab lands and who treat the Arab world as inferiors by having a parallel situation with the native Tlingit's of Alaska. In doing this he shows that supporting the idea of an Israel for Jewish people does not mean a country at the expense of others but what it was meant to be.

A place where Jews decide their own fates and are not at the mercy of another's whims, unlike any situation they have enjoyed in their long history even to this day. If you believe that Israel today is not subject to someone else's policy you are either naïve or blind.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is part Raymond Chandler, part Damon Runyon, and part political satire at it's finest. Michael Chabon is Isaac Singer cut with a modern sensibility that makes for an honest, sad, funny, and very real novel.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:43 AM | Permalink

Now a days there seems to be a pill for just about everything. There are antibiotics for all the new diseases that taking to many antibiotics has created; there are pills to take for the stress of living the life we're living; and there are the pills we take to cope with the heart attacks, high blood pressure, strokes and other stress induced illnesses.

Of course what goes in the body also has to come out in some form or other, which in turn gets gathered up by our city's sewer system, filtered and sent back into the water table. After the body has done assimilating whatever drug we have taken it will join the general exodus and end up in the sewers along with all the other waste products.

Well, you're saying, so what. How much can be left to pass out of our bodies after we're done? It's can't be anything worth getting excited about can it? Well obviously it can otherwise I wouldn't be going to all this trouble to set you up for it, so I'll just end the suspense.

Researchers with the Canadian Government, The Environmental Protection Agency in the States, and the American Chemistry Council have just released the results of a study they began in 2001. From 2001 until 2003 they treated a lake in Northern Ontario with trace elements of the synthetic hormone used in birth control pills.

The amount used was equivalent to the amount that would be discharged from a city's sewer system. After the three years of adding the amount they sat back to see what effect if any it would have on fish populations.

The results were quite frightening, male fish literally turned into females. Instead of producing sperm they began producing eggs and their physical appearance changed so them became indistinguishable from the females. After the first year the minnow population began to crash, and after only a few years the fish was almost exterminated.

Double-checking to make sure there were no other elements at work, they monitored the fish populations in two similar sized lakes in the same area. Those populations remained completely unaffected so they could conclude that their tampering was the direct cause. (The lake used was not part of any city's sewage system so would have been as pristine as you can get these days)

By the end of the experiment the lake's total concentration of synthetic estrogen was about five parts per trillion, or science's equivalent of next to nothing. Dr Karen Kidd, who headed up the research team said she was shocked by the severe reaction that the fish population had shown to such a small amount of the hormone.

While it's not known what effect the drug has on humans when it gets into the drinking water, it would be the same amount as was released into the lake, Dr. Kidd said that these results should be treated like a "red flag" warning us of the potential danger involved for humans. With the rise in various forms of reproductive problems in human males, ranging from declining sperm counts to testicular cancer and with no cause identified as of yet, she said this should really be a priority.

It's been long known that fish populations around sewer effluents have shown population decreases but this is the first time those reductions have been directly linked to a specific cause. Dr. Kidd said the solution is not for women to stop taking the pill, but for cities to start using proper treatment plants that can break down chemicals so they are not released into the water. Not only will it prevent estrogen from being released into the water table, but all other left over medications as well.

Of course if you live in a city like the one I do where they dump raw sewage into the water system when it rains too much there are vast improvements that have to be made to the way municipalities handle their raw sewage period. It will require an investment in infrastructure that is probably unreasonable to expect from most municipalities in North America, let alone elsewhere in the world. This is a project that all levels of government have to take responsibility for and not try to pass the buck.

Something else to contemplate is what affect other drugs "flushed" into the water table are having. A friend of mine jokes that so many people in the town where I live are on some form of stress medication or another that you could probably just drink the tap water now to if you need anti-depressants.

If governments want to pay more than lip service to the environment, if they are sincere in their efforts of trying to preserve our world, they need to worry about more than just the air we breathe. Human beings are made up of a ridiculous percentage of liquid and water is essential to our survival. Isn't it time we took the steps to ensure that our water isn't killing us?

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:54 AM | Permalink

There aren't very many nice things you can say about the British Empire, in fact I'd say you'd be hard pressed to find any. But as a result of the Britain's colonial ambitions of years gone by that funny little island off the coast of France has become a gathering place for the myriad of people who at one time lived under her always sunny flag.

Probably two of the largest immigrant groups were Indians and Jamaicans. Both groups have been settled in their newfound country now long enough to be on third generations. Through proximity the two groups, especially the younger generation, have become to grown familiar with each other's culture, specifically music. This is leading to some interesting combinations and meetings between the two.

To the uninitiated Apache Indian merely sounds redundant, but to those in the know it means a lot more. Apache Indian is the name taken by one of England's most popular singers. Of Indian, not Native American, Indian heritage he has combined the traditional bhangra music with reggae to come up with a sound that represents the best of both worlds.

In 2006 Apache Indian toured with Reggae Revolution as a part of the World Of Music And Dance (WOMAD) tour. As part of the tour they played the Musicport World Music Festival in Whitby, North Yorkshire United Kingdom. It was at this concert that the DVD Time For Change Tour Live was filmed and is now being released through MVD

Apache himself is an impressive looking man, tall and straight with a very full head of dreadlocks and great stage presence; constantly dancing and performing high leg kicks associated with martial arts and bhangra dance steps. Thankfully not wearing tons of gold jewellery around his neck or acting in any way like a North American hip-hop performer save for some similarities in vocal inflection Apache weaves in and out amidst six or seven members of The Reggae Revolution.

I'm questioning the number in the group not because I can't count but because I'm not sure if one of the people on stage is from The Revolution or if he works exclusively with Apache Indian. Gubzy is listed in the credits as playing Indian percussion, which seems to include sampled sounds as well as live, because he spends as much time standing over an electronic box as he does the Tabla or picking up the two headed dhol.

There's a great moment right in the middle of the concert where they stop all the music except for Gubzy and his drums. On the back cover of the DVD track listings they are listed as "Gubzy's Freestyle" and "Dholblast" and they are lumped under the title of "Hey Baba Improv" on the inside track listing, but whatever you want to call them they are great. He is an amazing drummer and gives a clinic in how to play the dhol as he leads the band and the audience in some great rhythms.

The Reggae Revolution seems like they are The Band for hire these days having played with people like Sting and groups like Musical Youth. It's no wonder, because they are wonderful. Not only can they be counted on to lay down a rock solid reggae beat but they can jump right into any improvisation with ease.

After a while I found myself wishing there were more of those breaks for improvisation like the one with Gubzy as Apache's sound began to get rather monotonous. Although the lyrical content was more interesting then usual, the rap style approach started to wear thin after a while. I began to wonder whether the people in the audience were absorbing any of what he was saying.

Whenever there was a shot of the audience they all seemed to be in a music induced daze as they shuffled back and forth dancing with their heads down. To me that 's not an attitude very conducive for listening. People need to have their minds kept sharp if they are going to listen and have anything register.

Part of the problem with the repetitive nature of the music was caused by their being something wrong with the mix of the sound. Whether this was the fault of the original source concert or the DVD itself I don't know. I do know I tried every damned sound setting my speaker system and DVD player had and I still could barely hear the horn section of Reggae Revolution.

The first indication that there was a problem came early when saxophone player started a solo and "look ma no sound". That continued throughout the whole disc; occasionally I could make out the sound of Revolution's leader's trombone, or a little bit of saxophone. The horns would have made a big difference I think in diversifying the sound.

Aside from that it was still a lot of fun to watch Apache Indian and listen to somebody sing songs about topics that were relevant to today's world and that attempted to explain cultural differences. I think Apache Indian is one of the performers who are learning how to create a truly global sound by drawing on their own heritage and extending a hand in musical fellowship to others.

Watching that happen on Apache Indian & The Reggae Revolution's Time For Change Tour Live DVD went a long way towards compensating for any deficiencies in sound. This is a first step on a path of preserving individual cultures while embracing others. A type of globalization we should all approve of as it eliminates nationalistic feelings sometimes associated with cultural pride.

It's worth watching for that reason alone if nothing else. We need more performers like both of these groups to offset so much of what the rest of the world is doing. They may not be able to change the world, but they do show how change is possible if you want it. You just have to make effort.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:25 AM | Permalink

The first book I read by Peter Carey was Illywhacker and I liked it enough to read Oscar and Lucinda. But since then I haven't picked up one of his books. If you had asked me why I wouldn't have been able to give you a real reason, save there were other books I was more interested in reading, or that he wasn't on my watch list for new releases.

It wasn't that either of the books were badly written or anything, or even that they weren't readable and likeable, its just I wasn't particularly moved by either one of them. The real problem was that I had no real memories of either book save that both started to feel like a chore to wade through in order to get to the finish.

But it's been a number of years since, and with the release by Vintage Canada of his latest book Theft I decided to take the plunge again. Once more Mr. Carey takes us to that strange land of Australia so that he can show off the local fauna in its natural habitat.

On this occasion we are dealing with the sub-species of Australian known as a visual artist, or painter if you will, and the misadventures that befall him as he attempts to win back his place in the pantheon of "importance". It seems that our erstwhile protagonist's, Michael Boone by name, star had been on the rise back in the seventies with his work making sizable chunks of change among the artistic set.

But it all went bad, his marriage ended, his wife took possession of his paintings, and for breaching a restraining order he ended up in jail. Unlike death it seems that jail does not appreciate a modern artist's work either in terms of cash or in terms of recognition and he is quickly relegated to the scrape heap where of the passé.

While he may be forlorn and forgotten, Michael is not forsaken. Upon his release from jail he is set up in country retreat by his patron/former neighbour so he can paint and be kept away from his ex wife and child. Any work he produces now will be outside of the "martial possessions" so he will be able to keep whatever monies he earns.

Michael has another burden to bear aside from that of being a modern artist with no selling power any more, his brother Hugh. Adult in body, Hugh's mental health has been stunted and he is unable to live on his own. As long as he take his meds, and allowed his routine he's reasonably contented and manageable, but he's large and can be dangerous both to himself and others.

For a while it looks like they will be able to set up a routine and things might work out for the Boone brothers. But out of a storm torn night there comes the shape that will make their lives anything but routine for a good deal of time to come. In spite of the fact that she's "a gammon " according to Hugh, a tiny bit of a thing, Marlene manages to take them down a path that will nigh on ruin them both.

Judging by the title of the book one could be forgiven for thinking that once we meet Marlene that the story will be one of Art theft. But in the world of international art, theft appears to be a minor transgression. Compared to some of the other "activities" described in Theft there is something nice and straightforward, almost honest, in a good old-fashioned robbery.

The back stabbing, lying, cheating, fakery, lust, envy, and even gluttony that goes on behind the closed doors of the auction houses, galleries and dealer's doors would be enough to make the devil blush. After all he only managed to come up with seven deadly sins, while these folk seem to delight in inventing new one on a daily basis.

I have to hand it to Peter Carey on this one; he has done a wonderful job in a number of areas. First his depiction of the world of international art is a delight in its inventive larceny. With the amount of money that is now at stake when a work of art is on the market, all it takes is a whisper of doubt in the right ear from the right lips to shake foundations worse than an earthquake.

To tell his story of the Boone Brothers Carey covers the same territory twice, once through the eye of older brother Michael and once through the eyes of Hugh. We learn just how fragile Hugh is from his own narrative and how much he really does depend on his brother. But he also inadvertently give us insight into both his and his brother's characters and how they were formed through his relating of their childhood.

Michael was an outsider to the world of art and when the novel opens till retains vestiges of his naiveté. Only as Maureen exposes him to the seamier side of the art world does it finally begin to dawn on him that it will never matter how brilliant he is unless he is willing to play the game. Whole nobody does anything out of pure altruism, he does find out what people, including himself, will do in the name of love

Theft was a far more memorable book than either of the other two I mentioned, as Carey has honed his wit to razor sharpness. Instead of wielding it like a blunt instrument as he formally did he's inserting it deftly and making careful cuts to deflate oversized egos and whittle things down to a proper perspective.

Art should be about how much it moves the spirit, not how much it will move for. But the reality is unfortunately the latter more often then the former. Dangle dollar sings in front of people and some of them will contemplate anything for the opportunity. At some point though a line will be reached that if you cross it turning back will no longer be an option.

Theft is full of such lines that people cross, justifying it in the name of art. But greed and selfishness are still greed and selfishness no matter how you colour them. It's not a pretty picture that Carey sometimes paints in this book, but it is a valuable one.

Canadians who wish to buy Theft can purchase it either directly from the Random House Canada or other reputable on line retailers like Amazon.ca

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:36 AM | Permalink

In 1980 the downtown Toronto Ontario bar called the Horseshoe Tavern held The Last Pogo. The former Country & Western Bar had for the last four years played home to Toronto's flourishing Punk Rock scene and they could see the writing on the wall that spelt the end of an era.

Already the first "boutiques" were opening in what had been their previously unfashionable downtown neighbourhood. When the sandblasting starts and the gentrification begins one knows it's only a matter of time before you become a "scene"

Band names like The Battered Wives, Nazi Dog And The Vile Tones, Suburban Crime, and Throbbing Members were soon only a memory as the weekend punks from the suburbs made their way into the city core to buy their black leather jackets, studded collars, and combat boots. Enclaves of hold outs hung on, moving to where rents were cheaper and the neighbourhood less reputable but it was only holding off the inevitable: the first wave of Punk Rock in Toronto was over and done.

Punk had its origins in the streets of London England in the mid 1970's where unemployment among the working class youth was rampant and hopes for the future were minimal. Rock music had become moribund and bloated, losing track of the rebellious nature that had made it so vital in the late fifties early sixties.

The times were ripe for something new, something that spoke to the anger and hopeless frustration. The times were ripe for Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols. For about three years they were like an asteroid entering earth's atmosphere; gradually burning out and breaking apart from the speed of their flight and the weight of the resistance against them.

The first line up for the Sex Pistols was Glen Matlock on bass, Paul Cook on drums, Steve Jones on guitar, and Johnny (Lyndon) Rotten vocals, lyrics, and attitude. Eagle Rock Entertainment has reissued the DVD Classic Albums: Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols that tells the story of how the album came into existence. Bollocks was the only full-length studio album that the Pistols produced and judging by what we hear on the DVD it's a miracle that they even got one recorded.

Paul and Steve had been part of a band and they had brought Glen in on bass but it was Malcolm McLaren, the man who saw himself as their Svengali but was more Barnum and Bailey then anything else, who brought John Lyndon into the band. It also becomes clear that while McLaren may not have fired Glen Matlock as the band's bassist, he seems to have managed to sow discord between John and Glen that was sufficient to have Glen replaced by Sid Vicious. McLaren thought Vicious looked the part more than Glen, and so he was given the nod in spite of not being able to play his instrument.

This goes a long way in explaining why the only bass on Never Mind The Bollocks was provided by Matlock even though he was no longer in the group when it was finally released. As far as I could tell from what the engineers were saying when they talked about recording the album, Glen's bass was heard on "Anarchy In The U.K." and the infamous "God Save The Queen" Otherwise everything else was done by Steve Jones.

One of the more fascinating aspect of the DVD are the conversations with the four remaining member of the band and to see them today. Obviously Glen is the one with least pleasant memories, but even he can't help but get excited when talking about the music and the band. Paul Cook the former drummer has the least to say and it falls to Steve and Johnny to tell the story from the band's point of view.

As I've long suspected the one who really comes out looking like the villain of the whole piece was Malcolm MacLaren. The Pistols appear to have had a career in spite of him, not because of him. He seems to have seen them as a toy he could play with and a means of creating a stir and being flamboyant. The music and what Johnny was trying to do creatively appear to have been of no consequence to him.

His comments about the trial when a shop owner in Manchester was charged with obscenity for displaying the word "Bollocks" as compared to Johnny's are very revealing. The English novelist and lawyer John Mortimer defended the band and the shopkeeper and had the charges dismissed on the grounds of freedom of expression. MacLaren was horribly disappointed; he said it would have been so much better to have one of them hauled off to jail because of it.

Johnny, on the other hand thought that Mortimer's defence had been brilliant and it was an important matter of freedom of speech and expression. At that point in the interview he got the old familiar evil glint in his eye and turned to the camera and said, "so fuck you" and laughed. He hasn't changed a bit.

One of the other interesting things about this DVD is that it debunks the theory that the band was inept musically. While it was true that Vicious couldn’t play his bass when he joined the band (and who knows if he ever learnt how) the rest of the band were better than competent by the time they got into the studio. While Paul and Steve admit they were no great shakes when they first started, when the band was given proper rehearsal facilities by MacLaren they began to gel.

Both the producer and the recorder engineer say, Chris Spedding was probably one of the most surprised people in England when it was passed around that he played all the guitar on Never Mind The Bollocks. They laughed and said you know you think we might have noticed him if were here, Steve did all the guitar work. The guitar sound on the album was produced by having Steve overdub his guitar with subtle differences each time to give it the depth to make it sound like a guitar army.

It's a common technique but it also requires a great deal of technical skill on the part of the guitar player, and a willingness to be paitant, as he had to be able to play the same part over and over again without changing a note or missing a beat. Couple that with Steve also laying down the bass as previously mentioned and you realize he knew his way around his guitar thank you very much.

Steve describes Johnny sitting huddled in the corner of the studio with paper and pen writing out song lyrics while around him everybody else was doing their thing. Johnny talks about how he liked to play with language and stretch words through pronunciation to make them work together: hence anar"K"ist and Anti Christ.

Bill Price who engineered the record and Chris Thomas the producer both say the same thing about Johnny's ability as a singer. Listen to how well each word is articulated, even when he sounds as if he's torturing his throat you can hear every last syllable that he is singing.

Classic Albums: Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols is a revealing look at the story of the band and the story behind the making of the disc. Listening to the tracks played on the DVD I was struck once again by their power and passion.

I remember being in London England in the summer of 1981.Shops in Portobello market were still covered in plywood from the race riots that had been rocking the city two weeks earlier. At the end of my stay I took train out through Brixton, where the poor are housed and confined. Looking out at row upon row of brick town houses crammed up against each other I could well imagine how those streets gave birth to bands like the Pistols.

Compared to the riots of the previous weeks there was nothing nihilistic about the Pistols. The act of creating music is not that of a person with no faith or hope for the future no matter what people say.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:40 AM | Permalink

In North America we tend to preserve outdated and romantic ideas about countries that have no bearing on reality. Whether it's believing that Arabs still live in tents and keep numerous voluptuous wives that are hidden behind closed doors (the fact that tents and doors don't really mix never seems to bother anyone) or that Indian Princes ride on the backs of Elephants hunting tigers in the jungles surrounding Mumbai our views of the world are still overly effected by Saturday afternoon matinees at the Bijou.

Although we have managed to bring ourselves beyond the Rudolph Valentino and Sabu the Elephant boy state we still haven't bothered to learn much about the realities of life in most countries beyond our own borders let alone across the sea. Fortunately the resources to educate ourselves are becoming more and more plentiful.

I don't mean from any removed sources like histories written by anyone with a line to toe, but by fiction writers who don't hesitate to speak truths that far too many everywhere would prefer remain unspoken. It's been my fortune to read a great many of these books including Vinod George Joseph's Hitchhiker. (Reviewed at Desicritics among other places)

Somehow Mr. Joseph was able to use the novel form to shed light onto one of the mysteries of Indian society that we in the West have little or any real understanding of; the caste system. Without being shrill, or preachy; just letting the facts and circumstances surrounding his main character Ebenezer a reader was given far too clear a picture of just how horrible it is to be from a lower caste.

Mr Joseph very kindly agreed to answer a series of questions I had about the book, himself, and the caste system. Intelligent, thoughtful, and compassionate answers to an emotionally charged question can be hard to come by sometimes, so his replies to my queries were a refreshing change.

I'd like to thank Vinod George Joseph for his answers and hope you find them as intriguing as I did.

1) Can you tell us a little bit about yourself – where you were born, brothers and sisters etc.?

I was in born at a place called Kollam in Kerala. That’s in southwest India. My dad worked as a lecturer in a polytechnic in the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu. My mother was a schoolteacher. She taught mathematics. So I spent my entire childhood in Tamil Nadu where Hitchhiker is set. I have a younger brother who is now (like many Indians of our generation) a software engineer.

2) You're a barrister, or is it solicitor, I've never understood the difference to be honest, but all of a sudden you've written a book. Was it so all of a sudden or has this been something you've thought about for a while?

I am a solicitor. To explain the difference between barristers and solicitors in a simplistic way, barristers appear in court on behalf of clients; while solicitors negotiate on behalf of clients, draft agreements etc. I specialise in corporate law and advice on mergers and acquisitions, bond issues, stock exchange listings etc.

I wanted to write a novel for a long time, ever since I read my first novel (R. K Narayan’s Swami & Friends) when I was ten. Hitchhiker was in the planning stage for four or five years before I actually sat in front of my laptop and started typing. I had just come to the UK to do my masters in Law, an LLM, after having worked as a corporate lawyer for 4 years in Mumbai. It took me a year to finish it. I wrote for an hour or so every day till my LLM exams got over. After that I wrote full time – ten or twelve hours a day - for three months before I started working as a solicitor.

3) Where did the idea for Ebenezer (the main character in Hitchhiker) and his life come from? Is there any autobiography involved?

There is no autobiography involved. The idea for Ebenezer came from what I saw and not what I experienced. As I just mentioned, I’ve always wanted to write a novel ever since I was very young. So, when I finally started writing, rather than write a war novel or a detective thriller as I would have liked, I ended up writing about things I know and have seen.

4) Aside from the whole caste system and reservations, you also look at the I. T. industry in India and don't see it as the same economic miracle as it's being portrayed. What is the reality today – Are companies like the one Ebenezer worked for that only provided content and such still around – or has it all become call centre and hardware.

The IT Industry in India has evolved over a period of time. Leading Indian companies are really world class, but of course there are companies at the lower end of the spectrum as well. So, you have companies that do cutting edge work and also companies doing boring, tedious low-end work outsourced to them by others. Some companies do both. Indian IT engineers are among the highest paid professionals in India. To succeed in the modern day service oriented world of business and technology, soft skills are as important as hard skills. And it is very unlikely that a person with Ebenezer’s background will have the sort of soft skills that a person from a more privileged background will have. It is not a question of intelligence or hard work, but all about the environment one grows up in.

5) How much of an economic miracle is it really anyway. Judging by your book the majority of the country is still not experiencing the miracle and child labour is still the norm not the exception?

It is an economic miracle. No one can deny it. But only a small fraction of India has benefited from it. India has always been a land of extreme wealth and extreme poverty. And it continues to be so. If you want to talk numbers, in a land of a billion people, maybe ten percent has benefited from this boom in some form or the other. That’s over a hundred million people who have gained something from this economic miracle. That still leaves nine hundred million unhappy Indians.

Child labour is still very much prevalent among India’s poor. But children who belong to the upper strata of Indian society have a privileged up bringing.

6) For people who may not understand what it is can you explain what the caste system is now and how it has been corrupted if it has? (My understanding was that it just used to be title given to people according to their jobs, not designations of their stature in society and that is a relatively recent invention)

The caste system prevalent in India is a system of beliefs, customs and traditions that horizontally stratify Indian society. Though it can be said to be tied to Hinduism, it is followed by almost all communities in India, including Christians, Sikhs and Muslims.

According to this system, society is divided into five major classes or castes. They are the Brahmins (priestly class), the Kshtriyas (the warrior class), the Vaishyas (the merchants), the Shudras (labourers) and the untouchables. One is born into a caste and there is practically no mobility within this structure.

There are various theories regarding the caste system in India and how it came into being. And before I say any further, I should confess that I am no expert. I know as much about the various theories as any layperson that is interested in knowing about these things.

The main theory, which is endorsed by a majority of scholars and historians, is that India had waves of immigrants from central Asian steppes since 1500 BC. They were fair in colour - as opposed to the earlier inhabitants (Dravidian and Austric races) - and the caste system was born. Varna or caste literally means colour in Sanskrit and Hindi. The new immigrants were naturally on top of the caste pyramid. And they brought in religion to justify caste. Even if one belongs to a low caste, one ought to stick to it so that he is reborn into a higher caste in his next birth.

The theory I have described above has a sub-theory that even before the immigrants from central Asia arrived, India had caste. The Dravidians, who were also possibly migrants to India, had pushed the original inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent down the social ladder. And they were in turn labelled ‘shudras’ by the fair skinned later arrivals. The original inhabitants became untouchables.

So, according to these theories, caste is not something recent. Some social activists even equate casteism with racism since the origins of caste are rooted in race.

But there are people who hold the view that till the arrival of Islamic invaders, a person’s profession was his/her caste. There was social mobility. But after the Arabs, Afghans and Turks started ruling chunks of India from the tenth century AD onward, social mobility was lost. Caste became a rigid structure, especially after the arrival of the Europeans. According to this theory, the caste system as it exists today is a recent phenomenon.

7) In North America we've had various affirmative action programs for minorities that were initiated against the wishes of those in favour of maintaining the status quo of white male dominance. Even thought disparities are long from eliminated we hear lots about the rights of the majority from conservatives who try to portray them as stealing jobs and opportunities from white people and play up fear and racism. Does this sound familiar to you in terms of the reservation system. Could you explain that and how it works and what it's intent was?

In India, reservations based on caste have a long history. They were introduced even when the British ruled India. And they are different from affirmative action in the sense, they are not voluntary, but mandatory quotas to be fulfilled by colleges in admissions, and by government departments. Schools and colleges that receive government aid are also bound by these quotas in the appointment of teachers. Different states in India have different percentages reserved for different castes. From what I know, the state of Tamil Nadu, where Hitchhiker is set, has the highest percentage of reservations in India. The other main difference between the situation in India and the US/Canada is that India has much fewer resources than the US or Canada. And it has a larger population. So, competition is a lot more intense and losing out to someone who is entitled to reservations generates a lot more anger than in the US/Canada.

I feel that reservations are the most effective tool for moving a socially backward caste up the social /economic ladder. But it does have its share of drawbacks. The main draw back is that it is not possible to ensure that every beneficiary of reservations actually deserves it. Reservations have created a creamy layer within every caste and this creamy layer corners most benefits. This is not to say that reservations should be done away with. But it is necessary to build filters into the system so that the benefits of reservations are evenly spread. Also, some of the people who lose out on account of not having reservations may not be financially well off. For want of a better term, I call it collateral unfairness. It is quite difficult to explain the need for reservations to a 18 year old middle class boy or girl who has failed to make it to an engineering college or a medical college because say, fifty percent of its seats are reserved on the basis of caste. It is difficult to see the larger picture when you are personally affected. A lot of the outcry against reservations comes from middle-class India for whom a decent education and a good job at the end of it is the only way forward. India with its billion plus people does not as yet have enough schools or colleges or resources to ensure that everyone gets basic opportunities. Until fifty years ago, everyone who belonged to the lower castes got excluded. This is no longer so. Now you find people at the bottom layers of all communities getting excluded.

8) In Hitchhiker you make it quite clear that there are plenty of ways that companies and schools are able to circumvent reservation quotas – is that still an accurate portrayal.

In India, the private sector is not bound to reserve places for lower castes. There is a demand for that, but it has not been put into effect. So, it is not correct to say private companies circumvent reservation quotas. Private educational institutions do however have quotas for appointment of teachers if they receive government aid. It is common for privately run schools and colleges to circumvent quotas in the appointment of teachers.

9) I received some comments from Indian readers when I reviewed Hitchhiker about how they felt people shouldn't portray India in a negative light anymore but focus on all the positive elements instead – how do you react to this?

I feel that it is important to examine oneself critically and make amends. Mere window dressing does no one any good. It’s quite silly to take the stand that criticism should not be public. Unless you do this, you will never bring about change. But I am happy to say that India does have its share of activists who do a decent job questioning government policies when things go wrong. In fact, I think India has more such activists than the US. I’m not sure about Canada though.

10) What do you think it will take to change people's attitudes about caste? Do you think it can be legislated or is so deeply ingrained that isn't enough and reservations will never solve the problem?

People’s attitudes about caste are changing, but they are changing too slowly. Legislation outlawing caste already exists, but it has made very little difference. The worst effect of caste is that the average middle-class Indian doesn’t give two hoots about the hardships faced by Indian who live in villages and slums. And the reason for the nonchalance is that the Indians who live in poverty and distress are very likely to be from the lower castes. As mentioned earlier, reservations cannot provide a solution by themselves. In fact, I would say that having more than 25% reservations is actually counter-productive. We need to spend more on building schools and hospitals and make sure that every Indian child goes to school. Once every Indian child has access to a decent school, then reservations will become more effective, since the intended beneficiaries will be able to benefit from it. I feel that caste divisions will disappear only when India becomes prosperous and basic needs for everyone is fulfilled.

Economic liberalisation has brought some wealth to India, but very little of it trickles down. India already has a large Maoist insurgency in many parts of central and eastern India. As poor people watch the rich ones lead comfortable lives and feel that they will escape their poverty, a Maoist revolution appears very attractive. India’s biggest challenge is to spread the benefits of liberalisation around (better tax collections, efficient investments in village infrastructure) as soon as we can.

11) I've avoided the whole issue of Missionaries in India, but are there still concentrated efforts to convert people to Christianity in areas – whether through bribery and offers of permanent employment or other means?

Christian missionaries are quite active in India. A few of them use fair means or foul to convert people. But I ought to add that most charitable work in India (as in the US or other parts of the world) is done by religious organisations. Christians, Hindus, Muslims are all in the fray. So, it’s a mixed bag. Religion based charities do a fair amount of good, but they usually carry their ideology and beliefs with them.

12) I'm interested in your publisher, can you tell me about them and how you ended up with them?

I got around thirty rejects from various literary agents and publishers before Books for Change agreed to publish Hitchhiker. Books For Change (BFC) is the publishing wing of Action Aid India. BFC publishes books with a high degree of social content. Hitchhiker was BFC’s first foray into publishing fiction.

13) Final question for you – Now that you've been bitten by the literary bug do you have any other ideas for books? Would you write about the same themes again or are there other areas of Indian life that you'd like to examine?

Yes, I have plans to write more. After Hitchhiker got published, I started writing a novel. It’s about a politician in Tawa, a fictional country in the Indian Ocean south west of Sri Lanka. I then got busy with work and abandoned my novel. Recently I started writing a collection of short stories set in a fictional village called Simhapara in Kerala. I should finish these short stories in another month or so. After that I have plans to pick up the threads of my novel again. Let’s see how it goes. I’ll keep you posted.

That concludes my interview with Vinod George Joseph, if it whetted your appetite to read his book Hitchhiker good, if it made you curious about the reality behind the "economic miracle" in India even better. When only ten percent of a population benefits from something I don't quite get how that's a miracle. It sounds more like a maintaining of the status quo where ten per cent of a country's population controls the majority of a country's wealth.

It's the same all over the world, why should India be any different? Like any other large capitalist free market country their attitude seems to be as long as the bottom line is fine who cares how many fall below it and can't get back up?

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:17 PM | Permalink

It seems to me that Americans don't understand how much the rest of the world cares about them. Oh sure there are demonstrations in the streets against them in cities around the world and their soldiers are attacked on a daily basis in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, but underneath it all they are really cared for.

Underneath the anger, the accusations, and the fear is the love of a parent for their teenage child who, although he or she mostly means well, seems to have lost their way in figuring out how to carry out their intentions without causing damage. In fact it appears to me that those who care the most for their well being are those who the Americans seem to understand the least.

Even while American soldiers are busy killing their fellows in faith and race, Muslim authors around the world seem to have taken it upon themselves to try and show America how they appear to the rest of the world. Books appear on shelves with titles that could be by lines from any number of war zones American troops have been stationed in the last ten to twenty years, written by authors attempting to enlighten Americans to the consequences of their government's actions.

The flaunting of absolute wealth, of wanton wastefulness when so many lack basic necessities, of indifference to the plight of millions of starving and homeless people, and of the bottom line meaning more than improving the lot of peoples. These are all cited as reasons for how ferment is whipped up against America and people see them as being the reason for all that ails them.

See how you look to our eyes the voices of these authors are saying. Is it any wonder the people of our countries who see no hope of life getting better lash out against you? Please they seem to be saying, open your eyes before we have all gone too far to come back. In his new book, The Reluctant Fundamentalist published by Doubleday Canada Mohsin Hamid chimes in to take another stab at enlightening those who still aren't willing to see what's in front of their faces.

Hamid's protagonist is not some poor villager whose life has been destroyed by bombs. Changez is an upper middle class Pakistani who is the spring of 2001 has just graduated from Princeton University and been given a job with a starting salary of $80,000 per annum with a valuation firm. At Samson and Underwood they prepare companies for the open market in the manner of a real estate agent appraising property. They even make recommendations on how a company can increase their value through lay offs and outsourcing.

It even appears that Changez has gained his entry into upper class society through his burgeoning relationship with the beautiful Erica, the daughter of a wealthy New York investment banker. He appears to be well on his way up the ladder of success when the World Trade Centre comes tumbling down.

His reaction to their collapse astounds him, he finds himself curiously elated that someone has had the gumption to strike at the United States. Perhaps it is because he is in Manila at the time on a job for the company and had just been unsettled to find himself being lumped into the category of "American Oppressor" by a Filipino. When thinking about it after he felt like he was faking and that in reality he was much more akin to that Filipino than he was to his co-workers.

What ever the reason though he is confused and dismayed by his reactions and realizes he must hide them from his co-workers who will of course not understand them in the least. Of course as the situation in the world disintegrates, and America bullies Pakistan into being an ally in the war against Afghanistan he begins to find it harder and harder to do his job.

Compounding this is the fact that the destruction of the towers has caused Erica to suffer a relapse into a near catatonic state that she had entered two years earlier upon the death of the love of her life. Like America wants to live in a world of the past where it is invulnerable and able not to be concerned about anything but its own interests, Erica wants to live in a world where her former beau is still alive.

She retreats into the world inside her head where he continues to exist and pushes all other considerations aside just as her homeland obsesses on trying to restore something that is irrevocably lost not caring about the expense or what it will cause others to suffer. Although Changez continues to try and work he realizes he is only going through the motions. He can no longer put the blinkers on that prevent him from seeing how many lives his job affects in terms of layoffs, lost pensions, and businesses closed forever.

So all of this sounds fairly typical doesn't it, what's unusual is the manner in which Mohsin Hamid has chosen to have Changez tell his story. He recounts it over tea and food to a strange American he meets in a market place in his hometown in Pakistan. It's obviously some amount of time after the events he is recounting to his visitor and at first his rationale for doing so isn't clear.

The Changez of today sounds like a far different man to the one he describes as living in New York City for six months. He is far more self-assured and a little bit more mysterious. Why is continually feel compelled to reassure his companion that he is not in any danger and take great pains to make his guest comfortable? He continually offers examples of the secular nature of Pakistan, pointing out women dressed in jeans, and talking about the women in his family working

If he also makes a few pointed remarks about his guest's cell phone ringing every hour on the hour, or about the bulge under his shoulder, well can you blame him for being cautious? These are troubled times we live in and you can never be too careful.

Mohsin Hamid has written a book that is deceptive in its simplicity and terseness. In taut and succinct language he shows us how we appear through the eyes of another culture. The image that mirror shows us isn't very pleasant and should serve as another piece of our education in how the rest of the world perceives us.

While it is true that perceptions can be coloured, when so many voices are saying the same basic message over and over again, voices which aren't preaching or advocating but simply reporting, don't you think we should be starting to pay attention?

Canadian's who are interested in buying The Reluctant Fundamentalist can do so at Random House Canada or other reputable online retailers like Amazon.ca

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:18 AM | Permalink

It was a few years ago when I first was introduced to the joys of a Heather Mallick column. This is not to be confused with a Doric Column with a cap that supports old Greek ruins, but a collection of around 900 words that was written usually in a fit of pique by a woman writer for The Globe And Mail newspaper in Canada.

On alternate Saturdays I would eagerly click the generic link "Columnist" on the newspaper's home page (they very rarely gave her a name link maybe hoping people wouldn't find her so as to cut back on the irate letters to the editor) and jump into her pool of righteous indignation. It was wonderful – somebody was actually writing about all the issues I would have written about and in a style that made me weep with envy.

Not only was her wit so acerbic that it could eat through the walls of the Teflon uber-bunkers that politician, pundits, and other spewers of lies, and garbage live behind, but she could also break your heart with her minimal description of real misfortune. She doen't have a drop of sentimentality in her blood, just real emotion and a formidable intelligence.

When she had occasion to turn upon herself and remark upon her own idiosyncrasies it wasn't to enlist our sympathy or even out of some masochistic need for public self-humiliation. It was more along the line of showing people how easy it was to admit to your humanity and to revel in your own eccentricity. Who needs to be the same as everyone else – even if it's only in the way you've planted your rows of flowers this year – it is still a statement of your uniqueness as an individual and you should be proud of it.

On occasion I would be moved enough by one of her writings to email a commentary or words of approval. To my surprise she actually would answer her mail, and not just with a thank-you for writing form letter either. I was beginning to enjoy our sporadic correspondence and I think she was beginning to recognise the name at the end of the letters when all of a sudden it ended.

A polite form letter informed me that she was no longer able to answer her mail as she was writing a book and she hoped I'd (and everyone else I assume) understand how she just couldn't spare the time anymore. I was a little disappointed but that was nothing to what was to come.

One Saturday as usual I clicked over to the Columnist section only to find her gone. There was no notice, no hints as to her whereabouts, nothing. It was if she had been abducted by Aliens or worse spirited away by some secret government plot to abolish free speech. Of course it was something far scarier – she was on publicity tour for her first book Pearls In Vinegar: The Pillow Book Of Heather Mallick.

Maybe it was some dark recess of hidden resentment, or the fact that I was broke, but I never got around to either buying or reading book one. Now that Knoff Canada has released Cake Or Death, her second collection of essays on modern life I decided to let bygones be bygones (the nice people at Random House Canada sent me a review copy) and see if she's changed at all in her new digs.

Will she have moderated her tone in the hopes of increased sales? Will she stop accusing Tony Blair of being the most duplicitous man on the planet and describing George Bush as the ultimate spoiled rich boy in the hopes of attracting the moderately well heeled to shell out the necessary readies to buy her book?

I guess Heather figures there are enough people out there (here) with as highly tuned sense of outrage as she has because she has not moderated her tone a whit. Oh certainly she might spend some time ruminating on the finer things in life. Those that allow her a respite from the reality of a world where in certain countries she's unable to leave her hotel room without crying because of how the people are forced to live.

I'm not going to deny her those two weeks in Paris because she is astute enough to know that the glamour she is revelling in for those fourteen days is an illusion, is in fact a glamour, a spell. If she were to live there all year round, as she occasionally fantasises, she knows that reality will exist in spite of where you live. That death and cake are always going to be our choices and the former in all its shapes is far more plentiful than the latter.

She makes no secret of her loathing for what she calls the unfeeling nature of conservative politicians who justify everything through greed and the bottom line. She declares her unstinting support for those people everywhere and anywhere who are appalled by what their leaders do in their name. She avows undying love for the Americans who have sent photos to the site apologizing to the world for re-electing George Bush. And she loves taxes. (Read the book)

She's opinionated, gutsy, bull headed, pretty much all the things that most people who use the words family values in a sentence despise in a woman. She has a marvellous conversational writing style that let you walk alongside her through the pages of her opinions. Even if the chat is a little one-sided in that you can't address her directly with your response at least you feel like you're involved and not just being lectured.

When I started writing articles, if I was attempting to emulate anyone, it was Heather. She sees no shame in expressing how something makes her feel, and doesn't hesitate in using herself as an example when the need arises. She's honest in a world where that means something and she speaks from the heart. Those are two attributes I will always admire and that still haven't changed an iota in her writing. Obviously fame hasn't gone to her head.

Readers in Canada can order a copy of Heather Mallick's Cake Or Death from Random House Canada or through some other equally reputable online retail outlet like Amazon.ca

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:06 PM | Permalink

For those of you who still have not discovered the joys of Candye Kane than all I have to say is you don't know what you're missing. She's a throwback to the days when women vocalists didn't compete to see who could end up starving to death first or sound the most like Minnie Mouse.

Instead of some uptight, anal retentive divas getting paid a million a week for singing songs so saccharine that would shame even Donnie and Marie, women sang songs about the bad guy who they loved no matter how bad he treated her. Or they broke your heart when they sang about "strange fruit' that hung from the trees of the south.

Candye Kane is like a breath of fresh air that will blow all the twittering twigs off stage without even trying. From the first time I heard her sing on a Ruf Record compilation disc I've eagerly awaited the arrival of another collection of her songs. White Trash Girl was a great warm-up but I had a feeling from that disc she was just hitting her stride. She was starting to experiment with her wonderful voice, using it for more then just power, and was discovering all of its nuances.

Well on Guitar'd And Feathered her new release, she takes some large footsteps towards fulfilling that promise. The title is taken from the fact that on each track she is accompanied by a different guest guitar player. From Junior Watson's rollicking work on "My Country Man", Sue Foley's challenge of a solo on "When I Put The Blue On You", to Bob Brozman's gospel tinged National steel guitar on "Jesus and Mohammad" each guitar sets the table for whatever vocal feast Candy is going to provide.

For it's a fine table she sets of musical styles and vocal technique. It's one thing to belt out a Blues rocker, but another thing all together to let your voice relax down into a lower register and made it ooze like molasses through a smoke filled room. "I'm Not Gonna Cry Today" is Candye accompanied by Jeff Ross on a Del Arte guitar. It takes a certain amount of courage, and an immense amount of talent to stand that alone in front of an audience. But Candye and her voice are more than up to the challenge.

While surrendering none of her potency she seems to have increased her flexibility when it comes to achieving nuances in mood and atmosphere. Listen to her on the heartfelt "We're Long Ago And Far Away" written by and featuring producer Bob Margolin on guitar and hear how her voice can caress words with a lover's touch.

On one of my personal favourites on the disc, "Jesus and Mohammad" Candye's accompaniment is limited to the playing of Bob Brozman's Steel guitars. But her voice is so textured with gospel feel you don't once notice the lack of other instruments. In fact the simplicity of just her voice and its interplay with Bob Brozman's guitars are what make the song so effective.

Of course she's still the fun loving Candye Kane that's she's been in the past as she shows on songs such "My Country Man", "Fine Brown Frame", and the tongue in cheek "I'm My Own Worst Enemy". On the latter she lists all of the attributes that end up causing her to stumble and tells all those who might be out get her that they have nothing to worry about, she's the Queen of self-sabotage and knows how to hurt herself far better than any of them could ever figure out.

People tend to get distracted by hints and rumours that surround Candye's past and forget about her music on occasion. The title of the disc Guitar'd And Feathered makes reference to her past while stressing what's really important in her life right now; her music. Candye Kane is a singer of power and potency it's true, but now she's discovering how to use her voice for subtle effect.

She's going beyond being just another singer in pursuit of the brass ring, if she even ever aspired to that, instead her focus has been turned squarely on to finding out just what that great voice is capable of. She has always had one of the most powerful voices on the market, but now on her latest release from Ruf Records, Guitar'd And Feathered, she shows an ability to refine it so that the power is now coloured with a rainbow of feeling.

Candye Kane is well on her way to becoming one of the great female vocalists of our generation. She's not just a singer like so many others out there, and that deserves to be recognised. Buy her record and learn just how great a treasure she is.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:23 AM | Permalink

Close to three hundred years before any poppies grew in Flanders' fields men were all ready killing each other, for King, God, and country. In those days the blame could have been placed a little more squarely on the shoulders of the second, as lined up one side were the Catholic armies of Spain, and opposing them were those who had joined the ranks of the reformed.

The fighting between Catholic and Protestant had outlasted three Kings of Spain and numerous petty princes and monarchs of lesser stature through out Europe, and if the mud in Belgium was somewhat redder then it had been in a previous century it was only to be expected. Under the pretext of protecting the One True Faith, Spain was desperate to hold on to its mastery of the Lowlands (Holland, Belgium et al) while the rest of Europe was just as inclined to assist the Dutch in their quest for independence.

By the time of King Philip the 4th all Spain has left in Europe is her reputation for fierceness and honour. Her soldiers in the field are as likely to mutiny over lack of pay as to obey their officer's orders on any given day. But because of pride and honour these same men will follow those same officers into battle and shed their blood without complaint whether paid or not.

After their adventures in Madrid (as recounted by Arturo Perez – Reverte in Purity Of Blood Captain Diego Alatriste y Tenorio and his ward Inigo Balboa are forced to seek the relative safety and anonymity of serving in Flanders. The situation in The Sun Over Breda, is as the military mind likes to say, fluid. In some places the Dutch and their allies have made inroads in reclaiming their land, but in other fields the Spanish still hold sway.

For all it's pride and vaunted reputation as the fiercest in Europe, when we meet up with Spanish infantry of which Inigo and Captain Alatriste are part of, they look and live no better than beggars. The only foods they eat are what they can scrounge from the surrounding countryside. As they are forbidden to loot the Dutch citizens except in the cases where they are expressly permitted to sack a village or town after its been taken, there is little to be found.

Pay that was meant for them hasn't materialized in over a year, so they lack the where with all to purchase anything. Clothing is patched, boots held together with rags; all that is kept in good repair are their weapons. Swords and daggers still gleam and are sharpened daily. Flints, powder, fuse cord, and musket balls for the harquebus they use with murderous precision are kept dry and safe amid the damp, and cold of Holland where the sun never really shine according to a Spaniard.

Not a one amongst them cares a whit for the King or his corrupt court. Nor do they like those who they serve, although the occasional one earns their respect. Yet when the bugle blows and the drum beats, there they are, formed up against the onslaught of cavalry, musket fire, and pike men all intent on making this their last day on earth.

But for the Spanish foot soldier who has won his country their empire, who keeps the nobility in their silks and fine foods, and whose King has almost forgotten their existence, what remains is their pride in them selves. Not pride in their accomplishments, anyone who takes pride in an ability to kill has no pride in the eyes of men like Alatriste, but pride in being no more or no less than who they claim to be.

Perhaps these were the men for who the phrase walking your talk was invented, save for the fact they never talked about what they did even amongst themselves. "The era of glorious captains, glorious attacks, and glorious booty was now long past…" are the words that Arturo Perez-Reverte gives to Inigo to describe the time during which The Sun Over Breda, the third and latest instalment of Captain Alatriste's adventures to be translated into the language of the heretic English takes place.

Kill or be killed, and if it looks like today will be your last day under God's grace than trying to choose the manner of your return to His embrace is the only ambition of these soldiers of Spain. Nobody can take that away from them; not the Church and their politics; not the nobles and their games; no not even the King, glorious Philip the 4th.

Reverte takes us to battlefields of Europe in a way no other author has ever quite managed. Sometimes we are witness to the horror and onslaught through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy who can't see beyond the noise and the confusion as he vainly tries to keep his master supplied with dry powder and musket balls. At other times we see the carnage through the eyes of Alatriste – and there is no difference.

Men still die and stink of fear; the ground beneath feet is slippery with blood whether you are 14 or thirty-three on a battlefield and you wouldn't be human if you didn't admit your reactions were the same. At one point Inigo remembers the long silences of the Captain on those nights he never slept back in their apartment in Madrid, and he thinks maybe he is beginning to understand where they come from.

When a man has had all his illusions shattered and has nothing left to hold onto but his honour and maybe his faith in God, not the Church but God, he will do things that others mistake for bravery or nobility. What's mistaken as doing your duty for King and country is doing your duty for the country of your soul.

Captain Alitriste is such a man, and the way Reverte has drawn him on the pages of The Sun Over Bredathe heroic becomes pragmatic and bravery is just a means of staying alive. One could look at these books as a parable for our times but that would be too blinkered a view. We live in one time, not all times, and the lessons of Alatriste are for all points in history where men's lives have been spent by those who don't care about what happens to them. It's happened before and it will happen again.

Arturo's skill lies in writing these books in the language of the Romantic swashbuckling novels of the 19th century but with characters that act and speak in anything but the Romantic manner. Inigo speaks with the enthusiasm of the wide-eyed fourteen-year-old boy he was at the time of these events, but his words are filtered through the world-weary attitudes of the retired soldier he is when recording them for history. It allows for a narrative full of commentary on the action that further dispels any illusions of romanticism.

Arturo Perez-Reverte's Captain Alatriste series continues to be the wonder it was from the opening line of the first book. I'd be sorely tempted to learn the language of the true faith –Spanish- so that I would no longer have to wait for the translations to appear to enjoy the rest of the series. But that is a battle I would surely lose, and not even the foot soldiers of Spain expect a man to spend his life needlessly.

In Canada you can purchase The Sun Over Bredo either directly from Penguin Canada or other reputable dealers of fine books and literature. Finding the DVD of Alatriste released in North America is another matter all together. A sack of Spanish Gold will reward the first who can bring me news of a copy with English subtitles. By Your Mercies leave, until we meet again.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:58 PM | Permalink

When Lou Reed's Transformer was first released back in the early seventies, a lot of mainstream audiences must have wondered where this guy had sprung up from. After all the Velvet Underground weren't a household name, and the one solo album he had released prior to Transformer had pretty much vanished without a trace.

It was shortly after his first solo effort had tanked that Lou was contacted by David Bowie and Mick Ronson, who had been playing guitar with Bowie, about being interested in producing his next solo project. Bowie at the time was enjoying extensive popularity in England as the leader of the Glam Rock movement, and for him to want to produce a seemingly unknown Yank must have seemed strange.

In Eagle Rock Entertainment's re-issue of Classic Albums: Transformer Lou Reed Bowie laughs as he remembers being very nervous about approaching this "unknown" American. Bowie had been a big fan of the Velvet Underground and thought the stuff that Lou Reed and the rest of them had been doing was brilliant.

Lou on the other hand remembers being equally nervous, because of Bowie's extreme popularity. He mad a really funny comment about the differences in the public's perception of the two men. Bowie would perform with Lou to help him promote Transformer and Lou said" People would throw you know like room keys and stuff to Bowie, me they they'd throw joints and needles to"

As with other DVDs in the Classic Album series this one focuses on the creation of the record under discussion. Lou Reed's Transformer happens to contain some of his most well known songs including "Satellite Of Love", "Perfect Day", "New York Telephone Conversation", and of course "Walk On The Wild Side".

While none of the songs are really that technically complex with any fancy studio tricks for people to be amazed with, there were still some interesting moments that were brought to light by listening to the masters in the studio. Of those the one that will probably interest people the most is the description of how the base line on "Walk On The Wild Side" was put together.

What has to be one of the more famous bass lines in pop music is actually a cheat, if you've ever heard a live version of "Wild Side" and something has sounded a little off it's because you can't reproduce the bass live. It's two separate basses being played with one being overdubbed on top of the other while being recorded at a different speed. The opening line was done on the stand-up acoustic bass, while the second line was an electric.

Listen to the studio version of the song again paying attention to the bass line. There will be moments in the song where it becomes a fuller, richer sound and then will switch back again. The irony is that what has become one of the most recognised bass lines in pop music was the result of a session player using an old trick. It wasn't any great composition or developed through any sort of writing process.

According to Mick Ronson and Lou himself, Reed had very little to do with the session musicians. He'd come in and play them the chords of the song to teach it to them, or to give them an idea of the melody and that would be the only involvement he'd have in creating the music for each number.

I personally found the most interesting part of this disc was the amount of time that was spent with Lou Reed. He's always seemed like such a fascinating man judging by the lyrics he'd written and the subject matter that he was willing to explore – not the stuff of your typical pop song. In some ways he always felt like he was an extension of people like Alan Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs.

He would write about people that most of society preferred to pretend didn't exist – gays, cross dressers, drug addicts, and other outcasts and miscreants. His lyrics were never judgemental, if they weren't sympathetic; they were at least not negative in portraying their attempts to have a life surrounded by a majority that hates them.

Everybody in "Walk On The Wild Side" exists, or existed as the case maybe. They were all people who had been involved with Andy Warhol's Factory; a facility for creative expression in whatever form that would take, and a drop in centre for New York's burgeoning underground artistic scene.

Reed never says in any of these interviews on the disc whether he had liked Warhol or not, but one thing you do get is that he had a lot of respect for Andy and had no problem acknowledging the debt he bore him for helping foster the career of the Velvet Underground. I think that Warhol's reputation suffered from the excesses of those around him at the Factory more than anything else and that he did have a unique ability for helping people focus their artistic energies to make the most of their taletn

Aside from his observations on and about the people around Andy Warhol and the Factory, Lou of course talked about his songs and his creative process. To me he sounded far more like a poet than a songwriter. One of the people, an editor type from Rolling Stone magazine, talked about this fact in terms of his lyrics and music.

He said that unlike most pop music whose lyrics don't work without music because they are so integrated, Lou's words can and do stand alone. That is very similar to other poetic types like Patti Smith and Leonard Cohen who have set their poetry to music. The only difference being that Lou never set his writing down on paper as poetry

Perhaps it is because of that relationship between Lou Reed and his material, that no matter how hard the documentary tried to bring it's attention back to the actual business of recording Transformer the focus kept on returning to Lou. In some ways what Classic Albums: Lou Reed Transformer does is make you realize really how unimportant the music is in terms of the words Reed creates.

The lyrics to the songs on Transformer would have probably existed in one form or another even if the album had never been created. That the music does exist is a bonus for the rest of us as it increases our enjoyment of his words. Classic Albums: Lou Reed Transformer is a great reminder of the singularly unique talent that is Lou Reed.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:37 AM | Permalink

How many times have you purchased a product, let's say a cleanser or a bug spray, and in big bold colours they display the various warning signs. Toxic, flammable, carcinogenic or whatever are in large enough type so there is no way that you're going to be able to miss it.

Or how about when you get a prescription you've never had before. The pharmacist, if he or she is any good, ensures that you know all possible contradictions and their symptoms. In fact most of them even provide a print out with which once you read you wonder if the stuff is going to kill you before it cures you, but at least you know what could go wrong.

Then of course there is now the grocery store where more and more packaging are carrying not only a products' nutritional value, but lists it's potential for allergies as well as any foods it might have come into contact with that could cause an allergic reaction. In fact everywhere you go you can see health warnings on the outside chance that something could harm you.

Whether it's because companies are terrified of being sued, new government regulations, or simple decency it doesn't matter. These warnings are now accepted as course and you expect to see them. The days of having to make use of magnifying products or having to pore over acres of small print in order to find out what exactly it is you're using or eating are long gone.

At least I thought they were, or maybe what applies to humans doesn't apply to pet products. That's always possible seeing as what's been going on with cat and dog food recently and other feeds in the past that have been discovered to be deadly. Heck mad cow disease was first started by adding sheep brains to cow feed, because the illness actually forms in sheep not cows.

Every spring I usually treat my cats with Revolution Blue, a medication I buy from my vets that gets rid of fleas, ear mites and other insects that bother them. They are indoor cats so that's all they usually need. Revolution is a great product that's easy to use, as you just squeeze a small tube's contents into the space between your pet's shoulder blades and it takes care of the rest. I think the natural oils in the cat's hair carries it around the body.

With our vet moving beyond comfortable walking distance I haven't been able to get out to pick up the medication for my cats in a couple of years but they'd been fine anyway so it hadn't seemed to matter. This year thought they started to display symptoms that they might be picking up mites or fleas; they can come in on my wife or I, if we have been around an animal that has them, easily enough.

So I went to a reputable pet store and bought Zodiac Spot On Flea Control for Cats and Kittens which promises to kill flea eggs in the animal's fur. You apply it just like the Revolution. So we did this on Saturday to all four of our cats.

By Sunday one of them was sporting a bald spot between his shoulder blades. Although we had noticed that it had aggravated them we had put the medication on their shoulders for a little while after, we didn't make any connection between what was happening with him and the Spot On until we noticed his skin where the hair had fallen out looked like it had been burned it was so bright red and weepy.

His hair had fallen out in little clumps in that area, I found it lying in a cluster on the carpet. It wasn't like it had shed or anything because it wasn't loose hairs, you could see it formed into clumps with the roots and everything. He's a shorthaired cat so we've been able to monitor him closely now and it doesn't look like the damage is spreading any further.

But yesterday I was walking through the hall and found a pile of hair from another one of our cats. His hair is thicker with more layers so we hadn't known anything was wrong until it all just fell out in a clump. It was like he had rolled over onto his back like cats do and had left his hair behind him when he got up.

Even before that had happened we had begun to suspect the Spot On might have had something to do with it. I looked over the packaging and saw something that said what to do in the event of a problem with humans. But didn't see anything else on a scan. The type is very small and it had been hard enough trying to read the instructions for applying the material. I had had my glasses on that were what I used for reading normal sized type face and even smaller, but the type was not much bigger than this.

My wife went over the back of the packaging with a magnifying glass and finally found first aid instructions for cats. While the first aid instructions for humans had its own subject heading and started a paragraph – for the animals it began mid way through the paragraph on human first aid.

It was the only place that they actually used the word pesticide in the packaging. "Sensitivities may occur after using any pesticide for pets" They go on to say if sensitivity occurs wash your pet with mild soap and water, and rinse with large amounts of water. If it continues seek medical attention – taking the packaging and P.C.P. number with you.

Of our four cats only the two boys showed any signs of "sensitivity". Have you ever even thought about washing a cat, let alone a cat that's not in the best of moods? Neither of our boys are small either; the black one weighs in at around 25lbs and the grey one is about fifteen but is affectionately known by the vets as "live wire" for the difficulty involved with taking his temperature (I've worn him as a hat with a thermometer hanging out of his butt when he was a kitten)

Nowhere on the packaging is there any warning that this stuff may have an adverse effect on the animal except in this first aid treatment area hidden away in small print. By then it's too late to decide that you don't want to risk your animal's health by rubbing something potentially dangerous into his or her skin. The last thing you want when you think you've done something good for your pet is to see its hair start falling out in clumps

A warning is something you put on packaging that a person can see so that they can make a considered decision. It's not something you bury in small print under first aide treatment. Especially when earlier on they tell you to make sure not to let the pet take the medication internally, or to keep it away from their eyes and genitalia. You'll think that the first aid treatment is for that eventuality– not in the event of something happening they haven't warned you about.

They don't even tell you what form the sensitivity could take. When do we need to seek help from a veterinarian? When all their hair falls out, when a little clump of hair falls out, when their skin turns pink, or when their hair takes on the texture of someone who’s done one too many home permanents and burnt their hair so that it feels like straw?

Wellmark International, formally known as Zoecon is the manufacturer of this and other insecticides that are used for everything from mosquito larvae control to the fleas on your pet. In a world where we are gradually starting to ban pesticides for their known toxicity and dangers to the planet, don't you think that a company that provides products to consumers that contains those toxins should be forced to warn them properly?

What would it cost them to print in legible lettering on the front of the package something to the effect of: Some animals have more sensitive skin than others – your cat may not be right for this product. Is that too hard? Think of all good will that would generate, and all the ill feelings it would prevent.

I bought Zodiac Spot On as an attempt to provide my cats some relief from a problem and have ended up causing them to develop problems. There is something wrong with that equation. That needs to change.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:12 AM | Permalink

"Anything you can do I can do better". Now I wonder why that lyric would come to mind when listening to the latest Ruf Records' Blues Caravan release? It maybe because Time Bomb features three women Blues players who prove that the only equipment you need to know your way around a guitar's fret board can be bought in a store.

For the third year running the German Blues label Ruf Records has gathered three performers from its label and banded them together to tour and record. This year's Blues Caravan is made up of three woman Blues guitar players; Sue Foley, Roxanne Potvin, and Deborah Coleman whose very existence probably make some men nervous. If after hearing these three women play you still think that lead guitar is the preserve of men only you either need your medication adjusted or a hearing aid.

Of the three, Sue Foley is the most established both on and off the stage. Two years ago she co-produced a two-disc set for Ruf Records called Blues Guitar Women that showed just how many and how long women have been laying down hot licks. Deborah has been around a while now too, but is just starting to attract attention with her strong urban blues guitar work and honest vocals. Roxanne Potvin is the new women on the block just having put out her first CD but has already proven she has the acumen and talent to play with anyone.

Time Bomb may not be the appropriate name for this assembly's production because there is no waiting around for the fuse to burn down and the fireworks to start. Right from the opening title track, "Time Bomb", an insrtumental where all three women take turns laying down leads, things are beginning to sizzle. For the next nine songs the women spell each other off taking lead vocals and guitar duties of every third song until they come together again on the final track "In The Basement".

Along the way we hear songs that display their versatility and virtuosity with their two instruments of choice, guitar and voice. Although all the music on the album is worth listening too, each woman has one song that pushes her a little bit further into the limelight for reasons other than just being the front person.

For Roxanne Potvin it's her second song on the album and fifth on the disc. "Strong Enough To Hold You" is a gospel tinged love song, which shows off the fullness and strength of her voice. Listening to it you can't help but feel the depth of emotion and sincerity that this woman is able to imbue a song with. As that voice matures she's going to be able stand on stage and blow an audience away simply by opening her mouth and singing from her heart.

Deborah Coleman is a rough-cut diamond so sharp that she'll cut you if you're not careful, but she is who she is and doesn't apologise for it. Her music is as direct and honest as she is and makes no bones about it either. "Talkin' Loud And Sayin' Nothin'" is as fine a piece of R& B tinged urban blues that you're going to hear from anybody anywhere. Pumped along by a great B3 organ line by Mark Licktieg you can't help but move to and be moved by this song.

On one level it could be an anti love song about false promises from a partner – but it could also just as easily be about all the false promises that society gives a woman no matter who she and where she comes from. There are lots of people in this world who are "Talkin' Loud And Sayin' Nothin'".

Sue Foley's sound is so polished and established it's hard to pick one song over another, not that all her songs sound alike, but they are all of equal strength. But the one that caught my ear the most was "Show Me" where she fools around with her voice. I don't know if it's through an effect box or if she's doing it on her own, however it's been done, it shows a certain comfort and relaxation that I haven't heard from Sue on record before and it's nice to hear.

She's always been a highly skilled and polished player with a great ear for music, and a phenomenal appreciation for her genre, but on occasion she seems to have taken it all too seriously. On this album she sounds like she's remembered that one "plays" music and it must have that element or it gets stale real quick. It was really nice to hear, because if there is anybody who deserves to enjoy being a woman Blues guitar player in this world it's her.

In fact one of the great elements of this disc is it's playfulness from the music on out to the packaging – (look at the cover and tell me what it reminds you of – come on it's not hard – Think big hair and the 1970's) Listen to them whooping it up in the background of "In The Basement" when all three are playing and singing together. If they're not actually playing together they're at least in the same room listening to each other and cheering each other's solos.

You boys out there, who've ever felt threatened by women, are in a lot of trouble now. Another myth of supposed male dominance has finally been ripped to shreds. Three of those people doing the ripping can be heard loud and clear on Time Bomb It's too late guys, the clock's done ticking and the explosion has gone off – try to be a little gracious in defeat.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:31 AM | Permalink

In 1968 Jimi Hendrix released what would be his third of only four albums he released during his lifetime. Are You Experienced and Axis Bold As Love his first two albums turned out only to be the warm up act for something nobody was really expecting.

For all that Jimi is mainly remembered today by the majority as a guitar ace, and a hard rocker, a close examination of the process that went into the creation of Electric Ladyland his third album goes a long way to dispelling that myth. Instead what we are shown on the DVD Classic Albums: Electric Ladyland is a musician driven to experiment and discover what could and couldn't be done within the confines, and beyond, of Blues based rock and roll.

In an interview near the end of the documentary one of his friends says that he always thought of Hendrix as the equivalent for Blues that people like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane were for Jazz. They saw and heard things that other people didn't even know existed as potentials in the music and tried to push it in that direction.

Unfortunately for Blues and Rock, in my opinion, unlike Jazz there were not the players or the incentive from anywhere for that experimentation to continue. People saw the noise and the burning guitar solos but didn't see the 90% that lay behind that small example of the man's talent.

Of course there is no disputing that the man understood guitar in ways that few coming after him did or those who came before had discovered yet. I'm sure there were faster players before his time and faster players have existed since his death. But as we enter the studio with Jimi and the Experience (Noel Redding on Bass and Mitch Mitchell on Drums) and anybody else who happened along that Jimi felt could contribute, it's like entering a painter's studio where he works with his materials to create the visions in his head.

It was very hard to keep track of all the different people who were talking during the DVD, but it's really what they were saying that's most important. At one point one of them says, Jimi saw music as colours and would talk about how'd he want a gold sound or the something this colour or that. Nobody else was really on the same page as him most of the time, and that probably led to a lot of the frustration that is mentioned on the DVD on the part of Noel Redding.

It wasn't just him, but others too who weren't accustomed to the way Jimi wanted to work on this occasion He wasn't interested in "schedules" when he was ready to work, when the spirit or the muse took him he wanted to work – but that didn't mean necessarily according to any clock that anybody else might have thought they working on.

But mainly I think it sounds like nobody else could understand the language he was speaking and he ended up many times picking up their instruments and doing things himself because they weren't able to produce the sound he wanted. He wanted to try different things at different times; if someone, even a cabbie or a delivery person could play an instrument he didn't have to hand – they were told to come back with it and sit in so he could hear if their sound was part of the picture in his head.

There is one beautiful story about the song "Crosstown Traffic" where he heard what he wanted in his head, but he couldn't get his guitar to make it. So he got a comb and some cellophane and blew through it for the sound he wanted in his guitar solo. Those really odd sounds in his guitar solo just before the chorus aren’t a guitar at all – they're a jury-rigged kazoo.

Classic Albums: Electric Ladyland is full of amazing details like that. Insights into the creative genius that has been hidden behind the electric guitar reputation for too many years are brought to light on this disc. Not only that, but quite a few myths about the album are laid to rest as well.

The whole controversy about the naked women on the cover of the British version of the album for instance, Jimi hated the cover and wanted nothing to do with it so he couldn't care less about it being banned. His idea for the cover is the picture above of the three band members and children on the Alice In Wonderland statue in Central Park.

But nobody bought into it, just as nobody who's come since has really understood the potential of what he was unearthing in the studio. Sgt. Pepper'sin 1967 might have been the ultimate pop album, and The Band in 1969 might have been the first album to connect all the disparate elements of American music, but Electric Ladyland sandwiched between the two in 1968 was pushing an envelope that most people didn't even know existed.

The world of rock and roll and popular music does not allow enormous amounts of room for the likes of Jimi Hendrix, not now and not then. He didn't fit easily into any convenient slots: a lead guitar player who could play rhythm, a black man playing with two white men, and some one who wanted to compose more then the three minute song that the industry machine wanted.

Classic Albums: Electric Ladyland offers a rare glimpse of Jimi Hendrix the man behind the guitar. It's well done and intelligent with the usual superb job of tracking down and bringing together the people who were involved in the recording of the album. Eagle Rock Entertainment has provided a real service with the re issue of this series, and this is just another example of what makes it so good.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:13 AM | Permalink

For everyone who listens to popular music there are always albums that for one reason or another stand out in their minds. Some of them are of personal significance, like the first album you ever bought, and some of them take on a little more meaning.

The first album I ever bought was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and it will always retain a special place in my heart. I got in 1969 in exchange for a Christmas present that hadn't worked or something like that at a post holiday sale and held onto the disc for more then thirty years. Since that time there have been other albums that have taken on various different types of significance for me, and like everyone else they were evaluated according to my own special criteria.

We all have our own means of judging why we think a piece of music or an album is important. That's why when I first heard about Eagle Rock Entertainment's reissue of the VH1 Classic Albums series of DVDs I was a mite suspicious of what was going to be deemed a "Classic" by the people at VH1 and whether I was going to agree with any of their selections.

I also wondered what the hell are you going to do for an hour on tape – sit around and interview people talking about how great they had been? But after viewing two releases Catch A Fire by Bob Marley and The Wailers and Aja by Steely Dan I realized that wasn't the case. In fact they were pretty fascinating documentaries on how an album is assembled, and the history of the groups involved.

Over the next week or so I'm going to be reviewing four more DVDs from this series starting with what I still think was the best "roots rock album" ever recorded – even though the genre didn't even exist in those days: The Band by the Band. Aside from the confusion about the title of the album and the title of the group it and the album that preceded it, Music From Big Pink have always been the two albums I automatically associate with The Band.

Contained within those two albums are almost every song that you associate with them: "The Weight", "Up On Cripple Creek", "Rag Momma Rag", and of course "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". The last three songs were all from The Band, and it's those songs, plus a couple of others from the album that come in for the closest scrutiny.

What makes this Classic Albums disc so special is the fact that the film makers have sat down with both Levon Helm (the drummer and lead vocalist) and Robbie Robertson (guitar and primary songwriter) and allowed the two men to separately go through the songs and break them down track by track to show what it is they think made the songs so special.

To me those are the highlights of the disc, sure the history behind the making of the album is interesting enough – it was recorded in Sammy Davis Jr.'s pool house in Los Angeles. But to be honest I really couldn't care less what Bernie Taupin or Eric Clapton thought of the album, or much of what any of the other talking heads had to say. The music doesn't need to be justified by celebrity endorsements and unfortunately that's what moments like these feel like.

The only person who was of interest outside of those who had been directly involved with the recording process was Don Was because of his producer's ear for analysing what they had done in the studio. His input was an interesting augmentation to the information that Robbie, Levon, and the original producer/engineer John Simon provided.

Both Rick Danko and Garth Hudson also took part but I found them both to be more of a distraction than anything else. Rick because he was so overweight, and I knew he was due to die a year or so after this had been filmed and Garth because he just sat at his keyboard and played long complicated pieces of music which as far a I could tell had nothing to do with the songs under discussion.

But all that was more than compensated for by the input and eagerness that both Robbie and Levon brought to the table. It's unfortunate that they don't seem to have been able to settle what ever their differences had been, because I'm sure it would have been great to hear them together. However there were advantages to them being separate as it gave them each an opportunity to focus on the parts of the music they thought important.

One of things I'd always loved about the Band's songs was their ability to harmonize. None of them had what anyone could call a "beautiful voice" by any stretch of the imagination, but they all had character and passion. Somehow or other when they would come together on a chorus the sounds would mesh beautifully.

Well Levon lets us in on the secret of how that worked for the Band. When it came to the choruses they would divide the parts up by who could hit what note. Usually that meant that Richard Manuel was the one who ended up singing the high harmony because he was the only one who could hit the notes.

It didn't matter that he also sang lead vocals on a lot of the songs, for the chorus somebody else would take over the lead vocal line and he would shoot up for the high harmony and then he would be right back into singing lead again when the verse started back in. On quite a number of their songs there was no pause between the verse and the chorus but they were so seamless in their performance you could barely notice the switch or the switch back.

Even when Levon sat at the mixing board playing back the old masters one vocal track at a time, once he started weaving them together I was no longer able to tell where the switch took place. These types of details are what makes these Classic Albumdiscs so fascinating. Both Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm are intelligent and fun, so not only can they tell you all sorts of details about the music; they are enjoying every minute of talking about it and that make you enjoy it all the more.

The first time we see Robbie sitting behind the console he looks and acts like a kid whose just been given an amazing present and doesn't quite know what part to play with first. Here's a guy whose written scores for movies, recorded and produced a number of his own projects, yet this music that he recorded almost thirty years earlier still excites him so much that he doesn't seem to know what he wants to talk about first. That tells me a lot right there about how good this music really is.

I have two quibbles with the DVD from a technical standpoint. One is the sound quality. Maybe they couldn't do anything about this but I'm curious as to why there was no other option for sound aside from strait stereo. Perhaps it was my system but on occasion there was quite a bit of bass distortion as if too much sound was being forced through too little space. The other thing was the packaging is limited to a single sheet with a list of the songs they talk about from the album and a blurb on the back cover. I would think that albums that are considered "Classics" would merit a little more attention than that.

But those are just minor points, what this disc wants to do, and succeeds as far as I'm concerned, is to convince the viewer that The Band by The Band merits the sobriquet Classic in terms of popular music. If you are a fan of The Band you'll want to see this disc for the pleasure of gaining a deeper appreciation of their talent. If you were unfamiliar with their work until now than Classic Albums, The Band makes a great introduction to one of the great bands and the great albums of the last forty years.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 12:41 PM | Permalink

Four weeks ago I had barely heard of him, three weeks ago I read about his album The Wheel Man in a newsletter I get delivered in my email inbox and was interested enough to request a copy from his label Northern Blues.

The CD came in my mail along with another on Thursday of last week. From the moment I put The Wheel Man in my player on Friday I haven't let a day go by without listening to it. On Sunday after I decided to contact his publicity people and see about an interview. They emailed me right back telling me to contact Watermelon Slim and the send him the questions I wanted to ask him.

After a quick flurry of emails between the two of us I sat down and wrote of the questions you're about to read and sent them off to him first thing Monday morning. By five thirty the answers you're about to read were waiting in my in box.

Talk about your whirlwind romances. It's not often a musician, will excite me that much as both a person and a musician that I will take those steps that quickly. The fact that Watermelon Slim responded so quickly says to me that my timing was right and this was meant to happen this way.

Slim says he doesn't believe in coincidence, neither do I which means everything you're about to read is just the way it should be, the questions and the answers. Two days from now I might have asked different questions, or he might not have been so available to answer so quickly. Who knows and who cares what happened today I what matters and what happened was that I was privileged to ask a person of integrity questions about himself and his art, and because of that we are all going to lucky enough to hopefully get to the man called Watermelon Slim a little better.

Sometimes the force of a person's character is so strong that you can hear his voice through the words on the page. Maybe it's because I've been listening to him sing these past three or four days on a regular basis but I swear each time I read these words you're about to it's like I'm talking to him in person his voice is so clear.

There are very few individuals left in this cookie cutter world that we live in as more and more it's becoming controlled by marketing executives and image consultants. Which make people like Watermelon Slim all the more damn precious.

The only editing done to Slim's answers was out of necessity for html mark up and to change the spelling of a few words so that Queen wouldn't be offended. Thank you Watermelon, and thank you Chris of Southern Artists management for setting this up so quickly.

1) Can you tell us a little about your early years; where you were born, family size etc.

I was born William P. Homans, like my father and grandfather before me-- an eldest son of an eldest son of an eldest son. My family line survives in a daughter, Jessie McCain Dandelion Homans, the reason for me to continue to achieve anything in this life. She is a sweetheart whose personal horizons are unlimited. She has inherited just enough of her mother's (the Blues woman Honour Havoc, from whom I have been long separated, but on legal advice, not divorced) more delicate European features (Scandinavian probably, maybe Jewish) to go with my old-line Anglo-Saxon cragginess with an admixture some generations back of Wampanoag (Massachusetts) Indian. Both dad and grandpa showed the Native American blood strongly. Family members would say that I favor my mother more than my brother does.

As I understand, I was almost dropped on a doorstep on Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts, but my mother held me in and we got to the hospital a couple of miles away in order to schloop me out in an organized fashion, so to speak. I have one full brother, Peter, who is a world-acclaimed classical composer, a half sister and brother from my mother's second marriage to Robert A.Totty, a successful small businessman from Petersburg, Virginia, and two half sisters from my father's second marriage,
to Libby Hayes, a socialite from Boston.

My father, to whom I dedicated my first major release, Big Shoes to Fill, was one of the most eminent attorneys in American jurisprudential history. He was a criminal defence lawyer, and his cases include the Boston Strangler, the Chicago Seven Conspiracy trial, the unbanning in America of English author Henry Miller's books (Sexus/Plexus/tropic of Cancer/etc.), the first test of Roe v. Wade, the Dr. Kenneth Edelin abortion trial, and the defence of Freedom Riders in the 1950-60s in Mississippi and Alabama. He was a colleague of William Kunstler and an instructor, at one point, of F. Lee Bailey. His manual on criminal jury selection remains the state of the craft ten years after his death in 1997.

He was also the only civilian attorney ever allowed to go to Viet Nam to defend in a capital case, which he did in 1971, the year after I returned. He fought in two navies for all 7 years of World War II, dropping out of law school at 17 1/2 in 1939 to join the Royal Navy against the Nazis, then in 1942, when the U.S. had declared war, returning from Europe and fighting the Japanese in the Pacific, eventually reaching the rank of lieutenant commander. His friend John F. Kennedy held me in his arms when I was an infant, in 1950. He was, besides, a workaholic who was also completely, paradoxically, incapable of handling finances.

Big Bill (he stood 6'4 1/2" at 17, when the English wouldn't let him fly Spitfires because of his gangly height, so he joined the Navy instead) was a man who cared deeply, almost, some would say, obsessively, about each individual who came to him for help. I shall never fill his giant shoes, not if I win 20 Handy Awards.

2) Were there any indications at that time that music would become such a big part of your life – were your family musical or were you exposed to a lot of music as a young person anyway?

All correct. We had no professional musicians, but my mother played some piano, and me and my brother were always strongly encouraged to sing in choirs and glee
clubs in church and school. My first starring gig was as a boy soprano soloist, singing the Bach-Gounod Variation of "Ave Maria", at age 9. I can sing you dozens of hymns from the Episcopal Hymnal of 1940, dozens more "Negro" spirituals, and various show tunes from musicals down through the years. My mother and Bob Totty, and the black woman who worked as our "maid", in those last years of Jim Crow segregation, Idell Gossett, and her grown children and their husbands, kept a wide variety of music in our various houses in Asheville, North Carolina-- we moved about a fair amount.

I first heard the blues, though I didn't know that's what the music was till nearly a decade later, in 1954, when Beulah Huggins, the first "maid" I remember, used to sing snatches of John Lee Hooker hits-- "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer", and "Boogie Chillen" are the two I remember-- as she did her work. It was the first live music I ever heard besides my mother singing me lullabies, and one trip I remember to Ringling Brothers
Barnum and Bailey, with 5 rings, which I can reliably date in 1952.

People sometimes remark that I sound "black". Well, if I do, I come by it naturally. Black women helped make me who I am today. And any "white" person who denies that
he or she has been profoundly influenced by "black" music and culture in the United States is in terminal denial. I suppose I have a bit more in me than most,
considering my father was a Freedom Rider. Indeed, growing up, I got called "n____r-lover" more than once, and once fought over it. Fine, bring 'em on. I heard myself say the word "gook" once too often in Viet Nam, and that was the beginning of my real getting hip to the universality of racism.

3) This is one of those questions you may choose to ignore and that's cool, but I'm curious as to what made you decide to leave school to volunteer in Viet Nam.

A combination of the extreme naiveté I have just alluded to, and a complete lack of motivation to do well in college. I somehow failed ever to have received any vocational/professional guidance throughout what was otherwise an outstanding education, so I had no real idea why I was in college, in 1968. I did poorly, dropped out, and since I had no real job skills (I'd never worked at anything but landscaping, greenhouse work, and janitoring, with a couple of stints as summer camp counsellor thrown in), and not even an outstanding athletic team in my strong sport to be a part of (I was a national-class epee fencer in high school, finished second in the Connecticut State Championships to a former Olympian and went to the Nationals in 1968. Give me a sword and I'll face a black belt...),

I did what any son of such a father would do, I joined the Army and volunteered for Nam duty. I wasn't a very good soldier; I was discharged with the rank of Private, E-2, one rank above Buck Private, or E-1. But I did my time and my discharge is honourable.

4) In your bio it says that you were laid up in hospital in Viet Nam when you made yourself your first guitar. Was there some specific incident that inspired that act, or what was it that made it so important for you to make music at the time?

I did not make my first guitar. I obtained a balsa-wood Vietnamese-made acoustic guitar for $5 from a local small concessionaire, and began playing it at the hospital in Cam Ranh Bay, where I was recovering from whatever unknown herpes-like disease I had caught in Long Binh. the guitar, an opportunity to sit with it for a few days and get started with it, and the other necessary tool-- a slide, which was my Zippo cigarette/doobie lighter-- and my growing knowledge of blues music all came together. Coincidence? I am a phenomenologist, and there ARE no coincidences.

5.) For a time after you returned from the war you worked as a musician. You had some success with people like Country Joe Macdonald recording some of your songs. What made you turn your back on music as a career at that time? Did you keep playing while you were working your other jobs, or did you stop completely?

When I came back I worked as a lot of things: grunt labourer, forklift operator, political investigator, musician, and small-time criminal among them. I was really learning my craft, and my gigging during the 1970s was sporadic, wherever I could catch on, and I probably played more solo than band gigs over those years. I was listening to all the live and recorded blues I could find, and did sit in with people like John Lee Hooker and Bonnie Raitt-- teaser gigs, in retrospect-- made my cult item, Merry Airbrakes, in
1973, and eventually produced another cult classic, Richard Phillips's folk record Endangered Species, in 1980.

In the 1980s, I gigged semi-regularly, especially in Oregon in 1984-87, with various groups and people, including the late Canned Heat guitarist, Henry (the Sunflower) Vestine. I tried to establish myself in Europe in 1987 but without any backing, flopped, and was literally smashed up in Amsterdam, both in a fight and a motorcycle-bicycle accident (I was on the bicycle), and returned to the US and started trucking, playing with my Boston/Cambridge group the Old Dogs, including Washtub Robbie, for several years, and sometimes working with my old friend and later producer of Big Shoes to Fill, Boston's top-gun guitarist and all-around bluesman, Chris Stovall Brown. Bruce Bears, "Sax Gordon" Beadle, and David Maxwell were three of the outstanding musicians I worked with in that period of the late 80s-early 90s.

I was mostly inactive from about 1993 to 1998, just woodshedding while trying to keep my little family together. But after quitting a scuffling trucking career for the first time in 1997 to go to graduate school in Oklahoma, I began making the long push towards getting truly on the musical radar screen. I'm a very late-blooming musician, and I'm a scads better guitarist, in particular, than when I was doing my first Fried Okra Jones gigs around Stillwater, Oklahoma, in 1998.

So I've never really given up the idea of making my living as a professional musician. Cursed myself for following a dream until I was battered and half-toothless, sometimes. But after three-plus decades I have achieved some degree of mastery over my own styles, and I think that and my age are why people are taking me seriously now. And, I've lived what I play and sing. Not everybody in the blues can really say that today.

6) While we're on the subject of music, you are credited with being involved with writing a majority of the songs and Michael Newbury with their arrangement. When you write a song for the group do you come up with the lyrics and then all of you contribute to the music in rehearsal, or do you and Michael hand out charts for each of the parts?

I do hand out some charts when we're first learning new songs, but we don't use 'em very long-- the guys are quick studies. Michael Newberry often determines the beats and tempos, and is usually the lead man on putting together beginnings and endings. He also plays guitar, so he can pass on helpful input to Cliff Belcher, the bass player, and Ronnie Mac McMullen, on guitar. But everyone contributes creative input, both in arranging and song writing. Michael so far has been my main song-writing partner, and Ronnie Mac has a couple of numbers that may appear on our next studio release.

7) Would you say that there has been any one musician who has had a significant influence on your music? What was it about him, her, or them that inspired you?

No. too many to pin it down to one, or ten. But John Lee Hooker, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Muddy, Howlin Wolf, Junior Wells, Charlie Musselwhite, James Cotton, Paul Butterfield, Chris Stovall Brown, my only real hero from my own generation (Musselwhite was born during WW II, not after), Ry Cooder, and my mentor, Earring George Mayweather-- only Brown, Cotton, Cooder, and Musselwhite survive-- hold some of the highest spots. I've gotten vocal influence from literally hundreds of people, including Oregon soul-singer/harp player Curtis Salgado. Some of these play guitar, some harp, but all have been an influence to me-- I've watched and played with Brown and Mayweather more than any of the others-- in overall showmanship. Robert Cray has been something of an influence in song writing; he's one of the best of the last 20 years. William Shakespeare might be my greatest overall influence as a poet.

8) Where does the music come from for you? Do you sit down with intent and write or do songs just come to you like bolts of lightning?

Remember, I'm a trained poet, journalist and all-around writer. I live, therefore I write. I am a trained observer and phenomenologist. My writing "axe" is well known to be much stronger than any instrument I play. I have no problem sitting down and writing songs, when the necessity hits me, in minutes. Sometimes, though, songs percolate within me for years, such as "Blue Freightliner", from my 2004 CD Up Close and Personal. I didn't record the song until 11 years after a couple of verses came out of me while I was driving a semi westbound through Memphis in 1993. Sometimes-- more often in the last 4-5 years-- the music, or just a riff, come to me first, but most of my songs were text before they became music.

9) In my review I compared you to Woody Guthrie because of your ability to sing about and depict the life of people who do the type of work you used to do; working in a sawmill, hauling industrial waste, etc. Is that something you've striven to do – giving voice to the lives of people who nobody ever really thinks about?

Yes, that's a valid way of looking at my musical development. I have a song called "Winners of Us All" that I will release on one CD or another soon that deals with exactly that issue. One verse reads:

"And I'm sitting in this dirty old dumpster rig
writing/Knowing the chance you'll ever hear me is
small,/But I'm doing it for everybody who don't draw
that bottom line/And I'm hoping one day to make winners
of us all."

I know the Guthries, by the way. I played for Arlo's sister Nora at my appearance, with Pete Seeger, Barbara Dane, and other peace-activist musicians, in the teeth of the Iraq invasion of 2003, at the Vietnam Songbook, in New York City's Joe's Pub, on March 1. I hung around Alice's Restaurant a few times as a schoolboy in 1968. And I have lectured on Woody Guthrie in an Oklahoma History class in which I was a teaching assistant in 1999. My best friend in high school, Josh Bauman, was a neighbours and best friend with the Guthries in Stockbridge.

Arlo and I are, indeed, two musicians who were making protest music during the Viet Nam War, and now speak truth to power during our even more disastrous misadventure in Iraq. If you run across him, give him "dap" and solidarity from me!

10) In your bio it says that it took a near fatal heart attack to get you to return to the music business. How did one lead to the other- most people have a heart attack and settle down to a more sedate life but you went the opposite route and chose to start working at one of the most demanding jobs, a touring musician. Doesn't that ever strike you as perhaps a little odd?

I had already released my 2001 self-release, ,Fried Okra Jones, and my first (2002) Southern Records release, Big Shoes to Fill, by the time I had my heart attack in November of 2002. I was a full-time trucker, and continued to do that into 2004, but I was already working on my current phase of career development. So I would say, rather than changing my path, it just made me focus. It's not a bit odd, for a person who, though well educated, has always used his extraordinary physical endurance as a main calling card.

We must all die, and I just finally got the idea that it might be any time now. My songs "Immortal", on Big Shoes to Fill, and "the Last Blues" and "Got My Will Made
Out", from Up Close And Personal, most directly reflect this development in my consciousness.

11) I actually asked this question to Arlo Guthrie, but both of you are in the unique position of having been singers during the Viet Nam war and now during the occupation of Iraq. What are the major differences that you see between the United States then and now? For example what have been reactions like to the line about spending a son on a war you don't see a reason for?

As I tell people, when I came back from Viet Nam, it became my hope that what I had done as a soldier, and afterwards as one of the Viet Nam Veterans Against the War (VVAW; I'm a proud Life Member, and Oklahoma VVAW contact person), would save some others from subsequent generations from fighting and dying in other useless and misdirected foreign wars.

It didn't work out that way. My generation-- some of us, anyway-- wanted to "..change the world, rearrange the world," as CSNY sang. But America mostly didn't listen.
We are making the same shortsighted, provincial, naive mistakes we made then. America cannot be the world's policeman, even if we are the only nation that can project overwhelming military force anywhere on the globe.

As the historian and social critic George Santayana said in 1919, those who refuse to learn from the mistakes of history are committed to relive them.

12) Oh yeah the obligatory stupid final question to ask a musician – what are your upcoming plans – swimming the English Channel or playing some Blues?

I am a strong swimmer, but I shall not be swimming anything like that anytime soon, he he. I have a friend, fellow VVAW Billy X. Curmano, who swam the entire Mississippi River, Minnesota to New Orleans!

We just made a live Workers DVD 4 nights ago in Clarksdale, with guest stars Big George Brock, Charlie Musselwhite, and Jimbo Mathus. Jimbo has become a semi-regular guest in Watermelon Slim and the Workers' gigs. I will be recording a country-blues CD with Mississippi Blues man Robert "Nighthawk", "the Gearshifter", Belfour this year. And the Workers will make another studio CD this year also, which may include
Ry Cooder or Willie Nelson. Add 135-150 gigs this year, and we are busy as hell!


I can't remember who it was, but there was some musician that used to call him self the hardest working musician in music. Well it's a damn good thing he never said anything like that around Slim and the Workers. They play a gig every third night, spend weeks in the studio, and do stuff like exchange emails with guys like me answering questions they must be getting sick of.

We left out some of the more oft repeated questions (so if you want to find out why Watermelon Slim go to his web site. But it you really want to get to know the man, buy his music. What you hear is truly what you get.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:56 PM | Permalink

Well my goodness, reason to celebrate everybody, Canada' childhood poverty rate, the percentage of children living in poverty as has dropped back down to 11.7% according to Statistics Canada's latest figures. I guess all of us negative folk who haven't believed in Stephen Harper are just going to have to east some crow.

The economy is pushing ahead at full steam and child poverty levels have dropped back down to where they were in 1989. Yep that's right 1989; that was the same year that Canadian politicians were so appalled at how high the number of children living in poverty was that they swore to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000.

Well it's 2007 and we finally got the number back down to the 1989 level again which means something somewhere has gone wrong with the plan. In 1989 Canada had just started to recover from the worst recession that we had experienced since the Depression (You notice we only have recessions now never Depressions – how recessed does a hole have to be before it is considered a depression?) Yet now when our economy is supposedly in the best shape it has been in years we still have the exact same number of children living in poverty.

Canada's economy has doubled in the last twenty-five years until now we have the 9th largest in the world. Unemployment is at a thirty year low, which means more Canadians are working now then ever before yet three quarters of a million children live below the poverty line. What's even scarier is that a third of those children have at least one of their parents working yet they still live in poverty.

One of the problems lies in the fact that in spite of the red-hot economy the majority of the people in this country aren't seeing any benefits from it. In fact Canada's poorest families are actually earning less in real terms then they did a generation ago. On the other hand the wealthiest Canadians are enjoying a thirty per-cent increase in their incomes. In one generation the gap between our richest wage earners and our poorest has grown to from being 31 times the income to 82.

Another annoying detail is that our poorest families our poorer now then they ever have been. The typical low-income family with two parents are now living an average of $9,000 below the poverty line. That's in spite of there being a so-called social safety net of welfare and employment insurance that is supposed to protect people in times of trouble.

The government of Canada has been merrily cutting spending so as to make the economy work better for all the people of Canada to benefit. They've even generated a surplus of 35 billion dollars to spend, none of which has been earmarked for helping to alleviate poverty. They obviously can live with the fact that three quarters of a million children across Canada could be going to sleep without being fed properly every night.

It seems like a couple of the provinces don't think that's such a good thing, both Quebec and Newfoundland, and the latter doesn't has never been a wealthy province with money to spare, are investing in family income support programs, day care, training and education, and affordable housing. The things that are needed to help people break a cycle of poverty and improve their lot in life.

Other countries, countries whose economies aren't doing as well as ours, have implemented programs like these to help fight poverty with success. Canadians have told pollsters that these are the steps they'd like to see our government take to help reduce poverty and decrease the size of income disparity, but Stephen Harper and his government don't seem to be getting the message.

Right now Canada is in a position to take steps to implement programs like these on a national level. But instead we have the government doing things like scrapping a national day care deal that would have helped the working poor and replacing it with a system that benefits people with incomes that are substantial enough that they need tax write offs. What good do tax credits do you if you don't have the money in the first place to pay for day care, or it there aren't enough day care spaces?

Conservative politicians love to talk about the trickle down effect that occurs when wealthy make more money and are encouraged to invest it and thus create more jobs. What they don't talk about is the trickle down effect that depriving people of things like day care, after school programs, and school lunches has on the working poor. They all add up to reduce their standards of living making it harder and harder for them to make ends meet.

We live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world; there is no reason that any child in Canada should be going to bed hungry at night or without a roof over their head. For 750,000 of them that is a very real potential. That is unacceptable.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 11:54 PM | Permalink

Over the years the definition of what is a critic and what is a reviewer have come to be identical. Even the majority of modern English language usage dictionaries reflect that opinion by using one to define the other: a critic is someone who write reviews, and a review is something written by a critic.

While it's true that more and more often there is little distinction to be made between the two in the way they are applied in most instances; newspapers, online blogs, magazines, television, and other venues of pop media, it does not mean there is no distinction. It's only because of the need to supply the users of the dominant popular culture with easily comprehensive opinions: good/not good; pretty/not pretty; or even evil/not evil, that the concept of what we call a review has even come about.

Historian Douglas Harper has written in the Chicago Manual Style's Online Etymology Dictionary histories of the words, critic and review that offer some interesting distinctions. Critic has only been in use since 1583 and was derived from the Greek word 'kritikos" meaning "able to make judgements" and a second Greek word "krinein" meaning "to separate, decide" Critical in the sense of "finding fault with something" didn't come into use for another seven years

Review according to Mr. Harper at the same source has been around for quite a bit longer, since 1441. It was derived from the middle French (as opposed to Old French or modern) word "reveue" meaning: " a reviewing, review" and the combination of two Latin words "re" meaning "again" and "videre" "to see" forming the French "reveeir" meaning "to see again".

If we look at some of the ways we still use the word review; reviewing the troops, to take matters under review, or to review the facts in a case, we can see the connection to its origins. However in terms of reviewing a book, play, film, or whatever, all it means is to go over again what happened. Unlike critic there is no implication of making a judgement on the item under review or reaching a decision.

Let's return to the modern day and if we were to look at a typical review what we are usually offered is primarily a revisiting of the events with a judgement based on those events. How well have the actors performed their roles, or how well has the author created his plot and other information pertinent to the item's presentation are reviewed and judged in terms of a standard based on contemporary expectations and demands.

The critical element of the process is reserved solely for saying how well an item has lived up to a pre agreed upon standard the reviewer uses as a benchmark against which to measure performance. This standard is of course subject to change dependant on the whim of fashion and the savvy of marketing departments, rendering it almost completely arbitrary and limited as a basis for judgement.

A critic on the other hand will spend less time reviewing content and more in placing the item in context with works of a similar nature so there is a basis of comparison for judgement. There is no point in judging a detective novel by the same standards that you would judge a book of poetry, or a Country music CD by those you'd use for an opera. Each of them have their own set of criteria that have been established by precedent over the years and it is the critics job to be able to understand enough about a genre to "judge" how well an individual piece fits within it.

That's even more important when dealing with pieces that are experimental in nature. A critic has to be able to understand not only what is being attempted, but how well the attempt succeeds based on the norm that is being broken with. A critic has to be able to inform his or her audience about any information that is pertinent to the item being critiqued.

With the development of a popular culture and a corresponding popular press to report on it, a means of validating the work through some system of assessment was required. Since there was no body of work to use as a history for basis of comparison, and fashions in pop culture change too quickly for that ever to be feasible for more than a small percentage of its output, the current system was developed.

Although pop culture has now been around a sufficient time for some forms, Jazz and Blues for instance, to evolve to the point where there is now plenty of history to draw upon, it hasn't changed the majority approach. The occasional specialist magazine or web site will have a critic who will take the time to inform their audience, but they are the exception not the rule.

While there is no doubt the review format is by far the more popular of the two currently, if one genuinely wishes to inform a reader of more then just your personal opinion, being a critic is the way to go. Although the distinction between the two formats is hardly ever made any more the difference is obvious.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:15 AM | Permalink

One of the mysteries of the music business is how it is possible that two different people can get up on stage and play the same type of music with one of them sounding contrived and false, and the other like the music is coming from some place deep in their soul. Some people put it down to life experience while according to others it's just simply a matter of age.

But I've heard twenty year olds sing with a passion and conviction that sounds like it's coming from under a mountain of burdens, and one only need look at Pat Boone to show that age and experience have nothing to do with the amount of anyone's soul. I've never been able to figure that one out, but it is obvious that some people open their mouths to sing and from the first note out of their mouth you understand what it means to bear witness.

Watermelon Slim is such a performer. The moment you hear his voice you can feel the depth of the emotion that he brings to his music. It doesn't matter if it's just your standard woman done, done me wrong Blues tune, you know that he's speaking not about some one night stand that he had at a truck stop, but about universal loves that have gone bad. Every guy and every girl who's ever been treated bad by some pig of the opposite sex can relate to what he's saying.

On his latest release from Northern Blues Records, The Wheel Man, he doesn't just sing about love gone bad or how fine it can be when it is fine, he sings about everything under the sun that's bound to strike a chord with people everywhere.

You don't have to have worked at a sawmill to get what "Sawmill Holler" is about, all you ever have to have done is work any job where the purpose is just to earn the money that puts the bread on the table and keeps the wolf from the door. Maybe it doesn't hurt that Watermelon Slim has worked as a long haul trucker, a sawmill hand, a journalist, and more jobs of that kind than is good for a human being, including the hardest one of all, a soldier.

It was in a hospital in Viet Nam recovering from being wounded that he taught himself how to play and he's on record as being the only Viet Nam vet to have recorded an album of protest music against the war. But from the seventies to 2002 he worked those countless thankless jobs until he had a near fatal heart attack. That made him decide to change the way he lived and make every day a "good day to die" in that he would do what was right for him to be doing, making and playing music.

I don't know about the rest of you but I've never been more grateful for somebody having a heart attack. Every song on The Wheel Man from the opening title track, a homage to his small time criminal days featuring a wicked guitar duet with Magic Slim who guest stars on vocals and lead guitar on that item, to the end fourteen tunes later is a rough hewn gem that's been carved out of the rock face of every working person's life.

But don't be mistaken; this ain't no salt of the earth blue collar snobbishness happening here. Not only does Watermelon have an M.A. he's also a card-carrying member of MENSA – the genius organization. These songs may be emotionally powerful and hit you hard in the gut, but they also have a mind that's as sharp as cut glass behind them.

"Black Water" has to be one of the best songs I've heard written about post hurricane Louisiana and all the other states that were hit by the storm. Hearing Watermelon say that there's a bunch of pol's (politicians) up in Washington who don't give a damn about poor boys, is as damning as any speech or protest I've heard yet about the aftermath.

On songs like this his lyrics remind me of another famous Okie, Woody Guthrie. They're simple, direct, and to the point without being simplistic. He doesn't assume his audience has the intelligence of a five year old or that they only care about themselves. Even his woman has done me wrong songs aren't what you'd expect from a blues band. They all have an edge that the majority of those songs are usually woefully lacking.

Musically the best way you can describe this band is an out and out fun. Slim's lap guitar is the centre that the rest of the band revolves around to create a sound that feels like it's been around for ever, but is as fresh as yesterday's laundry. Nothing about Watermelon Slim and The Workers sounds stale and dated but they have rooted themselves so deep in the traditions of their music that you don't doubt for a moment their integrity as musicians.

Perhaps that's the answer to my question from the beginning of the review – it’s a matter of respect for what you are doing and where it came from while putting your own soul into it. Watermelon Slim and The Workers are most definitely putting their heart and soul into every note they play on The Wheel Man. They play every song like it could be their last, and every note like there could be no tomorrow.

Hopefully there will be, more tomorrows that is, so we can keep getting great music from them. The world sure needs more of this music more often.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 11:53 PM | Permalink

It was just a year or two ago that I first heard of the instrument called the Mohan Veena that had been invented by the great Indian Classical Musician Vishwa Mohan Bhatt. I heard it being played by a Canadian Blues musician named Harry Manx and I was astounded by the depth of feeling that it was able to bring to traditional Mississippi Delta Blues music.

Prior to that the only times I'd heard Indian instruments being used in Western popular music were occasions when they were being used for effect, or wow that sounds cool, by people who hadn't taken the time that Mr. Manx had to learn properly. Most Western pop musicians just aren't interested in taking the ten years required to study with a master to learn the intricacies involved with playing any of the Indian stringed instruments.

Which is a pity considering the wonderful way in which Mr. Manx was able to incorporate into it his music. So I was very excited when I saw that the Northern Blues label had released an album of Blues music featuring Doug Cox and Salil Bhatt, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt's son.

The new album, Slide To Freedom not only features Mr.Cox on various Resonator guitars, wooden and aluminium, Mr. Bhatt on the Satvik Veena, and percussion by Ramkumar Mishra on Tabla, but Vishwa Mohan Bhatt sits in on two songs with his Mohan Veena. The result is pure magic.

The Veena, which is the basis for both the father's and son's instruments is, to put it very simply, like a long skinny lap guitar that the player sits behind and plucks the strings with the fingers of one hand and depresses them with the other hand. Usually they have two hollow gourds that they rest on and which also serve as resonators I would guess.

Both Bhatt elder and junior have adapted this basic model and combined elements of it with a Western guitar body. Salil Bhat's Satvik Veena retains the extra resonator under what we would refer to as the head of the guitar – furthest away from the hollow body. The Mohan Veena of his father's design has more in common with a guitar, with only the addition of a board along which an extra twelve strings are run marking it as different.

It's these strings that generate the sound we in the West associate with the sitar – the long drawn out sound reminiscent of bells if they were a string instrument. Look at the two men in the picture and you'll be able to see some of what I'm talking about.

But to be honest with you I don't really care what an instrument looks like, I want to know what it sounds like and what the meeting of these three players results in. In a lot of instances where completely different forms of music come together one or the other is forced to make accommodations. So does Salil try to make his Satvik Veena sound like a Western instrument or does Doug try and make his resonator guitar sound like a sitar and forget that it produces a valuable sound in its own right?

Somehow or other none of that happens; the three principal musicians, Cox, Salil, and Mishra on tabla (the two drums are referred to as one instrument when talking about the tabla not two – tablas plural is two sets of drums) have found a place where all three instruments blend seamlessly together while never losing their distinctiveness. If on occasion it becomes difficult to tell where one leaves off and the other begins it's only because they have made the sound a non-issue and have put the focus squarely on the songs performed instead.

Whether it's one of the two old Delta Blues songs, "Pay Day" by Mississippi John Hurt, or "Soul Of A Man" by Blind Willie Johnson or the pieces the three of them have created collaboratively it doesn't matter. With each of the three, or four as the case may be, giving their attention to what they can bring to a piece of music, regardless of what they sound like, the whole becomes greater then the sum of it's parts.

When that happens it becomes impossible for our attention as a listener not to travel along the same path. In the end we are able to judge them by the same criteria we would use to judge any piece of Blues music; how well does it work melodically, rhythmically, and emotionally to express the Blues.

In my mind that proves just how successful Slide To Freedom is. Once your ear is used to the exotic nature of the tabla keeping beat, and the new sounds generated by both the Satvik Veena and Mohan Veena, you find yourself listening to an acoustic blues album instead of an exotic coupling of instruments from the East and the West.

So is it a good acoustic blues CD? Yes it is. Doug's vocals on "Payday" opening the disc help to establish a mood that is never allowed to slip. Even a song entitled "Bhoopali Dance sounds just as much a blues piece as "Soul Of A Man".

Listening to the disc Slide To Freedom is a reminder that in spite of any and all differences there is always a place where we can all come together in harmony.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:07 AM | Permalink

Electronic Music. Isn't it funny how two words can have so many different meaning to so many people? In my mind electronic music immediately brings to mind Switched On Bach by Walter Carlos (who later became Wendy Carlos but that has nothing to do with music except the beat that Walter happened to dance to was more Wendy's rhythm) and Tomita's wonderful versions of Debussy's music on I believe what was called Snowflakes Are Dancing.

In other words pieces developed from pre existing music and interpreted on Moog synthesisers. I can also skip forward to the next generation of electronic arts – where it first crossed over into the popular music arena with people like Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, and Laurie Anderson or bands like Cluster, Kraftwerk, and various projects that Brian Eno did with people like Jon Hassel.

Unlike their predecessors these people created original compositions which attempted, with the exception of Kraftwerk, to create atmospheric impressions. Music For Films and Music For Airports, two Fripp and Eno collaborations, are classic examples from that period of what they called aural wallpaper compositions. They were created with the purpose of being played in the background, to have as subtle an effect on a room's atmosphere as wallpaper. The aim was for it to be noticed in the same subliminal way that wallpaper affects a response.

Today electronic music seems to mean anything from compositions like the above, to people doing nothing more than compiling samples of other people music through digital processors, adding bass and drum machines, and playing it for mindless hoards of people to dance to. Other people make better use of the technology to allow them to share audio tracks across great distances so that a musician in India can collaborate with indigenous drummers in the rainforests of Brazil and a singer in Detroit to make a unique piece of music but I'd be hard pressed to find any contemporary music that had really impressed me, until now.

So it was with some trepidation that I placed Altered Realities by Erdem Helvacioglu into my player. He had said his music was electronic and I was dreading some horrible house style thing. Well my fears were offset immediately upon reading his C.V. that he had thoughtfully enclosed with the disc. (he mailed it at his own expense from Istanbul, Turkey where he lives).

Erdem is a serious musician and artist who has performed at some of the most prestigious Electronic music festivals throughout the world. He has scored movies, dance pieces, and live theatrical performances, as well as producing music at home in his native Turkey. In other words to even say his name in the same breath as mentioning samplers is probably insulting.

What makes Altered Realities so amazing right from the beginning is that there are no overdubs, re-recordings (or samples) used at all in the process of making the disc. He's used an Ovation guitar, a multi effects processor, a midi foot controller and software to record in real time to a DAT recorder. There was not even any editing or post processing done to the result – what we hear is what he recorded live in the moment.

And quite frankly it's amazing. I probably don't have the musical vocabulary to do the music justice as I'm only used to talking about acoustically generated sounds, but this is the first time I've ever heard electronic music be as emotionally effective as acoustic music, and in some ways even more effective.

His method is deceptively simple in that he plays notes and chords upon his guitar and then feeds them through the processor and the midi foot pedals via the software to the DAT recorder (I assume), but it's what he generates and to what effect that is astounding.

Altered Realities is a very apt name because at times it feels like that's exactly what he's done, is somehow capture moments in everyday living and recreate them with sound so that we can almost picture them in front of our eyes. What he creates though isn't the actual people, which isn't possible with music anyway, but the feelings that would be generated in an observer watching a throng course across a bridge or move tightly packed along a sidewalk.

Of course I have no idea if any of that was his intent or not with the music, that was just what my over active imagination came up with from listening to one moment in one piece. These are definitely active pieces of music, and not of the aural wallpaper mode. You can't just put this on and forget about it, or sit and meditate to it like some New Age zombie. There's no way you're going to be able to clear your mind of all emotions while listening to it.

There are time listening to the music that I can feel my own anxiety level rising in time with what the music is describing, and on other occasions feel a great welling up of sadness. It's probably only because I've been reading the books of Orhan Pamuk recently, all of which are set in Istanbul and deal with what Mr. Pamuk calls the great melancholy of Istanbul, that I start picturing in my minds eye, black and white images of people trudging through the streets of a great city that is crumbling around them while listening to some of Mr. Helvacioglu's music.

Although I'm sure that if he has been at all affected by his environment that element will creep into his music like damp into a basement and permeate upwards even without his noticing; some of the passages are so hauntingly beautiful as to be almost heartbreaking. While others are just good to hear in the sense they are life affirming through their existence, not for any particular feeling or emotion they generate.

The fact that someone went to the trouble to create a piece of music is often enough of a positive statement in of itself without the piece having to evoke anything specific. The very act of creation is life affirming, and these creations of Erdem's are never tinged with negativity, selfishness, or anything else that can be construed as taking away from him honouring that fact.

If you are like me and have hesitations about electronic music, or have been dismissive of it as cold and unemotional, then I recommend you get yourself a copy of Altered Realities by Erdem Helvacioglu. I don't know if he is typical of the direction in which modern electronic music is moving, but even if it isn't, his is a name to keep an eye out for in the future. We can only hope Erdem is a sign of things to come.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:28 PM | Permalink

A week ago I probably wouldn't have been able to tell you who Carey Bell was. It wasn't until I listened to the new DVD from Delmark Records, Gettin' Up Live, that I'd heard of him let alone heard him play. In spite of that here I am a week later writing an obituary about him.

I'm sure there are many people out there who are far more qualified to be doing this than me, and I'm sure they already have. Going into details about his career, where he was born, the great stuff he did with the harmonica and how wonderful his voice sounded. Maybe they'll even talk of the fifteen kids he had and his two marriages.

He was seventy years old when he died on May 6th of heart troubles brought on by complications from diabetes in Chicago's Kindred Hospital. From what I gather he'd been in the hospital a while because of his diabetes and had been very sick. His health hadn't been the greatest for a while before that either; when he performed the gig in July of 2006 that makes up part of the Gettin' Up Live DVD he had suffered a stroke four weeks earlier, which had also caused him to fall and break his hip.

But there he was up on stage at Theresa's in Chicago blowing harmonica and singing while his son Lurrie was blowing out the lights with his guitar. It would have been an amazing performance even if you didn't know about the stroke a month earlier, but when you factored that in, it was hard not to feel awed by the man's indomitable spirit.

What does that say about somebody that only four weeks after not only having a stroke but also suffering from as debilitating an injury as breaking a hip, that he's sitting on stage blowing his harp and singing and acting like there ain't a thing wrong in the world. The only allusion he made at all to his recent illness was to apologise for not being able to stand because "I been ill recently".

Three months latter the two men were back at again at Buddy Guy's Legends club in Chicago, and some tracks from that October 2006 gig are included on their DVD as well. Carey isn't sitting down in a chair now, he's sort of side saddle on a stool, one foot on the floor while he perches on the bar stool swinging his other leg in time to the music. It's a perfectly natural pose that you see plenty of performers assuming, so aside from the fact he didn't shift from the stool at all during the five songs filmed, there's no indication that he was ever "ill" at all.

I realized something belatedly about the gig at Buddy Guy's, that only three and a bit months after he had suffered a stroke and broken a hip, I was taking it for granted that he was up on stage performing. He had already done it at four weeks so what was the big deal about doing it again at almost four months?

The big deal was it was still only four months since he had broken his hip and had a stroke and he didn't look like he'd been through anything untoward in the last four years let alone months. You have to figure he must have been in some fair amount of pain during the second gig, let alone how he must have felt during the first one. I know from experience just how long bone pain takes to heal.

I also know what kind of effect sound can have on any sort of pain; that just an acoustic guitar can quickly become unbearable. To sit onstage four months, let alone four weeks, after breaking his hip must have been close to intolerable. But I also know about the need an artist has to do what he or she does, and how that in the moment of fulfilling that need you can transcend all concerns.

So when you see Carey on stage in this DVD you're seeing something that has nothing to do with the mechanisms of the marketing machine behind so much music theses days. You're bearing witness to the relationship of artist and art brought to life in as tangible a fashion as you're ever likely to see. The motivation of performing with his son Lurrie was what got him out of bed and to Chicago from the Carolinas where he lived, but his need to make music carried him the rest of the way.

So that there's no confusion about this, I'm not talking about crap like "the show must go on", because as we see in the DVD the music carries him no matter what the situation. The day after the gig at Theresa's a crew from Delmark Records showed up at Lurrie's apartment to record the two men doing a few songs. No musician feels their best the day after a night gigging in a bar, let alone one who's had a stroke recently.

Yet the four songs that Carey and Lurrie did that day on the couch in Lurrie's living room were just as potent as any they did in either one of the "concert settings". It didn't matter how tired they might have felt, or that they were sitting on a couch with the only audience being a camera crew and Lurrie's wife and kids, what mattered was the music and doing right by it.

I think it was this willingness of the part of both men to so readily bear their souls in such an intimate setting as a family home that built the connection I felt for them right away. I've found that I can sit and talk with somebody for hours on end and come away not knowing anything about them because we've not talked of anything of substance. At the same time give me five minutes to watch any person who is truly connected to who they are and what they are doing and I can feel an instant affinity.

The fact that we also spent time in Lurrie's house and watching some of the interaction between him and his wife and children helped break down barriers that would normally be in place between performers on a DVD as well. It doesn't hurt that Carey is such a personable man, you felt if you had run into him at a bar that you could strike up a conversation with him and be chatting away in no time.

(My wife who is musician was watching the disc with me. She's mainly a percussionist/vocalist, but has recently taken up the harmonica. At one point she let out a laugh and pointed out Carey's missing left front tooth. She is missing two left front teeth as well, and like Carey never wears her plate as it interferes with both her singing and her harmonica playing. As she wears her hair about as short as Carey did we had a few separated at birth jokes with the gap mouth smile and haircut.)

When I went to write the review after watching Gettin' Up Live I looked over the press materials they had sent me with the disc and saw a notice in black ink announcing that the disc was dedicated to Susan Greenberg who died this year. Susan was Lurrie's wife, the woman we had seen laughing and smiling with the children in their apartment.

As well as being Lurrie's wife, (they had originally met at Theresa's bar when she was waiting tables there), Susan had begun creating her own artistic niche within the Blues community. She had taken some amazing portraits of blues musicians and been posting them at her former site Reaching For The Light.

Having just seen her in the DVD with her kids I felt compelled to mention the fact of her death in the review. When I wrote my contact at Delmark and asked him it he thought it was appropriate or not, he wrote back and said yes, and that Lurrie was having a particularly rough time, again, because now Carey was very sick and in the hospital. This afternoon I wrote him again to see if he had heard anything about how Carey was doing.

When I didn't hear from him right away I decided to do a quick search about Carey on Google, and on the third page I found the first reference to his death on in the Orlando Sentinel of all places. I realized I wasn't all that surprised to read that he had crossed over, not because of any premonition or such thing, but because of the tone of the letter I had received from Delmark records when I found out he was sick.

Kevin Johnson, my contact, didn't sound like your typical publicity guy (he doesn't normally anyway) when he wrote me back He sounded genuinely concerned for both Carey and Lurrie. I can't help thinking about Lurrie; how in the space of four months he has lost both the woman he loved and his father.

If there had ever been any issues between father and son in the past you could tell by the way they worked together on stage that they had been resolved and they were both comfortable and happy in each other's company. The hole that has to have been opened in Lurrie's life recently is not going to be filled easily. What words are there you can offer a man under these circumstances?

Sometimes people enter your life in ways you'd never suspect and their passing impacts you seemingly all out of proportion to your knowing them. Carey Bell, because of who he was and what he did, was such a man. The world is short on original voice today, and we don't have that many that we can spare them easily. Thank you Carey Bell and I only wish I had known you longer.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 01:11 AM | Permalink

Aside from wind, stockyards that use everything but the squeal, Da Bears and de Cubs (and maybe the White Sox) Chicago has been most noted for it being home to some of the finest Jazz and Blues in the North. While St. Louis can lay some claim to being a home to the Blues, and New York City can say everybody's played here, it's Chicago everybody thinks of when the Blues and Jazz are mentioned.

New York has too many other distractions for it ever to be the home to any one genre of anything, and St. Louis just hasn't managed to capture the public's imagination in the same way Chicago has. Maybe it's because even today you can walk into almost any downtown neighbourhood and find that the local drinking spot doubles as a Blues bar. Or it could be that Chicago has been home to so much music and so many clubs since the 1920's that they've become synonymous in most minds. (That the biggest collection of Mormons in the United States, Utah, has a basketball team called the Jazz strikes me as one of life's biggest ironies and mysteries – but that's for another column and another day)

Because of this reputation Chicago has developed into a place for pilgrims in search of the holy sites from the past where venerated types like Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, and others have played through out the years. One of the most unlikely spots on the pilgrim route has to be Meyer's Ace Hardware at the corner of 35th and Calumet in the South Side. For the last fifty or so years they've sold plumbing parts and fittings in the same building where Louis Armstrong learnt his big band chops and Sun Ra took off for Jupiter.

In 2005 some of the more interesting pilgrims showed up to look around, and since they were there, the Jazz O'Maniacs from Germany decided to play a few tunes as well. They were over in the States to participate in the annual "Tribute To Bix" festival held in Racine Wisconsin, and part of the festival was a tour of Chicago's famous Jazz spots, and there are few so famous as the former Sunset Café/Grand Terrace now Hardware Store.

As is they seem to do so often, Delmark Records, were on hand to record this unique performance, and then to follow the Jazz O'Maniacs down to Wisconsin to catch them in concert during the festival. There probably couldn't have been a more appropriate band than these guys to do a few tunes where Louis Armstrong used to play.

This group from Germany has been playing the music of Louis Armstrong and his contemporaries since 1966, and aside from acting as means of preserving and honouring the music and the people, they also bring new life into some old tunes. Watching them in the DVD made of this 2005 tour, Sunset Café Stomp is not hearing the music played with the intent of preserving it for display in a museum. Each song might have been written only yesterday, they play them with such freshness and verve.

While there is an obvious love and respect for the original recordings, and they do their best to recreate as an authentic a sound as possible, they haven't forgotten that for Jazz to be effective it has to sound alive. They are very careful in their selection of material so that they don't play the same old chestnuts that other groups of this type favour; no "Swanee River" or "When The Saints Go Marching In" for these guys.

Of the fourteen tracks on this DVD I only recognized one of the songs by name, "Willy The Weeper" and maybe one or two others sounded familiar as they were being played. Most of the tracks have been culled from less well-known Armstrong recordings from his days with the Hot Five and Hot Seven combo's. One that stuck out in my mind for its subject matter was Sweet Mumtaz, which was a 1920' tribute by Luis Russell to Mumtaz Mahal, the wife of an Indian Nobleman. As the liner notes say it's regrettably far less well known than the other tribute to the lady, the Taj Mahal.

Like the original bands, The Jazz O'Maniacs are a small ensemble, only eight players, but I'm not sure if the composition of the band is the same as those from earlier days. Instead of a drummer with kit, The Jazz O'Maniacs feature the amazing talents of Gunther Andernach on washboard and small percussion. Instead of your standard washboard he has custom built an ebony framed steel instrument with attached cowbells and woodblocks that he plays with the same finger picks that he uses for strumming and "tapping" his board.

Coupled with a banjo, played by Owe Hansen, and the tuba played by Dietrich Kleine-Horst, Andernach's washboard forms the rhythmic spine that holds the group together. While the leads are passed back and forth between saxophone (Cristoph Ditting), cornet (Roland Pitz who founded the group), trombone (Ullo Bella), piano (Andreas Clement) and clarinet(Claus Jurgen Moller, who was a last minute replacement when their regular player backed out) those three maintain the steady pulse that is so essential for this type of music to succeed.

With far less room for improvisation than in contemporary Jazz, it becomes vitally important that the band be as tight as possible because that's what's going to hold the audience's attention without spectacular solos. That the rhythm section is as interesting as they are tight in the Jazz O'Maniacs was one of their big attractions to me. As the tuba always seems to come in for a good bit of ridicule, it's easy to forget just how effective it can be at maintaining a beat, and how much fun it can be to listen to.

In the end that's what makes the Jazz O'Maniacs work so well where others just tend to sound tedious playing the same type of music. They are obviously having such a good time, and loving what they are doing, that as an audience member you can't help but be affected and get carried along with them.

If you are a fan of old style, almost Dixieland Jazz, and appreciate good solid musicianship as played by people who love what they do, than Sunset Café Stomp is the DVD for your. As is usual for all of Delmark's releases the sound is suitable for all systems; regular stereo, 5.1 surround sound, and dts. The special features are limited, but there is a nice interview with the current family member who owns Meyers Hardware and Tim Samuelson, Cultural Historian for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs as they discuss the historical significance of Meyers Ace Hardware and its location in terms of the history of Jazz in the city.

There is something really cool about seeing a group of German Jazz musicians setting up to play the music of Louis Armstrong in the middle of a hardware store in downtown Chicago. Music really does seem to cross all boundaries and make neighbours out of strangers.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 11:30 PM | Permalink

To say that Kahil El'Zabar is a percussionist is like saying Ludwig Van Beethoven was a songwriter. While both statements can be considered technically true, both are spectacular in their understatement of what each man truly accomplished, and in El'Zabar's case, still accomplishing. Since this is a review of a piece by Mr.El'Zabar I'll leave enumerating Beethoven's achievements for another time and focus on the percussionist instead.

If I were to even just enumerate the number of projects that Kahil El'Zabar has founded and continues to involve himself in to this day, I would never get to the review at hand. But his Infinity Orchestra, whose latest disc Transmigration I'm reviewing, is only one limb of what he refers to as the Tree Of Life on his web site.

This Tree shows exactly how many different projects he has on the go, and where possible lists the participants. The smaller bands, which some of you may be familiar with like, The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble or Ritual Tribe, are peopled by some of the greats of the Jazz Avant Garde: Joseph Bowie, Archie Sheep, Pharaoh Sanders, and Henry Huff to name only a few. But no matter who he plays with, Kahil El'Zabar's presence is going to be felt.

It's more than just his abilities as a musician, composer, arranger that make him so important to Jazz, it's also his commitment to the music and the part he seems himself playing within it.

I think the social relationship of this art, and how it helped to transform and inspire people from decade to decade, goes without the recognition it deserves…At this point in my life I'm part of that legacy from Louis Armstrong to Anthony Braxton and the Chicago Art Ensemble

This is a man who walks his talk whether at home in Chicago or abroad in the Aquitaine region of France's capital city Bordeaux where the majority of the musicians of the Infinity Orchestra are based. Since the year 2000 he has been the artist in residence at the academy of music for two months of every year and founded the orchestra he conducts on the Delmark recordsrelease Transmigration

For a lot of artists the jump from performing in the free form world of improvisation that makes up so much of Kahil's work to conducting a thirty-nine piece Jazz orchestra might be more of a challenge than they could handle. But judging by the results one hears on this disc, not only does he manage to make the transition with ease, he is able to impart a good deal of the spirit that imbibes his more intimate groupings.

Perhaps the title of the disc, Transmigration came about because of his ability to move across genres, but it also is in reference to the diversity of people's who meet and play in the Infinity Orchestra. Being near the Pyrenees mountains means that a quite a few of the musicians are of Basque heritage, while others are Algerian, West African, and the West Indies. El'Zabar himself was born in France and hi parents and he moved to the United States when he was around four.

So not only is this a transmigration of styles, but also of nationalities and cultural backgrounds. Kahil puts that down to the affinity people have for the folk music of their heritage and bringing that sensibility to the music. Even without him taking an active role in the performance side, save for one balafon (thumb piano) solo on "Speaking In Tongues", the percussion that forms the backbone of the disc has obvious African overtones, reflecting the heritage of players with names like Boudji Abasse and Manue Peran.

But that's only a small part of the Transmigration that is happening on this recording. The opening track, "Soul To Groove", has to be the first piece of music I can honestly say that I've heard a turntable be used as an instrument in accompaniment with others to such perfect effect. It lends a soulful, urban, down and dirty feel that you'd never be able to accomplish using more traditional means of percussion. The whole song carries a harder edge because of it allowing the soloists the freedom to get a little tougher than is normal for a funk/jazz-fusion type piece.

Of course you don't normally here a thirty-nine-piece band ripping into a hard-edged funk/fusion piece either. In fact that's one of the wonders of this whole disc is what you do hear from a big band that you would never expect. The aforementioned balafon solo that begins the second track of the disc – "Speaking In Tongues", and some of the haunting improvisations provided by a young musician from the Jazz hotbed of Latvia (Karlis Vanagas) on the same track showing be-bop influences are only the beginning for a multi instrument collage of sounds.

The song "Nu Art Claiming Earth" features countless forms of percussion that under pin and surround a rap in French. The good people will triumph over the evil through the power of the healing force of the arts all over the world is not the type of lyric we're used to associating with rap, but it’s a sentiment that I have no problems saying I wish them all the luck in the world having that one come true – it’s a great ambition.

The disc closes with a live big band rendition of a work from one of El'Zabar's smaller ensembles; The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble's "Return Of The Lost Tribe". The other two members of the Ensemble, Joseph Bowie on trombone, and Ernest Dawkins on alto saxophone supply solos that soar over top of the big body of sound that a thirty-nine piece Jazz band can generate. Now that's a "wall of sound" sounding like music not just white noise.

An amazing piece of music and a fitting end to a disc that is all about the blending together of different styles and cultures to form a unified sound. Transmigration might take Kahil El'Zabar out of his environs of Chicago, but it doesn't take him out of the world he is most familiar with, Jazz. This may be somewhat more accessible musically then other discs he has produced, but that doesn't stop it from being as innovative and inspiring as any of his more complex creations. You could end up listening to the Infinity Orchestra an infinite number of times.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 12:23 AM | Permalink

I have to admit that the one genre of writing that I've never had much liking for has always been the autobiography. There are just so many ways a person can be self-serving when they write about themselves, either by talking about the amazing things they've done (according to them), or detailing the incredible sacrifices they had to make on their road to fame thus ensuring we know just what martyrs they've been.

Worst of all is the playing down of their accomplishments in alluring displays of false modesty. That way, it is hoped I assume, we readers will be quicker in anointing them with a seal of approval that ensures them their "rightful" place in the annals of history. How many times have you heard it said of a politician that they are attempting to ensure his or her place in history? I can't think of anything scarier to be honest.

It's bad enough the damage they inflict just through their day-to-day interference with our world without them attempting to leave their mark so that they will be remembered and have a reason for writing their memoirs. In some cases you have to wonder, which came first, the need to write the memoir or the need to do something to be able to write a memoir.

That's not to say there aren't worthwhile memoirs where the author has used situations in his or her life as an example of how to overcome a difficulty. In those instances they aren't technically writing a memoir as they are not the subject matter and are only relevant because of what their presence adds to the topic.

After reading all that it probably won't come as any surprise to you me saying that if I had known that the Random House Canada publication Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk was a memoir I wouldn't have been so hot to read it. Maybe it was the comparison to Joyce' Ulysses that confused me into somehow thinking it was a novel, I'm not sure, but I do know that it wasn't until I had the book in my hands that I realized it wasn't fiction.

Thankfully Mr. Pamuk is not the type of writer who feels the need for self-aggrandisement and has merely included himself in the proceedings as a reporter on events and an example. He isn't writing about himself, he is merely participating in the telling of Istanbul's secrets.

As he describes the city, he acknowledges her past and the spell she exerted upon Westerners. The jewel of the Orient, The Mysterious East, and all the other stereotypes that were perpetuated by 19th century romantics are examined and found to be inaccurate even at the time of the their conception. By the mid to late 1800s the Ottoman Empire was already shrinking back to the borders of Istanbul, and she was starting to reflect the decline.

By the time of the author's birth in the 1950's, in the brave new world of the Republic of Turkey, empire and royalty are fading into memory as quickly as former palaces become apartment blocks and rooming houses. Even those remnants, which were mainly along the Bosphorus River that bisects Istanbul, had been built by bureaucrats of the Empire in a bid to escape from the crowding of Istanbul's core by waves of immigrants. (It 's apparent the concept of moving to the suburbs to escape the poor huddled masses is not a modern or solely Western concept)

Mr.Pamuk describes the yahs, the Turkish word for these waterside mansions as mere shadows of a destroyed culture. In other words they weren't even a pale imitation of the architecture of the Empire at its heyday that inspired the Romantic urges of 19th century Europe. So when a painter would come to Istanbul to record the mysterious east with all of its splendour he would find himself forced into "orientalizing" his work to make it "authentic"

The Bosphorus is obviously central to Istanbul as she repeatedly pops up in the book. She exerts a magnetic pull upon the author that keeps him returning to her banks at various stages in his life. That the word Bosphorus in Turkish means throat, and that the river delves deep into the middle of the city, gives the impression that if you were to follow the river to its furthest extent you would be able to delve deeply into the heart of Istanbul's secrets.

The river has its own mythology, stories of bodies disposed of in her murky depths that are quickly pulled out to sea by the fierce currents. But in spite of her fierceness she is also the site of many a family outing as parents and children head to her banks for a weekend afternoon outing. Of course there is also the known curative powers of the sea air, which doctors would prescribe patients in the final stages of their recuperation as a tonic, to spend time upon her waters in one of the many fishing boats that were for hire.

But that too is in the past, from the author's youth of the 1950's and 60's, although he does say that to this day he will always associate the Bosphorus with good health. But even those thoughts cannot dispel the overlying air of melancholy that is described as the constant state of being for the people of Istanbul.

Hûzûn is the Turkish word for melancholy, but according to Mr. Pamuk it has little in common with the word as we know it. In Istanbul especially it takes on a meaning that goes beyond sadness or individual grief. It is a shared sense of loss that is felt by all her inhabitants. In every neighbourhood no matter how poor or how wealthy one can find ruins of the empire.

The constant reminder of what once was and can never be again imbues the soul and spirit of the "Istanbullus". According to the author one can attempt to pretend it doesn't exist for a time, but then when it does hit you, another building collapses into ruins revealing some little piece of princely past, it hits you even harder.

Istanbul is a voyage into the heart of a city as seen through the eye of memories, history, and a person who has lived his entire life on her streets. Orhan Pamuk is so sentimentally attached to his city and its past that he resides again in the apartment of his childhood as if he's trying to regain the lost empire of the city of fifty years ago. Would the Istanbul of his childhood tried to have jailed him for writing "Anti- Turkish" thoughts? Or is that part of what he sees as part of the decline.

The irony of course is that the Ottoman Empire was seen by those under its rule as cruel and despotic, something to be thrown off like shackles. Here in Istanbul it appears that while they may not long for the actual Empire, they are preoccupied with the loss of its trappings and ostentatious displays of wealth. But to think that would only to see the veneer of feeling that affects life within this city that's older then most of the post Roman Empire western world.

Orhan Pamuk has written an amazing story of a city and how it's people relate to it. Using himself and his family as examples he manages to convey how Istanbul and her people are irrevocably interconnected. Istanbul is more than a memoir, and much more than a travel guide. It's not only a voyage into the heart of a city, but also an anatomy of the soul of a people

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:50 AM | Permalink

Welcome to Istanbul, magical, mystical portal to the East. What once was the home to an empire that sprawled from the Caspian Sea to Spain and the Atlantic Ocean now sits like a bride in her boudoir awaiting an answer from her latest suitor. (Turkey has applied for membership in the European Union, but there has been a lot of foot dragging over their human rights record. Part of the problem centred around the author of this book being threatened with imprisonment for writing what the government referred to as anti Turkish sentiment) Turkey has long walked a line between the East and the West that she once both ruled with an iron fist.

When the borders of the Ottoman Empire retracted back to modern Turkey at the end of World War One with the loss of the Middle East, Istanbul once more became the end of Europe and the beginning of the mysterious East. Today we know of Turkey as the fiercely secular state, where the populace protests if the government even gives the appearance of merging church and state.

How much different is the Istanbul of today from the Istanbul of the 1990s when Orhan Pamuk first wrote The Black Book? You might as well ask how much has the city changed since the times of the Crusades or latter when the Saracens of the Ottoman Empire pushed the infidels back to where they came from.

Istanbul always strikes me as one of the timeless cities, with nooks and crannies where the dust of history lays thick shoulder to shoulder with cars of chrome and bright paint. The Black Book in a new translation reissued by the Vintage International imprint of Random House makes that more than clear, as the city becomes more than just a setting but becomes a character in her own right.

A brief synopsis of the story is deceptive in its simplicity; the lead character Galip, finds a nineteen-word message from his wife declaring she's left him. At the same time her older stepbrother, the famous newspaper columnist Celal has also disappeared. Have they vanished together or is their joint vanishing act nothing more than a bizarre coincidence.

Galip's search for Ruya takes on all the attributes of the cheap detective novels she loves and he despises. Chasing down the ghosts of her past, her leftist existence with her ex-husband leads him onto the trail of secret utopian societies. That they may have only existed in the minds of those who wrote about them in pamphlets and broadsides simply add to the surreal quality that he has imbibed the search with through the charade he plays out to sustain the illusion that she has not left but is home sick in bed.

His step brother-in-law must have had an inkling that he was going to miss work because he left a file of stories for them to run on a daily basis during his absence. But Galip quickly recognises they are ones that have been published before and wonders at Celal not having taken the time to create new articles.

If Celal is not present in the story of the novel, he is very present on the pages as a character through his writings. Every second chapter is an article written by Celal that takes us on guided tours of the author's favourite locations, his city of Istanbul, and the streets of his own mind and emotions. Identity has been prevalent in his mind, the identity of the city and his own, as we can tell from the stories that he has chosen to have the newspaper publish while he is "off".

Whether they talk about his early life and meeting with established columnists who share their secrets with him, or giving a guided tour of a imaginarily flooded Istanbul down to the details of where the corpses are buried, they are about quests for identity. Will Istanbul ever make up her mind to be of the East or of the West? Will she succumb to the blandishments and lure of Europe with her bright lights and movie stars, or will she stay the city where you can only buy what's been made in Turkey and the commonest car on the streets is a 57 Chevrolet?

But identity is more than just idle speculation in journalist's daily column in The Black Book, it is the primary focus of Mr. Pamuk's novel. Was the job Celal, or was he the job and for a writer is there a difference anyway?

Galip takes on the role of concerned husband to cover up the disappearance of his wife from their families, the role of detective in a mystery story when he is trying to track down her whereabouts, and finally he become Celal by starting to write his columns. By assuming Celal's identity he is able to carry off the deception by being able to write in the same style. Is this a case of the clothes making the man, or is there more to it than meets the eye?

If anyone has any doubts about why Orhan Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, and questioned the result as being more about politics than talent, reading this book will set your mind at rest. Only very rarely have I read a work of any sort where I'm left with my jaw hanging open because of the seemingly effortless way in which the words follow each other on the page.

Even though the book was translated into English, his talent for orchestrating thoughts and words into sentences that are works of art is still obvious and astounding. He creates phrases like a musician will write music, not only do they sound pleasant to the ear, but they touch your heart, and make you think. But it's how he orchestrates them into a whole where he shows his true artistry.

Each little movement (conversation, descriptive passage, monologue, and so on.) flows and interlocks with those around it until it builds to its crescendo and then subsides to the final denouement. This is no half-hazard arrangement that meanders around carelessly without concern for theme and plot. It may seem casual and relaxed in places, but don't be fooled by that, the reality is as different from that as night and day.

As some music can be played as background while you do other things there are books that involve no effort to read and make no lasting impression. Than there are the ones demanding your full attention to be properly appreciated but the return is transportation to new worlds of delight and wonder. The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk is one such book.

Canadian residents who wish to purchase a copy of this book can do so directly through the Random House Canada web site or any of the online retailers like Amazon Canada No matter what your nationality, you won't want to deny yourself the pleasure of reading this book.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 01:16 AM | Permalink

Back in the early 1970's there was a rebirth of sorts that happened in Rock and Roll music in the United States. Rock and Roll got its birth in the United States in the South when people like Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis started to combine the country music they grew up listening to, with the Blues music that Black people were playing all around them.

The resulting Sun Records recordings were nothing short of revolutionary in the impact they had on popular music in the States. In those days the business of Rock and Roll was still pretty innocent. There weren't many marketing executives around then packaging performers and pasting label on their music. I mean how could you have a cross over hit between Country and Rock and Roll when that's exactly what you're playing, Country and Rock and Roll.

I don't think those original Sun Record touring shows of Elvis, Jerry Lee, Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, Johnny Cash, and whoever else they crammed into the cars and buses that took them around, were even called Rock and Roll shows. If anything they toured under the banner of Sun Records and the name of the sponsor.

Even though all of them were from well below the Mason Dixon line, calling what they did something like Southern Rock was as alien to them as calling it Afro-Cuban. Twenty years later one could see how much the industry had changed when a group of bands who had far less in common musically then the groups from Sun Records did, were lumped together as Southern Rock.

Charlie Daniels, of The Charlie Daniel Band, in an interview done this year for the release of the DVD of his 1975 Volunteer Jam, made the same point. He said that while they may all have been born in the same part of the world, The Marshall Tucker Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers, and Z. Z. Top never played music that could have been call similar. He could never understand why they were all called Southern Rock.

That being said, because they were all from the same part of the world, friendships struck up between the bands. So when the Charlie Daniels Band was doing its second "Volunteer Jam" in 1975 the invited guests included The Marshall Tucker Band, a couple of friends from the Allman Brothers and a variety of friends from other bands like Wet Willie.

In 1974 the Charlie Daniels Band had needed to record a couple of songs for an upcoming album in a live situation, so they rented a small hall in Nashville Tennessee, invited some of their friends along to have fun after they had laid down the tracks they needed for the album. They called it Volunteer Jam in honour of the state of Tennessee whose slogan is, The Volunteer State.

That first one was so successful, that they decided to do it again in 1975, this time in their hometown of Murfreesboro Tennessee. The concert was made into a feature film and released in 1976 called Volunteer Jam. Now twenty – one years later it is being released on DVD for the first time.

In 1975 Charlie Daniels and his band were riding high on the strength of their hits "Long Haired Country Boy", "No Place To Go", and "The South's Gonna Do It (Again)" and were able to attract large audiences, especially in the South. So when the Volunteer Jam was announced it quickly sold out a 14,000-seat arena

For anybody who wants to see the epitome of good classic 70's rock roll, watching the DVD Volunteer Jam should be required viewing. Multiple guitars, keyboards, elaborate bass playing, and lots of drum, were all staples of the period. The music is loud, rowdy, and live; you won't see any sign of a drum machine or tape loops on this stage.

The only costume anybody is wearing is blue jeans and the occasional cowboy hat. There's no elaborate stage show, only stacks and stacks of speakers. The music is being played by people who love what they're doing and it shows in how much they appreciate each other's efforts and the amount of pure fun that they're having.

What was even better was that nobody fell into the Rock God trap that was too common in those days and went off into twenty-minute solo. Everybody, including the special guests, played like they were members of a band, and the band's performance was the priority not their own egos.

It doesn't mean that these people aren't gifted players, because they are, in fact I had forgotten how good the members of The Charlie Daniels Band are. From the bass player who can play any style demanded of him, the guitarist who can somehow make his instrument sound like a fiddle without a synthesizer so he can do a fiddle duet with Charlie, the piano player who plays piano not keyboards, the drummers who can keep time and be elaborate, and Charlie who plays an amazing violin and not bad slide guitar.

If there's a drawback or an unfortunate part of this disc it's the fact that it was originally shot on film back in 1975. There's only so much you can do with digital transfer techniques for sound and picture quality, so occasionally neither are what you'd what them to be. But considering the fact that it was a live concert twenty-two years ago you can't really complain.

The one thing that did bother me was that nowhere on the packaging, or on the disc are there band credits. They list the names of all the performers, but I couldn't have told Dru Lombar from Jimmy Hall if my life depended on it. At the least they could have supplied a song-by-song breakdown of who did what in the liner notes, or added on credits at the end of DVD to that effect.

But aside from that there isn't much to complain about with Volunteer Jam; it may not be Southern Rock, but it sure is a great example of classic 1970's Rock and Roll.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:15 AM | Permalink

There came a point in the progression of twentieth century Jazz music that it began to intersect with the music of the minimalist contemporary compositions of people like Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, and John Cage. But Jazz and Jazz musicians being what they are, it wasn't ever going to be ever anything more than a visit to absorb items of interest that could be incorporated into their means of expression.

Jazz can never be as devoid of sound as the minimalists or as structured; it is all about textures and flow after all. So although you will never hear Jazz pieces that sound like a John Cage composition, the scraping of form and structure that he and the others experimented with most definitely made their presence felt in the Jazz world.

While the contemporary composers were doing their thing in New York City, it seems only fitting that the New Jazz was finding it's home in Chicago, long time Northern United States home to African American Music and Culture. In the days of racial segregation in the United States, the state of Illinois marked the "The Colour Line". Once you were in Illinois, and all points north, segregation was at least technically no longer legal.

Chicago was the first major metropolitan area with jobs for those who were willing to do them. The stockyards didn't care what you looked like as long as you had a strong stomach and didn't mind the smell. Blues and Jazz musicians from the South looking for music work began migrating to Chicago as early as the thirties when speakeasies were always in need of bands

But it was the 1950's when things really began to hop for the Blues and Jazz. The performers composing and playing throughout Chicago in the 1950's and 60's would read like a whose who of the aristocracy of the genre. Charlie Mingus, Cannonball Atterlly, Art Blakney, and a young John Coltrane to name a few: the list would run longer than this review if I let it.

As the 1960's wound down and attitudes were being liberated in music everywhere, jazz was no exception. The Chicago Art Ensemble is probably the most famous name to come out of that time that's still out there playing, but other groupings have appeared to make their mark as well. One that's still going strong is Rob Mazurek's Chicago Underground.

Sometimes a quartet, sometime a solo project, in his latest incarnation Rob has teamed up with long time percussionist and drum partner Chad Taylor, and South American born - Chicago based, double bassist Jason Ajemian (Ironically enough Rob himself now lives in San Paulo Brazil). Delmark Records has released Chicago Underground Trio's latest collaboration Chronicle as both a DVD and a CD.

The recording is a mixture or live performance; overdub remixing in the studio, and what used to be called Video Art. Obviously the CD will only contain the audio, but as I'm reviewing the DVD the visual component plays an important role. Filmmaker Raymond Salvatore Harmon filmed the live elements of the trio's recording session with the band set up against a white screen and wearing all white clothing. He projected a series of colours and video footage of scenery passing from a moving vehicle against the screen and the musicians and then filmed the result.

The piece Chronicle is divided into six parts, with each part representing (in my interpretation) a stage in the story of a person's travel towards a type of spiritual awakening. "Initiation", the first piece, represents the decision to set out upon that journey and the introduction to the rigors of what can be expected on the journey.

"Resistance" and "Power", the second and third pieces respectively, are pretty much explained by the titles. Think of all the factors that would offer resistance to any person in today's world trying to accomplish a voyage of this type and the varieties of power that would be needed to overcome them.

At some point along the way in this type of progression a person will usually run into a "Crisis" that is their turning point. It usually takes the form of pent up old emotions being released for a period of days, if not weeks, and can be a pretty ugly and scary experience. But it always leads into the stage of "Transformation" where you become aware of the changes you've gone through.

Your personal Chronicle completes itself when you have "Transcended" all the bits and pieces of your former self. It's the stage that will last you probably the rest of your life, as you continue the process that you began with your initial steps towards change.

Improvised Jazz at this level is so far beyond the music we normally associate with the genre that it is impossible to critique it by the same standards as other Jazz, let along other music. You have to react to it almost as the musicians are to each other, in the moment. Holding on to the feelings that are generated and piled on you one after another is an impossible task.

But what you can try to do is, like what I've done; find your own framework that you can hang the composition on. The titles are the titles that Chicago Underground Trio have given the six pieces that make it up, but the interpretation of what it was all about, based upon listening and watching the DVD, was my own. A true test of this piece is not what one person's opinion is, but whether or not many people have similar interpretations.

As usual the sound and video quality are impeccable on a Delmark DVD. You have a choice of DTS and 5.1 surround sound and either wide screen or normal for viewing. I chose to go with the wide screen to try and get as much of the imagery as possible in the picture

Chronicle is an example of both the wonder of free form improvised Jazz at its finest, and a daring combination of the visual and musical arts to make a single theme come alive for it's audience. I was able to come out of the experience with an understanding that may or may not have been what the musicians had in mind. But if they've done their job properly it will at least be within spitting distance. For anyone who is interested and willing to make the effort this is fascinating experience and I highly recommend it.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 01:35 AM | Permalink

Just how many great Blues players are there in Chicago? We've all heard of the Buddy Guys, the Albert Collins's, the various Kings, Walkers, and Williams's. But unless you’re a real aficionado that's about as far as it goes. But if you were to stop there you'd only have scratched the surface of what's out there.

I've been fortunate that recently I've been getting the opportunity to be introduced to a bunch of players who I can't understand why aren't household names. Piano players whose fingers dance across keys, guitar players who make you realize Eric Clapton is limited, drummers who have the beat so ingrained that it's the sound of their blood coursing through their veins, bassists who tap into the pulse of the world, and harmonica players who wail the sorrow of every broken heart the world has seen.

Does that sound like hyperbole or exaggeration? Well it isn't as far as I'm concerned and each new disc I hear only confirms that feeling. Delmark Records has released a new DVD, Getting' Up Live featuring the father son duo of Carey and Lurrie Bell recorded live on two separate occasions in clubs, and in the private setting of son Lurrie's house. After watching this DVD I can say here are two more players that can be added to that list of folk whose names should be known the world over, but somehow most of us have remained oblivious to their existence.

In late June of 2006 70-year-old Carey had a stroke, fell and broke his hip, but four weeks later he was on stage at Rosa's Lounge in Chicago blowing his harmonica and singing like nothing had happened. The only sign of anything untoward was the fact he remained seated through out the night, and his casual mention of having been sick and his legs were "broken", as in not working.

Just showing up was amazing enough as it was but he wasn't going be satisfied with that. The second song on the disc, the title track, "Getting' Up" was written only the night before by Carey in his hotel room in honour of the occasion of his being able to get up on stage with his son. "I'm down but I'm going to get up again" he sings in one of those passionate deep south Blues voices we've come to expect from a certain generation of Blues men.

It's one of the great mysteries of the world that a singing voice can rasp like sandpaper and sound as mellow as aged whisky straight from the cask all in one breath. Carey Bell's voice is one of those wonders; deceptively soft, yet so potent that it cuts through the noise of a Chicago bar and reaches all those who want to hear. Carey Bell doesn't need to shout to make himself heard, and he has the confidence to just put it out there as is without ornamentation.

Then there is his harmonica playing, like his singing deceptively simple, with no obvious ornamentation, but complete mastery over the instrument. Here again he takes a less is more approach and goes right to the heart of the matter. His harmonica playing reaches down inside of a song, finds the heart, and shows it to the audience.

Of course he can also do the fancy fun stuff as well as he shows on another one of his compositions "Low Down Dirty Shame" He and his son Lurrie start exchanging licks from harmonica to guitar. At first Carey would play a bar or two on his harmonica, then Lurrie would respond with the guitar. It sounded for all the world like the old call and response singing a gospel tune.

You know that saying about the nut not falling too far from the tree? Well in this case Carey's oldest son Lurrie (oldest of fifteen children) has not only landed right beside his dad, but his root system has been fed from the same source. Lurrie isn't one of these guys who think the more notes you're able to play in a second defines your quality as a guitar player, it's which notes you play and what you do with them what matters.

I've said it before and I'll say it again that to me the sign of a great guitar player is his or her willingness to play higher up on the fret board near the tuning pegs– the deeper notes- during leads. Lurrie is one of those great players who can and will do a lead up there as exciting as, and twice as moving as anything today's guitar heroes can manage.

The other thing that struck me about his playing was his ability to play rhythm at the same time while playing a lead. While he's plucking out the tune on his fret board, he is somehow keeping the tempo heard at all times. That may not sound that impressive, but think about how many lead players you've ever seen be able to do that simultaneously let alone play rhythm at all.

There's always something special about hearing a parent and a child play together. They almost have an instinctual response to what the other is doing and is able to react to every nuance, note, and idea created by the other without thinking. This was especially obvious between Carey and Lurrie on the last four tracks of the DVD that were shot in Lurrie's living room.

Seeing the two men sitting side by side on the couch playing together one couldn't help notice the communication between them; it was almost like an electrical cord or telegraph wire was running between them. Lurrie didn't react to what his father did, instead they would make transitions simultaneously even though there was no way either of them could have anticipated what the other was doing.

Getting' Up Live is a remarkable performance disc in a lot of ways, from the marvellous back up bands that played with Carey and Lurrie at both gigs, to the talent of the two men. Both the sound and picture quality of the disc live up to the level of music on display, with the sound being offered in stereo, surround 5.1, and dts. The special features were limited to a short interview with each of the men, but they were nice little pieces that were shot in Lurrie's family home with his wife Susan Greenberg and his three children present.

The very last song on the disc is Lurrie singing a beautiful rendition of the traditional gospel tune "Stand By Me". This isn't to be confused with the Ben E. King popular song of the same title, as the lyrics are far more devotional: "Stand by me Lord, help me bear this heavy load" Lurrie song on July 28th 2006 with his wife and children watching.

At the end of the press materials included with the DVD a note has been added in bold type: Dedicated to Susan Greenberg (1963 – 2007) At some time since the filming of this disc and it being released just this year, Lurrie Bell's wife Susan passed away. The last song Lurrie sang on the disc takes on a horrible new meaning with our knowledge of the sadness that is to come for the happy people in seen in those frames.

You can see some of Susan Greenberg's legacy at her website "Reaching For The Light" where her beautiful photographs of Blues musicians, including her husband are on display. For what little it may mean coming from a total stranger, I offer my condolences and sympathy to Lurrie, his young children, and the rest of his family. Truly you have been given a heavy load to carry.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:42 AM | Permalink

Sometimes two events become so irrevocably linked that it's hard to remember which came first and what the connection was in the first place. That is the case for me when I started to blog. I've recently celebrated the third anniversary of writing an article a day for my home space, which made me start thinking about what it was that got me started, or gave me the idea in the first place.

I don’t believe in coincidences, everything that happens does so for a reason, even the fact that I'm writing this article on May 1st, the turning of the year, a time for new beginnings in some of the older traditions, is not without portent. It's also no coincidence that I happened to receive in the mail about five weeks ago a complete set of the Indian edition of Ashok Banker's Ramayana, or that I've been reading it almost non-top since.

Three years ago I was wandering through a book store when I came across book one of Ashok's modern version of The Ramayana. I knew nothing about him or the poem but the name Valmiki was familiar to me. A friend of some friends of mine had opened a teahouse in the city where I live for a short while called Valmiki's. I knew that the friends were Hindu, so I knew Valmiki was important.

Seeing a series of books based on a tale he had originally told, told over three thousand years ago by the way, piqued my interest. At that time books one through three, Prince of Ayodhya, Siege of Mithila, and Demons of Chitrakut were published, so I immediately scooped up all three of them and read them back to back.

To say I was inspired would be an understatement; I thought they were some of the most amazing books I had read in a long time and wanted to tell the world about them. I had been writing in sort of a desultory fashion at the time; pecking away at a story that was rapidly stalling, writing a couple of articles, and some poetry. I was selling them at Lulu.com in the hopes that people would find them and buy the.

But I had nowhere to post things on a regular basis. I discovered Ashok's web site at that time and went and read through it and learned more about the man who wrote these books and what Rama meant to India. I was fascinated. When I discovered he had an area for readers to write him and to mail in reviews, I quickly wrote him a long letter about the whole Valmiki thing and sent him a review I wrote of all three books. (I had previously published it at MouthShut.com, ironically enough an Indian based review site being the only one I had been able to find easily)

When Armies of Hanuman came out in Canada in 2005 I immediately wrote a review of it and sent it off to Ashok's web site along with a letter reminding him of the story I had related about the teahouse named Valmiki's. I had assumed he had not, for some reason, read the first one. When he wrote back and asked it I knew myself because somebody had already written him about a teahouse in Kingston called Valmiki's I had to laugh. (When I told him to check the return addresses of the two emails he must have found it funny as well, judging by the humour of his reply)

By this time Ashok had opened his first blog through Google's Blogspot network. There was a link on his site, as there are on all Blogspot blogs, inviting you to get your own blog. Well I followed that link and started my own blog and the rest as they say is history.

Would I have discovered Blogspot without Ashok? Probably yes, but who knows how long it would have taken. Picking up that original Orbit copy of Prince of Ayodhya was the first step in me being exactly where I am today in terms of my writing. It was because of my love for Ashok's books that I began to write reviews; he was the first person I interviewed because I liked his books so much, and now three years later I'm editing his website/literary magazine.

I feel in some ways that Rama and his story have a lot to do with me being here where I am today. It was important for me to find his story as told by Ashok aside for more reasons then the ones I've already given. In the final book of the series, King Of Ayodhya Rama is referred to as Maryada Pushottam – He Who Fulfils His Vow by his followers. At one point his brother Lakshman adds to that title the words…Against All Odds.

In spite of many obstacles and temptations thrown in his path Rama lives his life according to the simple precept of doing exactly what he says he will do and what is expected of him according to who he is. He is a son, a King in waiting, a husband, the disciple of a guru, a brother, and eventually the leader of an army. He is also gifted with various celestial weapons and powers that he can draw on under certain conditions, and only those certain conditions.

Each role he plays has it's own conditions that must be followed. If at anytime there appears to be a conflict between fulfilling his duty as a son and as a King, he has to figure out how he can resolve the conflict and do what is the right thing. But in spite of that he is always able to do the right thing even if it turns out to be the most difficult and the most fraught with danger.

It was in this manner that The Ramayana as told by Ashok Banker introduced me to the concept of dharma. I had of course heard the word many times before but had never really understood the concept. Simply put dharma is the fulfillment of your duty to yourself in spite of whatever obstacles you might face.

At the time when I read the story of Rama I was just beginning to start writing in earnest. But I also suffer from a chronic, acute, pain condition, which means I'm in constant agony. That was my obstacle to overcome; it is what could prevent me from being one who fulfills his vows as a writer, a husband, a son, and a brother.

Sometimes I have failed, given into self-pity, resentment, and all the other traps that we set for ourselves so that we won't succeed. I have a perfectly legitimate excuse for failure and inexcusable behaviour at my fingertips. But every time I hear myself, even in my own head, using it, I'm ashamed and it sounds like an excuse. There are people in the world with far worse problems that get out of bed every day and are simply grateful for being given that gift.

So for three year I've done pretty well, but life can play tricks on you. It rewards you for being diligent and hard working by giving you recognition, in my case editing Epic India, and you use that responsibility along with what ever other excuses you may have at hand, to stop doing what you're supposed to be doing.

Oh I still produce an article or two a day for the various sites I write at, whether a review of a book or a CD, or and opinion piece on some aspect of the world today. But they feel like excuses for not working on what I'm supposed to be working on. My novel sits abandoned and neglected. Not only haven't I done the revisions I want to do on book one but I have not done any work on book two in almost a year.

It doesn't matter what other things I'm achieving, what praise that I'm winning, or anything else. What matters is that I don't feel like I'm doing what I should be doing, or all that I should be doing. It's very easy to make excuses, but they still ring false in my ears so I've got to make a change and stop the excuses. It's not even like I have too much work otherwise, I'm usually finished with the blogs by ten o'clock in the morning at the latest.

Today is May 1st the turning of the year and I have just finished reading all six books of Ashok Banker's Ramayana again, and this time in their original Indian editions, as the author intended them to be read. It is never too late to start fulfilling your dharma or to do what you are supposed to do.

Jai Shri Rama.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:08 AM | Permalink