Leap In The Dark

I always get miffed at the way people refer to pop musicians as artists. If there is any group of entertainers who are further away from fulfilling the definition of being an artist than they are I've yet to come across it. It's not really their fault of course; it’s just the way the system works.

You see to be an artist means that you are continually attempting to try something new. Experimenting with form and style in search of a new way to represent what you are trying to depict, tell, or explain. That of course is the antithesis of what the pop music business is all about. There the object is to find something that sells and repeat that formula as much as you possibly can until the world moves onto the next thing and leaves you as yesterday's hit.

This isn't just a modern phenomenon; it has been going on since the early days of popular music back in the 1920's. There were whole buildings in lower Manhattan where each office contained a piano, enough cigarette smoke to cause a miniature green house effect, and one or two people churning out song after song in an attempt to either create the next big thing or imitate it.

Those musicians we remember from that time periods, like the Gershwin brothers George and Ira for instance, are the ones who were the artists continually breaking new ground with their music. The same holds true for the contemporary scene as well. Think back over the last ten years about who you remember from pop music and I'll bet they stand out because they were different from what the mainstream was churning out.

Now I'm not saying that just because somebody experiments they are going to be remembered, some experiments are still better left un tried (Pat Boone doing Heavy Metal springs to mind as does Neil Young's Transformer album) and the sooner forgotten the better. But there are also those attempts that make you sit up and pay attention to the people behind the project.

The new self-produced and independently released disc by Afuche, Carajo Is Worse Than Hell is a great example of the latter. The two main players in Afuche are Zach Ryails and Ruben Sindo Acosta, and they are accompanied on this disc by Mike Brown on acoustic bass, Josh Lawrence on trumpet, Ryan Perrey on electric bass, and Charlie Amador on drums and additional percussion.

With that sort of line up the assumption that Carajo Is Worse Than Hell being jazz like would only be fair. So the first song on the five track E.P. comes as a wee bit of a surprise. "A Cue To Bathe" starts out as Klezmar as anything you'd hear played in Fiddler On The Roof and halfway through turns into something resembling a Buena Vista Social Club reunion.

It would never have occurred to me to segue from Eastern European Jewish to Afro-Cuban rhythms, but, hard as it might be to believe, the transition between the two was without incident. It sounded as natural as if they just moved from one verse of the song to the next but playing in a different key.

But that's a key element of successful experimentation and creativity; finding the means to ensure seemingly disparate elements fit together and be able to make something new out of that joining instead of it just sounding like an incoherent mess. There is sometimes a fine line between self-indulgent crap and artistic expression, but Afuche never seem in danger of being guilty of the former.

One of the things I appreciated most about this disc was that unlike other bands, Afuche don't seem to confuse experimentation with discordance. You can still make thoughtful music that is tuneful and melodic while experimenting with personal modes of expression, and there is no need to proclaim your alternativeness by eschewing the idea that music be an enjoyable experience for your audience.

"What Distracted Slowdrag", the last song on the CD, is a wonderful jazz composition with some beautiful keyboard work and great interplay between the instruments. What impressed me most about this piece is the awareness it expresses of the music that has come before them. Instead of pretending that they are creating in a vacuum where music has no history, they have used the works of people they admire as a starting point.

In the case of this song elements of Charlie Mingus compositions are obvious to my ear because that's what I'm familiar with, but I'm sure others would recognise other influences as well. To it is a sign of maturity in an artist when they don't recklessly disregard what's come before simply because it's already been done but instead use the past as their foundation to build something new upon.

Afuche might have been a deliberate attempt by Zach and Reuben to take a different approach to creating music than either of them had followed in the past, but that doesn't mean they are simply being experimental for the sake of being experimental. Carajo Is Worse Than Hell is the type of disc we need pop musicians to be making more often in order to guarantee the future will at least be interesting.

This is intelligent music created by artists who are willing to take chances in the hope of discovering something new and exciting to perform. That you get more good music from the five songs on this disc than you do on most twelve-song discs these days should tell you how successful their experiments were.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:56 PM | Permalink

I was going to try and write something profound about the role guilt plays in helping keep our society ticking over. You know one of those think pieces that analyses trends in people's behaviour and shows how that everything they do can be put down to guilt. But for the life of me I couldn't think of an opening paragraph to introduce the topic.

I guess I could have started with the family unit and how large a role guilt plays within that dynamic. How so many people use a blood connection in lieu of decent behaviour as a means of having people pay attention to them. "Family matters most" and count on guilt to make you drop everything for them at a moments notice no matter how they've treated you up until that moment.

Of course I could have just a easily started off by citing how most of North America's spiritual life is based on guilt. First there's the whole idea that we're all born guilty because of Adam and Eve committing that original sin with the apple. Talk about holding the sins of the father against the children.

If that isn't bad enough, how about this scenario: God sends down his only son and sacrifices him for our sins! Talk about your guilt trips – look what I did for you, so you'd better behave. Just in case we didn't get the picture there are all sorts of things you can't do without having to pay some sort of price or doing some sort of penance.

Some folk take it so far that they equate all pleasure with sin and believe the only way to avoid it is to work constantly and live a life of abject misery. They must feel guilty for having being born and I'm sure that they only had sex because they felt guilty about not going forth and procreating. Heaven forbid they enjoy it though because that would have been a sin and there would be a price to pay.

Religion is an easy target though, so I maybe could have talked about how government only works because we're made to feel guilty. For instance if you dare to disagree with something that the government decrees your made to feel guilty for not loving your country enough. Or if you don't agree with the war the government sends troops off to fight in they imply you're guilty of wishing the soldiers harm because you won't support them.

Or on the domestic front when they want to cut taxes and slash and burn social programming they will either find someway of making the poor guilty of stealing from the rest of the population or make you feel guilty for stealing the money out of your children's pockets. If we spend money today what will be left for your children?

It's not just the government who uses guilt against us. So do far too many environmental groups, human rights organizations, foreign aid fundraisers and anyone else with a cause. Hell I'm probably a lot more of an environmental extremist, believer in human rights and social justice then most of them and they piss me off with their attempts to make people feel guilty in order to change their ways, give money, or whatever they want them to do.

What's the point of making some poor guy who needs to drive his barely working vehicle so he can go to work and feed his family feel guilty for polluting? How's that going to change the world or do anything to make it a better place for his kid or grandkids? It's not any one individual's fault that people in Africa are starving to death or dying of AIDS and whether or not they contribute ten dollars isn't going to make a bit of difference.

When they show you pictures of starving orphans living behind barbed wire in refugee camps and say you can make a difference they might as well be saying it's your fault if they continue having to live like this. Not only is that unfair, it is of course patently untrue. Hundreds of years of history lay behind the reasons for those children living in refugee camps and only a change in the so-called developed world's attitude towards the developing world will make a difference.

Now that I think about it some more I could also have talked about the reasons why we are made to feel guilty by all these different people. It's to cover up who the really guilty parties are. As that guy who worked for Clinton said, "It's the economy stupid", but probably not in the way you think.

Did you know that in the time since the great Depression there was only a very short period of real prosperity in the post world war boom in the 1950's? Since then there has been a gradual erosion of the middle class and more and more wealth and power has been accruing in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Governments can preach all they want about free trade and open markets making a better atmosphere for business which makes it better for all of us but they are only getting it half right.

While the workers are made to feel guilty for demanding basic needs like job security, environmental protection, and workplace safety businesses go where they want and rack up bigger and bigger profits everywhere around the world. They exploit natural resources, people, and environments until they have exhausted them and move on leaving worse poverty and political unrest in their wake.

Religions have long used guilt to control their people, and people in turn use it to control their families so that they will not run afoul of the church. In the twentieth century governments who are sponsored by businesses use it to ensure that their patrons have clear access to everything they need to make their profits.

Most of us really have nothing major to feel guilty about in terms of society, yet we are constantly inundated with messages from all sides insisting we are guilty of a multitude of sins. Listen to the way messages are delivered by politicians, preachers, and advocates and you can't help but hear the accusation in their voices.

Try telling yourself the next time that it's not your fault, or not the fault of whomever is being offered up as a scapegoat and see who that leaves you with to blame. It maybe that the Church is right and we are all sinners and guilty of something, but there are some who are guiltier than others.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:59 PM | Permalink

Edinburgh Scotland is one of the grand historic capitals of the island of Great Britain. The good burgers of the city, which would include municipal politicians and local business associations, would love for the world to not see past the Castle on the hill and all the historic buildings that line the downtown area.

Every August the tourists will flock to the city for the Edinburgh Festival, for The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and all the parties and good times associated with both events. Of course if they can drag themselves away from the optics for a time they can also take in some theatre and some music while they are at it.

As long as they don't stray beyond the confines of the nice hotels, theatres, shops, and "authentic' Scottish pubs, there's no need for them to see the ugly reality of what life is like for a great deal of the city's population. Ever since the 1980's and Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party destroyed the back of Scottish industry and put tens of thousands of people out of work it has been a desperate struggle to bring employment back for the working class.

Like so many other British cities Edinburgh has its Council Flats, ghettos for the poor to live in. Huge concrete towers surrounded on all sides by concrete parking lots, filled with immigrants, the unemployed, and the unemployable. Like their inner city counterparts in North America these places are rife with drugs, violence and the hopelessness that comes from not being able to see any hope of it ever getting better.

It's in this world that Ian Rankin's character Detective Inspector (DI) John Rebus spends a good deal of his time, because where there's poverty there is sure to be crime. In Acorn Media's release Rebus 1 (the first two episodes with Ken Stott as Rebus), we follow Rebus behind the façade of gentile elegance in "Fleshmarket Close" as he investigates the disappearance of a young woman from one of the housing developments.

The other episode included is set among those who live in manor houses amid elegance and style. But "The Falls" proves that it's not only poverty that can make people desperate, or turn to crime as a means of solving their problems. "The Falls" was also the episode that introduced viewers to the new actors who were charged with bringing Ian Rankin's character's to the small screen.

Right from the start you begin to get the idea you're not going to be dealing with the typical television police officer. When in the midst of conducting an interview with friends of a murder victim he refers to his new partner as Robin to his Batman you know that John Rebus marches to his own drummer.

What I especially liked about "The Falls" is they spent a good bit of time dealing with Rebus when he is off duty. At one point his new partner, Detective Sergeant (DS) Siobhan (Shi-von) Clarke, makes politely incredulous noises about Rebus having a relationship with a younger woman. Her attempts to understand her boss has Siobhan's character acting on behalf of the audience in finding out as much as possible about the enigma of John Rebus.

It's interesting to discover that the character traits that make him a good cop are also what make him attractive to women. He's intuitive, empathic, and sensitive to moods and place, characteristics men are often accused of lacking. The problem though is these same traits make him highly susceptible to carrying his job with him at all times. Awareness isn't selective when it comes to deciding what its going to feel and when, so DI Rebus can't leave the job at the end of the day any more than he'd stop breathing.

We see this in "Fleshmarket Close" with the discovery of the first body and the helplessness that you can see him feel when the deceased's wife is brought from a refugee detention centre for formal identification purposes. Afterwards the camera and Siobhan find him sitting on a staircase with a scowl that betrays nothing of what he's feeling. But the fingers tugging and pulling in an attempt to remove his tie, leaving it hopelessly knotted and hanging crooked from his neck, is an indication of the turmoil that sits just below the surface.

Television shows aren't often noted for their cinematography, establishing shots and the like don't make many appearances on the small screens of North America, but both episodes contained in this set have at least one breathtaking shot. Most memorable is how they shot the apartment blocks that make up the projects where the action takes place in "Fleshmarket Close".

By shooting at an angle almost directly below the buildings and straight up, the apartment blocks turn into towering monoliths that dominate their surroundings and the people who live in them. They are monstrous sentinels that act as a constant reminder to the people living there of their lowly status and how little they are valued by the rest of the population.

Coming on to the site with Rebus and Siobhan the first time you wonder how anyone can live there. Even the meanest housing in most places will have some green space; a bit of park for kids or a place for dogs – but here, there is nothing but asphalt and concrete and brown lands. The surprise is not that they eventually turn up a body here, it's that they aren't constantly tripping over them.

As was the case with Posted by Richard Marcus at 01:22 AM | Permalink

It seems like an eternity ago now, but it was only thirty years, when this beanpole guy with a great voice put out an album of rockabilly music. It was so bare bones that if not for the fact it had a full drum kit in play, the album could have been easily recorded on a four track recorder and the sound quality would have been fine.

Robert Gordon accompanied by the late great Link Wray on guitar came out of nowhere to remind the world where Rock and Roll came from. They put out two great albums, Robert Gordon With Link Wray and Fresh Fish Special. "Red Hot", the single from the first album, was actually released in and around when Elvis Presley died, which made the song take off like a rocket.

Comparisons between Elvis and Robert were probably inevitable due to the coincidental timing of the first album's release and their similarities in vocal ranges and musical styles. Robert never denied that as a youngster Elvis' music had been a big influence on him, but none of his tunes would ever be confused with Elvis' music. They were harder edged with an undeniable punk influence in sound and attitude.

Link and Robert only lasted two albums together, mainly because the label that put out Fresh Fish Special went under leaving them high and dry. So his third album didn't come out until 1979 on RCA. Rock Billy Boogie was the first recording that Robert made with guitarist Chris Spedding and it had four songs on it that broke the top 100.

Now for the first time in twenty years, and more importantly thirty years since the death of Elvis, Robert Gordon and Chris Spedding have joined forces again for the release of It's Now Or Never on the RYKO label. The thirty-year anniversary is significant because every track on this disc was recorded by Elvis at one time or another during his career.

Since they are accompanied by Elvis' former backup singers, The Jordanaires, one could be excused for thinking that this is some sort of Elvis impersonator's album. Well you couldn't be further from the truth. If you haven't heard Elvis in a long time, than you might think that Robert sounds like him, but in reality it's only the style of the music and the fact they both are baritones.

At worst this is a tribute album, but in reality its interpretations of some of the classic rockabilly and country blues songs that were recorded by Elvis during his hay day. Looking over the track list there's only one song that Elvis even gets a writing credit for, "Don't Be Cruel" and only three others that he even held the rights to. Remember Elvis' first big hit "Hound Dog" was written by Big Mama Thornton, so it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that most of the songs that we associate with him were written by other people..

Robert Gordon and Chris Spedding have recorded the fifteen songs on It's Now Or Never as pure undiluted rockabilly without any of the augmentations or concessions to modern audiences that groups like the Stray Cats used to do in the early eighties during the so called rockabilly revival. These songs sound like they could have been recorded at the old Sun Records studio in downtown Memphis back in the 1950's they are so pure and authentic.

You can't fake the sincerity in the voice of Robert Gordon when he sings any of the songs on this disc. Even something as potentially cloying as the old country gospel tune "Peace In The Valley" works because he so obviously means what he sings. He still has wonderful control over his voice, as he's able to dip down into the baritone on "(You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care" and reach up high when needed on "It's Now Or Never".

What's truly amazing to me when it comes to his singing is how melodious his voice still is. He's been singing for close to forty years now and there's nothing to suggest that his voice has suffered any damage at all. He never sounds like he's straining for a high note or volume. If at the start of the record you had thoughts that he was trying to imitate Elvis, by the time the disc ends you've completely forgotten about Elvis and are only thinking about Robert Gordon's voice.

I can't think of any other guitar player who would compliment Robert Gordon in this type of music better than Chris Spedding. Not only is he an amazing rhythm guitar player when it comes to this style of music, but he is a totally unselfish lead player. His rockabilly leads are incredible, with each note sounding out individually and echoing a time when guitar leads weren't about speed but what you could make a note say.

When the voice of Robert Gordon is joined with the voice of Chris Spedding's guitar and they are backed up the Jordanaires it is to hear what made Elvis and rockabilly so special. People of my generation really only saw Elvis when he had become the parody of himself doing those horrible shows in Las Vegas. Thanks to It's Now Or Never we have a real opportunity to appreciate the music and understand a little better why people would refer to Elvis as the King.

If he sang anything like Robert Gordon does now, then he must have been something wondrous to behold.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:52 AM | Permalink

Ten years and seven books after it started its all over. In that time J K Rowling has gone from being a single mom scribbling in a tearoom with her baby on her lap to being one of the best selling authors in the world. But whatever fame and fortune may have come her way; none of it seems to have affected the person who was the reason for her success.

Through story after story, and adventure after adventure, Harry Potter has been a constant in a world of uncertainty. He and his friends have become the extended family and friends for millions if not billions of people all over the planet. They have provided "guest house" that has kept us all safe from the Voldemorts of our own lives.

When I first came across the Harry Potter books he was already a phenomenon in terms of sales and publicity. It pains me to admit that I almost let all that hoopla chase me away from the enjoyment that awaited me between the pages of those books. It's yet another debt of gratitude that I owe my older brother for insisting that they were worth reading in spite of the hype being starting to spew out of the Warner Bros. marketing department.

It was the summer of 2002 and I had just come out of extensive bowel surgery that had been an attempt to cure a chronic pain condition and I was spending a lot of time in my head with worries and concerns. The good thing about coming in at the halfway point in the series is that I was able to enjoy the first four books all in one fell swoop.

From the moment I opened page one of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (A note for American readers: that was the original title of the book and it refers to a magical object that alchemists of old tried desperately to create because it would turn lead to gold - There is no such thing as a Sorcerer's Stone in this context) I found a world where I was free to forget about my problems. How easy it was to become immersed in a world where magic actually existed.

But this world had its rules too and you couldn't just wave a magic wand and makes things perfect. Those who acted like there was were the ones who were most dangerous. When you look for short cuts in life no matter what the means, you always end up surrendering something that will have turned out to be important.

There are times that Harry of course wishes he could just wave his wand and all his problems would be solved, and in the latter books he definitely has the power to be sorely tempted by that very possibility. But by then he has already learned enough to know that for something to have real value, one has to experience each stage of its obtainment.

The lessons that the students were taught at Hogwarts occurred in and out of the classrooms. Magic is not something that can be leaned overnight, In fact, as Harry learns, it can take years to completely master some spells or for the wizard to be able to gain the power to perform some to full capacity. Part of the process is to grow as a person, and learn humility, compassion, and all the shapes and forms of responsibility.

For if nothing else Harry and his young friends have grown in ways that far outstrip what the passing of years can accomplish. While like their contemporaries they have their share of teenage angst, they quickly come to understand the value of introspection. Harry has to learn to overcome his temper and his desire to rush into action because of the potential this had for endangering the people he loves.

There are few books, let alone ones for young people, paying attention in such detail to character development. How many books allow us to see the inner workings of a character's brain as they deal with anger and resentment? They are not moments that show the hero in his best light, but they are honest. For young readers to see a character they identify with so much assailed by the same doubts, anxieties, and insecurities that plague them is to feel less alone in the world.

For me what made these books so special were the characters. J K Rowling created people who you wanted to know because of their flaws. In spite of the fact that they all had capabilities far beyond what any of us could ever dream of having, it was these imperfections that gave them the human elements that made them all so appealing.

Of course the magic was fun too; who among us hasn't out of desperation while looking for some lost object tried to use a summoning charm, or when we are depressed imagined what our patronous might look like. Rowling could also write action scenes as well as anyone on the market today, as the penultimate battle in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows proved. She also ensured that there was nothing glorious in battle and people died whom we cared about so you'd know that there's always a price to pay for fighting.

I know there are those who have spent the last few months showing that these books are in fact bad. They are sexist; they ennoble the British Class system, and are elitist or other such nonsense. All that means to me is there are people who have too much time on their hands and are trying to make a name for themselves by finding ways to be critical of something that is immensely popular.

In my opinion they are the ones who are showing their jealousy and bigotry because some single mom from Scotland had been able to reach out to so many people with her story of the young boy who discovered he was a wizard at the age of eleven. Just because a book is so beloved and popular doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it. I never knew that sour grapes could smell so bad.

For ten years and seven books J K Rowling gave us all the wonderful gift of Harry Potter, his friends, and his enemies. I don't know about anyone else out there, but I for one would just like to say thank you for all the wonder and magic you brought into my life with those seven books Ms. Rowling: Thank you.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 12:48 AM | Permalink

You know about that one, that Old Coyote? He's sure one tricky fellow. He come over for tea you have to watch him all the time. He keeps sticking his nose where it don't belong – like in the jam jar or down the muzzle of a gun barrel and then gets feeling sorry for himself when he gets bit by wasps because he's covered in sweet stuff or gets his nose blown off by the shot gun because he forgot to make sure the safety was on before pulling the trigger with his nose down the barrel.

That's when you really have to watch out; when Coyote feels sorry for himself and thinks the world owes him something. Hoo Boy, then it's time to board up the windows and bury yourself in the root cellar cause you don't know just what could happen when that one starts to feel sorry for himself.

He gets all resentful and looks for someone to blame and you just have to hope he don't pick you. Sometimes he don't find anyone and then he gets depressed and starts moping about the house. Then he starts sighing –oh boy you don't want to have those Coyote sighs floating around in your house- you never know what they can turn into. He was doing a lot of sighing just around the first time that George Bush Jr. got elected president and you know what that's been like

Well this other day that one, Old Coyote, he was around my house and he was looking as sorry for himself as I've ever seen him do. And I thought the world has enough trouble right now without more Coyote sighs loose in it, but I was ready for him this time. There's nothing Coyote likes better than to hear stories of himself and I thought I had the perfect thing for him.

Those people over at Penguin Canada have just put out a book full of tricky stories about Coyote and his extended family called The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling are the ones who went around and asked people to write down some tricky stories from all over the world and I knew there would have to be some in here that Old Coyote have not heard before.

"Old Coyote" I says "Come over here. Get your head up from off your paws lying there out in the yard like dumb dog and stop your sighing. Have a nice cup of tea; I want to tell you some stories that people have written down about you and your family and friends around the world. Very tricky stuff."

I could see he was interested because of the way he pricked up his ears when I said they were stories about him and tricky ones too, but he had to pretend he wasn't because he's Coyote and he likes to feel sorry for himself. But he picked himself up and came and sat on the veranda with me and let me pour him some of that tea which he likes with four cubes of sugar and no milk.

So when he was comfortable with his mug of tea I picked up the book and decided I'd read him the story about his Uncle Tompa from Tibet. Well it's not really a story but a poem by that nice woman writer Midori Snyder who has written lots of stories.

This poem is just called "Uncle Tompa" and because not many people over in this world know about Coyote's Uncle Tompa from Tibet (he's not really his uncle you know, but one of those old friends of the family you just call Uncle because you sure aren't going to call him mister) and it describes all the tricky things that Uncle to make people look silly. And Coyote, he smiles, cause it reminds him of an especially dirty story involving an uppity virgin bride to be and her wealthy father and what Tompa did to them both to take them down a peg or two.

I don't think anyone wants to hear that story so I decide to read him another from the book so he won't tell it. This one's a little longer; it's one by that Charles de Lint fellow. "Crow Roads" is what it's called and it's not a ha, ha, tricky story, it's more an hmm, make you think about things tricky story. The type that make you wonder about what goes on in the shadow of a tree when you look at it from the corner of your eye- that sort of story.

Now Coyote liked that story and asked if there were any more stories, and of course there were, and all of them good. That Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling know their stuff when it comes to putting together collections of stories after all. This is the third of what they call their Mythic Anthology Series, and if those first two The Green Man: Tales From The Mythic Forest and The Faery Reel: Tales From The Twilight Realm are as good as this one owning all three would be a good thing, especially if you get Coyote visiting often like I do.

Now this book is just filled with tricky tales of all sorts, and of course Coyote comes inot them too which is right and proper as he himself puts it. In fact the very first story has his sister trying to fix the world. Always a dangerous business when Old Woman Coyote tries to fix a young man's world, for the young man that is, because if he don't heed the teaching he'll be mighty uncomfortable for a long time.

Of course some of Coyote's friends and family aren't just out to trick you to teach you a lesson, they may want to do bad things to you and than you have to be the tricky one if you want to get away. The young girls in the Irish school learn that about Queen Mab of the faery all right in the story "Friday Night At St. Cecilia's" by that Ellen Klages. Now that story made Coyote a little nervous, but he liked the trick at the end the young girl did to save herself and her friend.

Well Coyote and me, we had a good time that afternoon sipping out tea, (well he slurps his if you want to know the truth) him listening to me reading stories about tricky people from Africa, Asia, Europe and South America. I had forgotten how big Coyote's family was and how many friends the tricky guy has. By the time he decided it was time to go home, he wasn't feeling sorry for himself no more and was laughing under his breath as he trotted along down the road.

Any thing that can make Coyote stop feeling sorry for himself is a good thing, I thought as I sat and watched the sun go under the ground at the end of the road, and the stories in The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales that Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have picked out are good stories for that.

I picked up Coyote's mug, and our pot of tea and carefully put the book under my arm to remember to take it inside. Tricky stories like those ones can't be left just lying around; you just never know what they might get up to.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:20 AM | Permalink

In the early part of the twentieth century in the United States mass entertainment was still limited to what could be broadcast over the radio or published in magazines that could be sold through out the country. Magazines ranged from the Benjamin Franklin founded Saturday Evening Post with its sentimentalized vision of American life personified by the Norman Rockwell pictures that adorned its covers to the down and dirty world of Pulp magazines with their sensationalist and lurid stories of crime, passion, and violence.

Of the two it should come as no surprise that the Pulp magazines were the breeding ground for some rather remarkable writers. Without these erstwhile purveyors of filth and scandal Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Raymond Chandler, and Robert E. Howard may well have never had the opportunity to even begin their careers as writers let alone created the works and characters they have become famous for. Conan The Barbarian from Howard, Phillip Marlow from Chandler, I Robot from Asimov, and The Martian Chronicles from Bradbury are only a few of the works and characters that the literary world owes these magazines a debt of thanks to.

It was on these pages that genres we now take for granted like Science Fiction and Fantasy, Detective Fiction, and Romance Novels all had their humble beginnings. While the literary magazines like The Paris Review were trumpeting the avant-garde for a select audience, the Pulp magazine was heralding the creation of the inexpensive paperback novel and the concept of popular fiction.

Today the inheritors of these early authors are plentiful, as the crowded mystery and science fiction/fantasy shelves of any bookstore can attest. While some authors have managed to create their own voice within this framework far too many seem like pale imitations of the originals. How many ways for instance can you recreate the private investigator role created by Raymond Chandler before it just starts to get trite? There are just only so many ways some pies can be cut before the slices are so thin as to be non-existent.

Under these circumstances you have to give author Corey Fayman marks for effort with his novel Black's Beach Shuffle. He has made a genuine attempt at bringing something new to the private investigator novel with the creation of the character Rolly Waters and a plot involving the high tech industry. But in the end it still feels like nothing more than someone trying to update a Raymond Chandler story.

Rolly Waters is a part time Blues guitar player haunted by what might have been and how he had blown it with booze and one deadly car crash. Being arrested for driving under the influence and vehicular manslaughter on the very day he had been given a blank check by Capital Records, and the fact that it was his band mate who died in the crash, destroyed his dreams, and his desire. He drifted into private investigator work because his community service (record searches for his lawyer in a library for three years) gave him the three thousand hours living in the State of California required to get a licence and he couldn't imagine ever working for someone else.

The majority of his work has been gathering evidence for divorce cases or tracing down kids who had run away from home, nothing glamorous or heroic but enough to pay the rent. It sure didn't qualify him for the job that an old school friend dropped in his lap one fine morning. Some new high tech business found that an essential component of their new software programme that was to be their path to fortune had gone missing and they needed it to be found.

Of course it's not good to have preconceived prejudices about an employer whose offering you a blank check and stock options that could be worth a fortune, but Rolly can't help it. The night before being hired he and his band had played at a house party for the very same business and returning to retrieve a forgotten guitar he had found a dead body in the pool he had been strumming his guitar beside a few hours earlier.

When the body shows up a day or two later at the bottom of the cliff behind the house on the beach beside the ocean he figures there might be some connection between the corpse and the missing component, especially when he finds out the cadaver had been the programmer responsible for software. One things leads to another, including an interlude with the de rigour femme fatale, until he stumbles upon the answer to who done it and along the way uncovers corporate scandals and stock swindles that are the stock and trade of dot.com companies.

Although Fayman has done a competent job in telling the story, and making the character of Rolly Waters more then one dimensional, there is nothing new under the sun here at all. Having Rolly think of the case, and his life to some extent, in musical terms might have seemed like a good idea while writing the book, but unfortunately its not enough of a diversion to hide the fact that this just another pale imitation of the original.

Although Black's Beach Shuffle is an enjoyable enough read, there's also nothing really special about it to suggest you should run right out and buy it. It's like fast food for the brain, easy to read, sort of tastes like it should, but lacks the substance of the real thing. If I were you I'd just re-read The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon and enjoy a real meal.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 11:32 AM | Permalink

In the mid 1980's when I was still working in theatre I was usually unable to go a week without seeing the name of someone I knew, my age, in the obituary columns. Some weeks of course there was no one, but other weeks were really bad when everyday brought someone new. Anybody who worked in the arts during those years probably tells the same story because so many brilliant lives were cut short because nobody gave a damn that gays were dying.

As long as AIDS remained something that only killed gay men who cares; they were only reaping the whirlwind of their own perversion. It was only when so called "innocent victims", children and others who had received tainted blood and began contracting the disease, that governments got off their sorry asses and started to do something about it.

Like any community during a pogrom, gays across North America closed ranks and began taking steps to both ensure their survival and to demand their rights as human beings be respected. Ever since the 1970s and the gay sexual revolution when closets were being kicked open all over North America, their community had been subject to harassment from politicians and conservative religious leaders.

It was pretty hard to find anyone in those days who was willing to cast a positive light on gay men, but one of the few voices out there was author Armistead Maupin. Over the course of six novels set in San Francesco, collectively referred to as The Tales Of The City Series he charted the lives of a group of gay and straight friends as they revelled in the good times and suffered through the hard times, just like anyone else.

From the early days of the seventies until the dark days of the eighties he wrote about these people like any author would write about group of characters, except that most of his were gay. Just like everyone else they were in search of sex, love, companionship, and everlasting relationships.

Twenty years later he picks up with one of the lead characters from his former series, Michael Tolliver in his new book published by Harper Collins Canada, Michael Toliver Lives. The title can be looked at in a couple of ways; one that Michael is a fifty-five year old gay man who had developed full blown AIDS and was preparing to die, only to have his life saved by some of the new drugs that came on the market. That he lives at all is a miracle and worth proclaiming to the stars.

But the title could also be in reference to the fact that unlike a lot of his contemporaries who have just been content to survive the plague years, Michael still wants to live. For Michael that means finding a partner to spend his days and nights with, more than just sex but a husband. When the opportunity arises he jumps in headfirst and falls for a younger man, Ben.

In fact during brief period when gays were being allowed the right to marry in a few cities in the United States he and Ben had been joined in a civil ceremony. But they are living in the Brave New World of George Bush Jr's America where being gay is an aberration for the man in charge and he's doing his best to strip people like Michael and Ben of any rights they have gained.

This being twenty years later everybody from the original series has aged considerably, and the gay community has expanded to include people who are transgendered both ways; women who have turned themselves into men and are gay, and men who have turned themselves into women. As Michael puts it, some people find them too queer to be queer, but he has always been comfortable with the idea.

When he first arrived in San Francisco his original landlady had not always been a lady, and Anna had become like a second mother to him when his own fundamentalist Christian family turned more than the other cheek to him. Oh they didn't completely disown him, but they let him know that they were praying for him to find his way back to the fold.

When both Anna and his mother fall sick he comes to terms with both his blood and non-blood families. Instead of being the dutiful son and running to his mother's bedside when she's on her last breaths, he stays in the city when Anna falls into a coma after a heart attack. It's a testament to Maupin's writing ability that neither of these scenes ever descends into sentimental crap.

There's no deathbed reconciliation between mother and son, save for a final acceptance of who he is via a photo sent by email of his mom sitting in her bed, smiling and waving, holding a picture that been taken of him and Ben on their honeymoon. Touches like that are what have always made Maupin's books wonderful. He has the ability to take potentially trite sentimental moments and give them genuine emotional depth.

Anna's recovery is a wonderful thing, but it also reminds Michael of who and what he is; a fifty-five year old, HIV positive man living with a man twenty years younger then him. Ben has promised him that he will stay with him no matter what, even if it involves having to bury him. Maupin is such an honest writer that he doesn't let his characters off the hook with pat happy endings like that. Michael knows he's blessed, but it doesn't stop him from feeling guilty and worrying about what will happen to the man he loves when he passes on.

Michael Tolliver Lives has of course a third message to the world. That the gay community is here to stay and nobody is going to push them back into the closet. These are real human beings in this book. Just like other people, some gays are assholes, liars and cheats, while others are kind and descent folk. Maupin writes about his community with honesty, affection, and humour and in doing so continues to put the world on notice that it is going to have to grow up and accept gays as part of society in the same way blacks were integrated.

Most of all Michael Tolliver Lives is a wonderful story about growing old and learning how to be grateful for the small gifts that fortune throws your way, and to deal with the pitfalls with as much grace and style as possible. Gay or straight that's a lesson for all of us.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:02 AM | Permalink

One of the hardest things to do in the arts is to take something from one medium to another. From book to film, theatre, or television is the most common transfer but still the one most fraught with difficulties. The adaptations and changes that scriptwriters and directors are forced into by either time restraints and the other constraints that the visual medias have as compared to the written are always going to be stumbling blocks no matter what the circumstances.

Instead of being able to describe what you want the audience to see and tell them the information you want them to have, you have to rely on what you can create visually with the camera and the skill of the actors in imparting information. No matter how many times you shoot a scene, and how many different ways an actor does the same line or series of lines they could still very well not get it right and you're left without getting the same feel as the original narrative.

Sometimes, as in the case of Peter Jackson and his version of The Lord Of The Rings everything comes together to create a stunning adaptation of the original for the screen. In other instances, the first two Harry Potter for instance, may have stayed with the plot, but seemed to lose some of the essence and magic of Harry's world.
Of course I'm sure others would disagree with both of my assessments and have their own ideas on how the movies should have been.

But whenever a director and crew are dealing with a character or story that has a huge following they will be faced with massive amounts of back seat directing. What's probably even worse is if someone has already taken a stab at producing the stories and had some success. That's exactly what faced those involved with producing the most recent series based on the character created by Ian Rankin, Detective Inspector (D.I.) John Rebus.

Now nineteen books into a series that started in 1985 when Ian Rankin was still a student, the character of D.I. John Rebus has become one of the most popular figures in modern crime fiction. The books themselves are a wonderful mixture of gritty realism and human interest as the audience has been introduced to John Rebus, the work he does, and the mess he has made of his personal life.

So what can a director and screenwriter do when faced with the prospect of bringing an almost iconic figure to television and fitting close to three hundred pages of story into sixty to seventy minutes of screen time? Well judging by the four episodes contained in Rebus 2, available from Acorn Media, they've come up with a great solution.

In order to simplify matters they have taken stories from through out DI Rebus's case history and set them all in the same time period. This has allowed them to focus on his interpersonal relationships with the two characters in the books from the police who have featured prominently; Detective Chief Superintendent Gilles Templer, a former girl friend of Rebus', and Detective Siobhan Clarke his junior partner (pronounced She-von).

By doing this they have been able to ensure that they have created an atmosphere where they can allow an actor of skill to bring John Rebus to life, and thus make the books come to life. For after all without the character of John Rebus these books wouldn't be all that special and without an actor who can embody those traits that have endeared and exasperated Rebus to his legion of fans the show would be a flop.

In rumpled, intense, and tough Ken Stott the people behind this production have found a perfect actor for the role. Watching him on screen performing I can't imagine anyone else playing the character anymore. His face is that of a man who has seen all the horrors that one human can do to another, but it hasn't jaded him.

In one telling line in the episode "The Black Book" he says to a police psychologist he has been ordered to see that what he does is not a job, but a vocation. His calling is rectify the injustice he sees behind most crime. Someone has been victimized and it's his duty to correct the imbalance that caused that injustice.

Stott's performance is nothing short of brilliant in that he is able to personify that absolute dedication and idealism without resorting to anything more then his characterization. Watching his Rebus carry out an investigation with the tenacity of a bulldog, seeing the look of grim determination as he goes to a murder scene for the first time, serves notice that he will find who is responsible no matter how long it takes, or whose toes he has to step on in the process.

The two women cast opposite him, Claire Price as Detective Sergeant Clarke and Jennifer Black as Templer are able to play the parts of foils to Rebus and at the same time create characters who are interesting in their own right. Chief Superintendent Templer is in the unenviable position of being a woman in a man's world, where not only is the pressure on her to succeed as a police officer, but to prove that a woman is as capable as a man as a top cop. So when Rebus flies by his own set of rules she has further complication always in the back of her head when she has to decide on how to keep him on the leash.

Clarke as Rebus' junior knows that he gets results and his instincts are amazing, but what will someone like him do to her career ambitions? Will being associated with Rebus hold her back due to his insubordination, or will their high rate of success be enough of a mitigating factor to boost her chances of promotion?

Included on the disc that contains the episode "Let It Bleed", is a documentary feature on the making of this series, a nice history of the books and a look at the previous attempt at filming them. There is a really good interview with author Ian Rankin where he admits that he's not really watched either of attempts for the simple reason that he doesn't want to have his version of Rebus affected by what an actor does.

Judging by the four episodes that I were included in the Box Set, Rebus 2 watching Ken Stott portray Rebus wouldn't do anything to change Mr. Rankin's vision of his character. This show has captured the essence of D.I. Rebus and in doing so have brought the books to life on television as well as anybody has ever adapted any book for the film, stage, or small screen.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:05 AM | Permalink

Once they lived in a northern province of India, but something or somebody set their feet upon the road west. From India they followed the trade routes that brought them to the Middle East and Egypt where some stopped and began a life there. Others continued on into Asia where they circumvented the Black Sea and crossed over to Turkey and Istanbul.

Following the Danube River the people dispersed out through Europe, from Bulgaria to as far away as Ireland. The Romany, gypsies, travellers, tinkers, and Roma are the names we now know them by, and a great many of them still keep to the ways of their ancestors. While modern countries, visas, and passports have curtailed a great deal of their wandering other aspects of their lives have remained unchanged in the thousand or so years that they've lived among the "unclean".

Due to their taboos of what is considered unclean they still live apart from the non-gypsy community as they always have. Like their fellow second-class citizens of Eastern Europe, the Jews, their tendency to isolation has caused resentment and anger among the non-gypsies who they live among. Even now in countries throughout Europe they are still treated with derision and suspicion.

But since the fall of communism in the East the gap between the Roma and European culture has started to be bridged via the music that is the Roma's main means of artistic expression. Even as early as the 19th century Hungarian composers Franz Lizt and Bella Bartok were incorporating their music into orchestral pieces. Now it's the people who carry on the traditions of their nation who are playing the music for audiences around the world.

Fanfare Ciocarlia from Romania, are one of the foremost proponents of gypsy brass band music and are playing a large role in bringing the music of the Roma into the public eye. Their latest release on Asphalt Tango Records, Kings and Queens, is a perfect example of the work they are doing. Aside from their own prodigious talents they have gathered together other musicians from around Europe to join them in celebrating the music of Roma to be listened to by audiences around the world.

Initially the musicians of Fanfare Ciocarlia had come into contact with all the performers on the disc during an earlier tour of the United States and Europe called Gypsy Caravan. In 2006 the founder of the band Ioan Ivancea passed on and though the band vowed to continue without him they wanted to do something to commemorate his life. So they gathered together the friends they had met on the Gypsy Caravan tour to record the many flavours of Gypsy music.

The name of the disc Kings and Queens was to honour his memory, but was also more then just idle boasting when you consider some of the people who perform on the disc. Macedonian Esma Redzepova was crowned Queen of the Gypsies by Indira Gandhi and has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. But even those who have not been given title by anybody are also considered royalty among the musical brethren and sistern of the Gypsy world.

From France came the Flamenco guitar sounds of Gitans Kaloome and somehow they are blended into the brass band sound of Fanfare without any problem. Strummed strings and voices soar in amongst the trumpets, clarinet, saxophone, and tuba to create tangos like you've never heard before.

Aside from turbaned Esma's magnificent voice singing two marvellous songs, the women vocalists on this disc represent three generations of singers and music. Ljiljana Butler (ne Petrovic) was born in Bosina in the early 1940's but fled to Germany during the civil wars and violence following the death of Tito. Her deep, almost masculine voice is amazing for its strength and passion. From Hungary comes Mitsou whose use of modern technology and rap rhythms somehow some how works with tuba and sousaphone providing the beats. Florentina Sandu is the granddaughter of Nicolae Neacsu the founder of the Romania's other great gypsy band Taraf De Haidouks, and her singing shows the music gene still flourishes in her generation.

Of course male singers are equally represented across the generations and the continent. Serbian Saban Bajramovic was another survivor of post Tito Yugoslavia who made a name for himself as a singer songwriter during Tito's rule and continues to sing with soul and passion to this day. Romanian Dan Armeanca wasn't as fortunate as it wasn't until after the fall of communism he was able to achieve popular acclaim. He still shuns publicity, which is a shame because his voice is wonderful and has the majesty one expects from an elder statesman of the Roma. Representing the younger generation is Jony Iliev from Bulgaria who began singing in his family's band when he was thirteen. He signs a wonderfully funny and sexy song about his love for a black woman.

But the stars of the show are without a doubt Fanfare Ciocarlia themselves. They play with wild abandon and exuberance that lends credence to their claim of being the fastest band on earth. But in spite of their speed they never sound as though they are rushing through a song. Every note is played with precision and focus so that the sound is crystal clear.

Listening to them you can hear echoes of every type of music that's ever come out of Eastern Europe and the Balkans; Klezmar, Polkas and the sounds of every folk music you've ever heard from that part of the world shows its face in their music. For all of their traditionalism though they are not afraid of the new and the different. When the producers of an American movie were looking for somebody to perform "Born To Be Wild" like's it never been done before it was Fanfare Ciocarlia they turned to.

Believe me when I tell you there is no more apt song to close this disc than their cover of that seminal Steppenwolf classic. Once you hear their version you'll be a fan for life and quickly forget that it was ever done another way. Just like nothing can prepare you for their version of "Born To Be Wild", and nothing you've ever heard can be compared to it, nothing can prepare you for the experience that is Fanfare Ciocarlia and nothing compares to them. Once you've heard them you will never forget them, and will wish that there was at least just one more song on the disc.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:57 AM | Permalink

Everybody always talks about the connection between Jazz music and Africa. How if you listen to tribal music you can hear in the drums the roots of what we now call Jazz. In fact many modern Jazz artists have "gone back to Africa" so to speak, and begun to make use of tribal instruments as part of their percussion sections.

But the flow goes both ways and African musicians have heard the music that's undergone a renaissance and a metamorphous and have in turn incorporated it into the music they perform and come up with their own versions of Jazz (as well as blues and popular music). One of the first to rise to prominence was Hugh Masekela from South Africa.

As a young man he came under the tutelage of some of the greats of American Jazz and popular music. Louis Armstrong gave him a trumpet, Harry Belafonte arranged for him to come to New York City to study music, and Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis took him under their wings to teach him the intricacies of Jazz. Living the life of an exile from his homeland because of apartheid, Hugh had more opportunities than most of his contemporaries to be exposed to North American Jazz and other Western pop influences.

At the same time he was also providing inspiration to North American pop artists like Paul Simon. Graceland, which featured Hugh, was one of the first popular attempts at tracing the path that African music had blazed across the landscape of American pop music. It also served to bring the name Hugh Masekela further into the general public's awareness and added to his reputation as an ambassador for African culture and music.

Seventeen years ago Masekela was able to return to his homeland and in that time has not only continued his musical career but has also set out to develop a pan African entertainment and recording network to replace the mostly foreign owned system that is currently in place. It was only fitting therefore that The Market Theatre in South Africa, where Hugh's musical Sarafina received it's first performance, and home to African culture even during the worst days of apartheid, had him close out their month long thirtieth anniversary celebrations with two evenings of concerts.

Hugh Masekela Live At The Market Theatre on Times Square Records is a two disc recording taken from those live concerts and is being released to coincide with Hugh's planned 2007, three month summer tour of the United States and Canada. For those of you, like me, who are more familiar with the name then the music, and not sure what to expect, these two discs are a revelation.

From song to song you don't know what to expect. It could be something similar to the jazz/funk fusion of Miles Davis, jazz melodies with reggae backbeats, the sounds of the South African townships mixed with Jazz, and what could only be described as Hugh's own unique blending of the different strains of African music as it has dispersed around the world.

Of course there are also the songs that are familiar but I didn't know that Hugh Masekela had written like the classic anthem calling for the release of Nelson Mandela "Mandela". Hearing this song sung live makes you also realize how much of an impact and connection Masekela has with the people of his homeland. The audience reaction to the music and the sound of them spontaneously breaking into song indicated how much the man and his music had come to symbolize freedom as much as Nelson Mandela himself.

Song after song on this recording had the air of celebration to it, either celebrating their country or their culture. Unlike North American Jazz, which relies heavily on instrumental compositions, voice plays a large part in this music. Perhaps it's that element that gives the music it's celebratory air like the voices in Afro-American gospel music make that music a joyous occasion. Make A Joyful Sound may have been about gospel music but it could just as easily apply to Live At The Market Theatre.

Of course some of the songs are about the less pleasant things in life living in Africa. For instance "Stimela" is about workers who are paid next to nothing for backbreaking work, or "District Six" is about the neighbourhoods that were artificially created by the government during apartheid. But even these songs, that are about serious social issues, aren't depressing just because they are about serious social issues, they are strong, powerful, affirmations of the human spirit that call upon people to rise up out of oppression, instead of being piteous complaints.

The music of Hugh Masekela that is presented on Live At The Market Theatre is obviously representative of the type of work he has done for his whole career. Songs like "Grazing In The Grass", which was the first instrumental song to rise to the top of the Billboard charts, celebrates Africa and Her people, provided hope in times of trouble and inspiration for a better tomorrow.

If Nelson Mandela was the face of liberation for South Africa during the long years of apartheid, then Hugh Masekela was its sound. Listening to him singing and playing with his band in South Africa at the Market Theatre is an affirmation for all of us that the impossible can happen and dreams can be realized.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:46 PM | Permalink

As far back as humans have been telling stories we've been telling ones of epic proportions. Even before we were writing things down, Homer in Greece and Valmiki in India were reciting the verses they had created commemorating the lives of cultural heroes. Later civilizations, like the Romans with Virgil's Aenead, co-opted the form to create a suitably heroic past for themselves.

Mythical or true the epic served the purpose of providing a culture with a hero of exemplary character who could be held up for all to emulate. Some cultures have created their religions on similar lines, with a central figure both worshipped and emulated. Over the years though the application of the word epic has changed and is usually only used to indicate the size and breadth of the narrative.

Long gone are epics created meant to serve a culture as guidelines, mainly because that role is no longer necessary, but that still doesn't mean the term should be tossed about as lightly as it is today and applied to writing just because it runs into multiple instalments or a huge number of words. How many times have you read of something being described as a "sweeping epic narrative of …"?

Nine times out of ten it usually means the author has written thousands of pages of pointless drivel based on some romantic notion of history. It's the reading equivalent of eating a ten course meal of fast food – it's the same as a ten course meal of gourmet food in size, but has none of the substance that makes you remember it an hour after you've eaten.

Steven Erikson's series Malazan Book Of The Fallen, published by Bantam Press, definitely qualifies as a gourmet banquet of delights. The publication of the seventh book, Reaper's Gale, of his ten book contribution to the story of the Malazan Empire is another indication of how impressive his talents truly are. (A fellow Canadian author has now joined Mr. Erikson in contributing to telling the story of the Empire, Ian C. Eslemont's first instalment Night Of Knives is being released by Bantam on July 24th)

Over the course of the first six books of the series Mr. Erikson has managed what I consider the remarkable achievement of creating a multitude of characters and plots without once allowing his work to descend into confusion. In fact he's one of the few authors I know where the introduction of new plots and characters actually clarifies matters instead of confusing them further.

The reason he is able to accomplish this seemingly difficult task is his patience as a writer. He allows his characters and his plots plenty of time to develop so his readers are able to be comfortable with both the situations and the people. People who were briefly introduced in early books as chance encounters, come back in a later book to have their story told in full and their place in the history explained. They might then be set aside for another entire book, but when we meet them again we know who they are and what their role is destined to be.

The title Reaper's Gale is a reference to the old saying about "reaping a whirlwind" as a consequence of your actions. A number of assorted plots and schemes have been launched by a variety of beings, ranging from mortal to God, over the course of the first six books, and now they are reaping that Gale.

The Malazan armies have landed on the coast of Letherii to ferment rebellion against the Tiste Edur who has conquered that Empire. But the battle between elements of the Fourteenth army and the Tiste Edur and Letherii forces is only one layer of the battle. While the mortals wage bloodthirsty war, plots and counter plots are being acted out around them on all levels of reality.

What holds everything together is Erikson's wonderful skill in creating characters. Unlike the epics of old where there is one character who was representative of all that was supposedly admirable about a culture, we have a multitude of characters who represent all that is the best and the worst of humankind. Of course there are heroes and villains, but then there are also the others who are neither or the ones we will always be unsure of.

Erikson makes it clear that good and evil have nothing to do with nationality or race. Among the supposed enemy there are just as many good men and women in the armies opposed to the invading forces, who are just as capable of heroic and selfless acts as anybody else. The villains in these stories have never been soldiers after all, rather those who use them to obtain wealth and power for themselves.

It's probably no accident that the God who tempts with the means to obtain power over others is crippled, and those who utilize his gifts more often then not end up with bodies as deformed and pain ridden as their patron. Their physical deformity is testimony to the corruption of their minds and a manifestation of their diseased souls.

The epic stories of old were told to recount the exploits of heroes and to try and impart to their readers and listeners something of the scale of the events. Battles were fought that changed the course of history, and all of the events were larger then life. Erikson not only retains those elements he improves on the format by introducing the human element with the characters he creates.

It's through these characters that we are drawn into the story, instead of being left on the outside watching a larger than life hero. We want to know what happens to them and that more then anything else is what keeps us turning the pages. Everything about these books is well written, from the descriptions of the surroundings to the chaos of battle, but it's our investment in his characters that make all those elements matter.

Reaper's Gale is another wonderful instalment in Steven Erikson's remarkable creation The Malazan Book of the Fallen. Reading his work is a reminder of what epic fiction really is. Readers in Canada can buy Reaper's Gate directly from Random House Canada or other online retailers like Amazon Canada

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:01 PM | Permalink

To say that Bob Brozman is not your everyday, run of the mill guitar player is just a wee bit of an understatement. Aside from the fact that he is a highly accomplished and skilled slide player on almost any strummed, struck or plucked instrument, it’s the number of them that he is able to pick up and play with equal skill and abandon.

But Bob hasn't just learned other people's instruments so that they sound cool when included in his music. He's been like a pilgrim of old visiting shrines around the world. But instead of the tombs of saints his Mecca has been the musicians of various cultures where he has sat with them and learned how to their music and instruments.

Bob and I have been trying to set up an interview since almost the start of this year but his schedule and life haven't allowed him any time to sit down and answer the questions I sent him until now. Of course the timing couldn't have been better as he's just released Lumiere an album of orchestrated instrumental compositions created and performed by Bob.

Each piece utilized Bob's accumulated knowledge of music and prodigious talent with instruments as he wove seemingly disparate styles of music together seamlessly into a variety pieces that represented the sounds of the countries and people he had met and worked with.

My interview with Bob focuses mainly on the here and now, his inspiration, his ideas, and his hopes for his music. For those who want some biographical detail or are looking for a full discography I suggest checking out his web site. Without further ado…Bob Brozman

Who were your first musical influences/ do they still play a part in what you perform today.

My early influences in roots American music are varied, but still affect my aesthetic senses: For Blues, Charley Patton, above all. He was for me the deepest and most interesting player/singer, whose sound goes almost back to Africa. While I like Robert Johnson, I find his music to be a little more self-conscious, and less musically profound. I am sure that above all, the urgency and fully committed passion of Patton really infuses my music.

For Hawaiian, Sol Hoopii was the greatest steel guitarist, and you can hear echoes of his music in my steel playing, though no 2 steelers sound alike. For Hawaiian music in general, my hero of course is Tau Moe (see Hawaii at Bob's site for the full story on this first collaboration of mine (1989)) with Tau and family, who made their first records in 1929! Tau was also the teacher of the teacher of the teacher of Debashish Bhattacharya! Very deep stuff for me, my relationship with Tau, especially as an influence of how to be a human being in the music business and in the working day of the musician.

Then for early Jazz, many African-American artists of the 1920’s affected me: Louis Armstrong, Don Redman, Tiny Parham, Eddie South, many more. And I must also cite Eddie Lang and of course Django as other strong jazz influences. From there, I was deeply influenced by calypso artists from Trinidad: Wilmouth Houdini, and Growling Tiger in particular. From there, Africa and the rest of the world continued to open up to me, with too many great artists to list!!

When did the resonator guitar first become such an important instrument in your life?

Having played guitar since 5 years old, I first played an old National guitar at 12 years old, and what an effect it has had on me!!! The huge dynamic and tonal range and musical possibilities of these instruments completely shaped my ears, and led me on a long journey around the world, while giving me a deep internal lifelong journey of exploration of musical, muscular, and emotional nuances. They have been perfect instruments for a guy like me, who thrives on the stimulation derived from exploring variations in sounds!

You've done, and still do a lot I assume, of traveling in order to play with different musicians all over the world. When did that start and why?

The work I did in 1988-90 with the Tau Moe Family was my first “ethnic” collaboration, followed by 3 projects with 2 brilliant Hawaiian slack key guitarists: Ledward Kaapana and Cyril Pahinui, the first time slack key guitar and steel were re-joined after decades of musical-social separation. (Steel guitar travelled the world, while slack key stayed on the farm in Hawaii for many decades.)

Serendipity led me to be invited to Okinawa to record with Takashi Hirayasu, and the resulting Cd Jin Jin, became a runaway world music hit. From there I started attracting other collaborators, like René Lacaille, a massive influence on me. I suppose my non-imperialistic way of working makes me a good person to collaborate with.

My reasons for doing all these collaborative projects? Well, first and foremost, musical curiosity—something I think is essential for artistic growth. Then there is the desire to bring certain artists to world attention, because I love their music! Then there is the intense high-speed learning I enjoy, and the challenge and struggle to play at 110% of my ability. And finally there are the lifelong friendships I have made, with some deeply inspiring musicians! And now, most of my fellow collaborators all have met, played and even toured together! I love it when my friends meet my friends to make exciting things happen!

Honestly, this all developed through curiosity, keeping an open mind, and serendipity, really—there was no plan at the beginning of this long story. My travels have made me fall in love with humanity.

Can you tell us about some of the most memorable people and places who you've played with.

You pretty much have the whole list when you look at my discography—all of the marvellous people I have had the honour to work with, from Hawaii, Okinawa, Reunion, India, Guinea, Papua New Guinea. Rene Lacaille was in many ways my most satisfying collaboration in terms of rising to a challenge, and in terms of sheer joy of playing and the friendship that music creates. My real diploma is to be joyfully accepted by great musicians who I admire!

You've developed a style that is decidedly unique in your ability to incorporate a multitude of musical styles and philosophies into your playing – is there one style you think of as your underpinning – the basis upon which you build everything else onto

Blues and Hawaiian equally shaped my early playing, but now African and Indian thinking really affect me, too. Reunion Island, and the music of René have recently been a strong influence on me in recent years, and it has given me even more rhythmic freedom. I live like a blind man sometimes, in an abstract world of sound. When I play there is no intellectual process—I simply hear, and then react with movement on my instruments, that’s all!

This leads quite naturally into your new album Lumière. What gave you the idea to make the work improvisational?

A complex question demanding a multi-part response.. I will give you the ideas suffusing the making of the record in this unconventional way, to improvise effectively with a large ensemble, with the music unwritten and yet to be composed.

First, I have been tapping on things since infancy, singing since 2 or 3, playing piano at 4, and finally taking up guitar at 5. As with all toddlers, my young brain was still wiring itself up, and so today it is difficult for me to use language to describe the wonderful abstract world I inhabit----somewhere between sound, movement and feeling. I don’t really play guitar, I play music, and the total commitment I give with my whole body in live shows, well, I attribute this to the ineffable synesthetic feelings music gives me, thanks to my early start.

Second, tones, timbres, and rhythms affect my emotions very deeply in large and small ways. Layering parts allowed me to explore this idea, and it HAD to be improvised--as I was affected in new ways by each new timbre or rhythm added.

Third, I have accumulated many years experience of trying to play well with musicians who are better than me, or who are playing music that is unfamiliar to me. I’ve had learn to think quickly and instinctively in order to flourish in this extremely challenging and stimulating type of environment, and I thrive on the stimulation. (I am writing this the day after playing 3 hours improvised concert in Québec, with Malagasy guitarist Solorazaf—no rehearsal, no set list, first time in front of the public, what a blast!) Thus, the knowledge often comes to me in intense short bursts of understanding and moving/playing in reaction. Some of these pieces of music with multiple parts went down to tape very quickly. The total was 16 days of recording.


: Did you hope to achieve something specific by recording in this manner that wouldn't have been possible any other way and what was your goal?

Absolutely! I was able to work like a painter, using colours in layers of varying thickness. Moreover, I was able to do all of this without a click track, since I know my own breathing. That’s why, for example, the Tango Medzinárodný has places where the whole orchestra slows down and then resumes the original tempo. This cannot be done if a metronome or click track is used. Moreover, all the emotional crescendos, decrescendos, rises and falls in volume and intensity are being done by one man who knows his feeling each moment. The result is it sounds like a couple dozen players reacting emotionally to each other’s sounds and feelings! While nothing is ever perfect, I feel I have succeeded in conveying my intentions in each piece.

In my review of Lumiere I referred to it as orchestrations for stringed instruments strummed and plucked with percussion accompaniment. When you talked about muscle memory was that in reference to the actual playing of the instruments, or was there something more to it than that? Can you explain that in a little more detail?

Definitely on the instruments, but also in the hearing, perceiving, and composing. As I mentioned above, it is the blending of emotions, movement, and sound--squeezing muscles at differing strengths and durations, controlling it by emotions only, and then, in forward-moving time, reacting with both emotions and muscles. So, I am sure I have a long and detailed neurological catalogue of gradations of emotions and muscle-actions in my brain, which constantly interfaces with the sonic input coming in! That’s technically how it all works, but I never think about any of this when I am playing.

What do you hope that a listener to Lumiere will get from the experience?

I hope they will be transported to places of their own imagination. I hope they will enjoy hearing new parts emerging upon repeated listening.

In the liner notes for Lumiere you mentioned you did the arrangements as each instrument was recorded. Have you created an actual score for each piece? Which leads of course to would you ever attempt to get together the players necessary to perform the music live?

There is no score whatsoever, and though it could be performed live, the rehearsal required would defeat the purpose of the spontaneous improvised intent of the compositions. However, the general aspects of some of the compositions will no doubt emerge in interesting ways in the future.

Now that you've done this, something that you've been working towards for twenty odd years, do you feel any loss of purpose? Or will you be able to use this as motivation to find new ways to continue to broaden the definition of Blues music?

Your first question: Are you kidding!!?? I am more stimulated than ever, playing with more clarity and focus than ever, and ready to address the long list of other projects that have been steadily stacking up around the world for me..

Your second question: I am also working finishing mixes on Post-Industrial Blues, for October 2007 release, on Ruf Records, where I am taking a of new risks in writing lyrics, new ways of singing, new instruments, .new ways of improvising, and many of the songs are slightly orchestral as well, and definitely composed in the same improvisational way as Lumière.

So I don’t worry too much about running short on ideas or inspiration. Music saved my life, and continues to make it beautiful.

You're not shy about voicing some pretty strong opinions on the state of music today. To be honest most Rock and Roll guitar playing leaves me cold and bored – it becomes only noise and no passion. That's what I loved about punk for about the two weeks before they too were co –opted – Bands like the Clash and the Pogues managed to stay outside for longer – Bob Marley and especially Peter Tosh didn't make many concessions But that’s ancient history. Rap got turned into a minstrel show for white boys from the suburbs and has become misogynist and homophobic – It's not the music of Gil Scott Herron, Grandmaster Flash, or Afrika Bambata anymore. What do you think pop music needs to do to revitalize itself to stop being so damned boring?

Personally I must challenge myself every day in order to sleep at night, as an artist. My biggest gripe about rock and pop is that it is often artistically lazy and musically very conservative, actually. I tire of artists who simply re-do what they have been doing for 35 years, without risk-taking. I mean, after one has gained the fame and the money, can you think of a SAFER time to take some artistic risk??

Another problem I see with pop culture is that, since the 70s, it just keeps re-hashing the last few decades—it seems there is not a lot of radically NEW music happening. To clarify, it was a big leap from swing to r&b to rock &roll, but it was NOT a big leap from rock to metal to grunge, art-punk to non-art punk, house to jungle…. I don’t expect to see any really big leaps in the future of pop, because big commerce always makes art more conservative!!

Having said all that, my life and workload have never been better, because there will always be some people interested in art with a little more substance. When I am onstage, it is obvious that I am just a regular human being doing real things with passion. It’s also evident that onstage I am fully committed with every cell in my body. I find it interesting indeed that since the advent of Youtube, my concert attendances have shot up, and all the newer concertgoers at my shows are under 25 years old. And many come up and say they find my way of playing AND my attitude to be refreshing and, more importantly, inspiring. I cannot identify it exactly, but there must be something I am doing right.

RISK and CURIOSITY! That is all you really need to get interesting and challenging art, I think. Pretty easy really—it’s just that in modern life there are strong social-marketing-mis-education forces at work killing curiosity and discourse…I urge people to FIGHT back with independent thinking!

You mention rap and hip-hop. But you did not mention the one other thing hip-hop has become: a 24/7 advertisement for materialism, thus the revolution got a little co-opted. These famous guys crave all the same Rolex, Gucci, Escalade crap that the establishment craves!! What about using that microphone to help the neighbourhood where you came from?? Come on, boys, don’t be so selfish—the bad guys have their microphones on ALL the time! (TV)

Another problem I see is that the concept of “fame” has been pumped up to a ridiculous degree. Celebrity used to be attached to accomplishment. Now it is often pre-made, and simply used to distract the masses from more important news about urgent real things in this world.

Part of my success has simply been trying to get BETTER, not bigger.

I heard you being interviewed about a program where you were trying to get guitars to people in impoverished villages – can you tell us about that.

Well, I have travelled a lot in the third world, and it is hard for westerners who haven’t done so to really understand how difficult things are there. After meeting US guitar collectors who own 500+ guitars, and then meeting a man in Rwanda who is trying to teach 500+ orphans to play guitar…with ONE guitar, I decided to start the Global Music Aid Foundation. In many developing countries, any common thing you can think of—they don’t have it! So musicians struggle to have strings and decent instruments to play.

The idea of the Global Music Aid Foundation is to transfer some of the musical surplus of the West (guitars, ukes, strings, and other musical basics) directly to musicians in developing countries. What little leverage I have in the guitar and music world can be used to better the world in a tiny way. Getting non-profit status is difficult in the US, so we have decided to work independently. We can thus accept materials donated, but no money donations. Now that I am doing well enough to do good, this is just something I want to do. I figure every time a new musician is created, that’s one less criminal, except possibly for Michael Jackson!

What type of role do you see yourself as a musician playing in society today? Are you strictly an Entertainer – which I don't think there is anything wrong with by the way; people need to be entertained intelligently.

Well, first, I don’t feel important, just another fella doing honest work. Second, I do think of myself as someone who breaks false myths for audiences, about show biz, myths about guitar virtuosity, and myths about a supposed “wall” between performer and audience, especially for younger people. I like to say, “This is not a concert. It is just an evening of life, together.”

I think I am becoming a kind of teacher, too, simply because I see so many people struggling with music and I just want to help. That is the impetus for all the workshops I conduct around the world, and for my teaching DVDs, to give back some of what has been given to me.

Third, I guess I have evolved slowly into a bit of a socio-political raconteur. While there are people who don’t want an artist to talk about much onstage (shut up and play), I disagree. Artists, by definition, have sensitive perceptual antennae, thus we are something like the canaries in the mineshaft of society, an early warning system—our bullshit detectors are turned up full! I would also like to say that the concert ticket may RENT the artist for a night, but it does not BUY him!

But mainly, I see myself dealing in brain-chemistry alteration, using moving air waves! I love the grey zone between biochemical-neurological reactions to sound waves, and human feeling/meaning derived from music! It is an endlessly fascinating area of thought. I see people at the end of my shows, smiling and talking excitedly. I love to stimulate, light a fire under people, and just transfer some of my deep and passionate love of life and music!

Sometimes when I happen to hear today's popular music or hear about what's popular on tv I get the feeling the last thing people want to do is think. Everything seems to be geared towards escapism and stopping people from thinking. You've seen a lot of music all over the world and played with a lot of musicians, in your opinion is this something particular to our society or do elements of it exist everywhere?

Well, as I said above, commerce tends to ruin art. Great forces have been at work for the last 35 years, to stop critical thinking, and discourse, in the US especially.

• Slashing education,


• increasing greed and materialism while jobs evaporate,


• fundamentalism,


• ever-increasing pop & celebrity culture


• declining access to international and economic information,


• fear of terrorism,


• fear of losing your job,


• constant media noise and distraction


• overuse of pharmaceuticals


• choppy MTV editing style killing the ability to think in paragraphs

Language needs translation, but music does not. I think music’s ancient original purpose in our evolution was to engender co-operation between people. It provides a window into another person’s mind, with a much smaller error rate than language!

Globalism (American corporatism) is indeed spreading everywhere, regrettably. The advertisers of the (non-existent) American dream are powerful. The US may be a rich country, but I think it has a poverty of empathy. Sometimes I think the poorest music comes from the richest countries. Is it just that the top 1% wealthiest, who essentially run everything, are simply NOT funky?

You did a lot of what people like to call world music, and now you're doing a style people will call Blues for the sake of giving it a label – where do you see yourself moving musically in the future, or is that even something you've given much thought?

Well, actually I have been doing both for a very long time. Lumière, which you have recently reviewed, represents a summation and full development of my adventures in world music up to now. My next blues record (Post-Industrial Blues-- releases on Ruf, in October 2007!) takes my blues side further than ever, with a few new instruments, as well as a LOT of new original songs, some of a very socio-political nature, for the first time. There is a lot of risk on this record—as a songwriter/lyricist, and with new risky ways of singing. I’ll be very curious to see the reaction it gets.

For 2008 and beyond, there are a lot of new projects in the hopper, but I am not ready to discuss them yet!

One last question, if there was one place in the whole world you could go and play with another group of musicians right now, just for fun where would that be?

Back to Madagascar, tout suite! There is so much to learn there, and I just love the place. In the next few years, I hope to mount a large Madagascar guitar project. So many incredible musicians there, and I love the challenge of trying to keep up!

Well that marks the end of my interview with Bob Brozman. As you can see he's not only a talented and gifted musician he's also one of the most thoughtful men I've had the privilege of interviewing for a long while. You may not agree with everything he said, but you can never deny his passion for what he does.

Thank you Bob Brozman for your time and for sharing a little bit of your passion with me.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:59 AM | Permalink

There are many ways that filmmakers have made use of the documentary form of cinematography to tell a story. One that has come into favour in recent times has been the "mockumentary". One of the more recent attempts that achieved notoriety was of course The Blair Witch Project, but more often or not the mode is employed for the potential it offers for humour and satire.

Meet The Ruttles, featuring Eric Idle was a send up of the whole Beatles phenomenon and one of the first full length mockumentaries that I know of. But it wasn't unit Rob Reiner made This Is Spinal Tap that the format gained wide acceptance. Since then amateur theatre groups, dog shows, and folk musicians have all been subject to the "mock" treatment with various degrees of success.

The secret to a good mockumentary is its ability to present the ridiculous or the unbelievable, in as realistic a manner as possible. Every attempt must be made to make things as believable as possible in order for the absurdity of the situation to shine through.

In the new Cinema Libre Studio release, The Hole Story we are presented with a mockumentary in the black comedy/satire territory. But there's an added twist in that the line between reality and movie is blurred almost beyond recognition.

Writer/director Alex Karpovsky has created the story of want-to-be T.V. documentary/human interest show director Alex Karpovsky who has given up his job editing Karaoke videos to pursue his dream of selling a pilot to Cable television. Provincial Puzzles will travel around the United States seeking out mysterious events that have happened in small town America and try to come up with answers to the riddle posed in each case.

For his pilot Alex has chosen to go to Brainerd Minnesota in the middle of the winter. Where, in spite of temperatures well below zero Fahrenheit, for the second year in a row a mysterious hole has opened in the ice on North Long Lake just outside of town. With his savings Alex hires a crew and heads out to Brainerd only to discover that two days before he arrived the hole had frozen over again.

But Alex won't give up that easily and he decides to do his interviews with locals, and the other stand ups that can be shot without actually seeing the lake. You never know he says, the hole could open up again just as easily as it closed. After all they don't know why it opened in the first place do they – so what's to stop it from opening again?

The only leap of faith that we as the audience need to take is to wonder why Alex's film crew never stops filming him. After all they are here to shoot a television pilot not to shoot Alex every step of the way. But that's also part of the joke too – because at times Alex will take the camera into the bathroom with him in the middle of the night to record his thoughts for posterity.

In fact his second monologue is one of the best bits in the film I thought. It's a drunken, rambling monologue about the need for myth in American life and how his television show will fill that need. Going from town to town he envisions creating a new mythology out of the stories he tells about each town's mystery.

It has to be one of the best pieces of satire that I've seen or heard on film in ages. His vision is so at odds with what he is actually doing, making cheesier versions of Life's Unsolved Mysteries or whatever those shows are called. It's almost like he is trying to mythologize American Kitsch; Franklin Mint, Hallmark Cards, and Disney World are his visions of myth instead of the real folk tales that people told each other.

He cites Paul Bunyon, whose home was credited with being Brainerd Minnesota, as his inspiration as a true American Folk Tale, when in actual fact Paul Bunyon was a creation of an ad agency back in 1910. Alex's great vision is as tarnished as the myth he is trying to forcibly create in Brainerd with the hole in the ice.

Eventually when the hole fails to materialize he takes a chainsaw to the ice and cuts a hole big enough to jump in. After six days in the hospital recovering from hypothermia he checks himself into a mental institution suffering from deep depression. It's while in there he finally figures out how the hole is formed and comes up with a plan to recreate the circumstances that will allow it to open again.

For Alex the hole takes on mythic proportions because his whole life revolves around it. Without the pilot he will have to go back to a lifetime of editing Karaoke videos, and the pilot can't happen without the hole. Perhaps the fact that the town folk refer to the hole as a Black Hole, should have given Alex a clue. Supposedly a Black Hole is an area of space where nothing exists. They're perfect vacuums and anything that gets drawn into them ceases to exist.

Alex doesn't quite cease to exist but he gets awfully close, with the rest of the world retreating into the background, the hole becomes his raison d'etre, and without that piece of nothing he's nothing. Somehow the irony of that is lost on poor Alex, and that's part of what makes the movie so funny. But it also makes Alex a figure of ultimate pathos as he pursues his empty dream.

If you do buy The Hole Story on DVD I recommend that you watch the completed pilot episode of Provincial Puzzles that's included in the special features. In it we see all the staged, faked shots, that we had seen Alex create to compensate for the lack of the hole as tried to create his own Paul Bunyun; a myth of definitely non-epic proportions.

The Hole Story is a funny, sad, and satirical commentary on television, false visions, and obsession. Looked at through the lens of the camera shooting Alex, the American Dream looks more then a bit like a nightmare.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:05 PM | Permalink

I'm sorry, but I still can't think of Sweden and pop music without breaking out into a cold sweat. ABBA; the name alone makes the hair on the back of my neck start to rise and my fingers tremble. They and bands like Bonny M are aberrations that will sometimes make me wonder about people who live in the North of Europe.

The real curse of ABBA is that they seem to have more then just the one life. First they were the band, and now they are the musical. Some horrible Sadist created a Broadway musical out of their music and it will now tour as a road show through North America for eternity. Nothing freezes the blood quite like the idea of a semi-professional production featuring the music of ABBA being staged by anyone evil enough to pay for the rights to produce it.

Yes I know they were insanely popular, selling millions of records worldwide and probably continuing to do so until this day. I've never even had the nerve or energy to try and figure out how they were and are so popular. I'm sure if I were to discover the reason I might be driven to some desperate act like suicide. There are questions in this world that are better left unanswered and that is most definitely one of them.

Thankfully a new generation of Swedish musicians are working to make reparations to the world through the creation of music that will drive a stake through the heart of the un-dead, saccharine monster. One such stalwart individual is Pelle Carlberg who has just released the album In A Nutshell on Twenty Seven Records. In a daring move he attacks them on their own territory by writing seemingly innocuous pop songs and then subverting the form with lyrics of wit and intelligence.

Wit and intelligence of course work against ABBA like wooden stakes and garlic do against other legions of the un-dead. While one can be used to hold them at bay, the other puts them out of our misery. That Pelle has been able to cleverly disguise his subterfuge only makes his hopes for success that much greater.

Catchy tunes, a lilting voice, and choruses so hook laden you could start a fishing fleet, can't quite disguise a slight sardonic quality in the vocals. The opening track, "Pamplona" with its strings, sounds for all the world like it could have come from the same factory that manufactured ABBA until you hear the lyrics. Pelle very carefully reels you in with some fluff only to drop a rock on your head with the last line.

All along you were under the impression that it was your typical, boy trying to impress girl song, and he pulls the rug out from under you with barely a hint of what's coming. The only indication that something might be up is a sardonic quality to his voice that makes you notice just how pointless and silly the words really are.

Maybe after you've heard the first song you might start to read the song titles a little closer, because if you do you might start getting some clues as to where this is disc is going. "I Love You, You Imbecile" is not your typical title for a love song, nor is "Crying All The Way To The Pawnshop" normally what you'd expect for the name of a pop song.

As you get deeper into the disc you start to get the idea of what Pelle is all about and how subversive In A Nutshell really is. "Middle Class Kid" is a wonderful send up of all the bands that look for art and suffering in their lives. The reality of course is that when compared to the plight of the rest of the world their problems are inconsequential and trivial.

But he's more then just a one note voice and keeps you guessing about what his songs are going to be about. "Even A Broken Clock (is Right Twice a Day)" doesn't sound like the most promising title for a love song, and in fact the lyrics might make you think its not. But again Pelle saves the key line for the end, and the closing couplet quickly makes you realize how everything until that point was meaningless. Material matters are nowhere near as important as being able to understand each other emotionally in a relationship. We need to examine the way in which we judge people is the message that comes through loud and clear from two simple lines: "But she can still look straight in my eyes/And tell when I'm sad."

Pelle Carlberg is a gifted and talented songwriter and musician. He has written all the songs and plays nearly all the instruments on this album. The music is deliberately catchy pop but beneath the fluff aren't just the hooks of a popular song but the barbs of satire and social commentary. In A Nutshell might not be able to banish the ghost of ABBA completely, but it goes a long way towards clearing the air. If for no other reason then that we owe Pelle a vote of thanks.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:19 PM | Permalink

Back in the mid to late seventies, when I had no hope of ever getting into bars, I was fortunate that a few of the old coffee houses in Toronto still hung on. Though long past its hey day when Joni Mitchell and Neil Young played there, The Riverboat on Yorkville Ave was still the flagship around which the survivors rallied.

I loved the music and enjoyed the atmosphere of these places; but the things I liked about them most, lack of drunks and intimate space, were probably the very things that doomed them. Unfortunately these places also provided proof that people don't need alcohol to act like pompous twits too in love with the sound of their own voices to notice that nobody gave a damn what they thought or had to say.

It was my first meeting with the bizarre creature whom I've since come to call folkmusicseriosus. Male or female, I think they are interchangeable, believe that its not music unless played on an acoustic guitar, songs have to be about something that "matters", and the proper place for emotions is on stage at the point in the song where you close your eyes to show how affected, (sorry effected) you are by world events or the disintegration of a relationship.

The species was driven to the edge of extinction with the loss of their natural habitat, the folk club, at the end of the seventies, but managed to hang on at the fringes of local folk societies making a royal pain of themselves. Unfortunately with the recent surge of interest in traditional music their population seems to have stabilized and even started to grow.

All of which makes the arrival of Folk Uke on the scene all the more timely. You'd be harder to come by better credentials for a folk duo then Amy Nelson and Cathy Guthrie considering their parentage and heritage and their debut album, Folk Uke, does nothing to dispel that belief.

For starters they sound like they've been singing together forever, as their vocal harmonies are wonderful. They also have a good ear for what songs will work for them, and the covers they have chosen are ideally suited to their talents and their style. The opening song on the album, "Tonight You Belong To Me" is an old standard written in 1926, which they perform straight, but with just enough tongue in cheek that you know their not taking it too seriously.

But they also take the old Johnny Cash song, "I Still Miss Someone" from 1958 and do a beautiful rendition with achingly pure harmonies and an understanding of how this type of song needs to be sung. But they aren't their father's daughters for nothing and they have inherited both men's sense of mischief and sly humour.

If you didn't know the title of their second song and began by listening to only the sound of their voices you'd be expecting something along the lines of the first song, until you hear the lyrics. "Shit Makes The Flowers Grow" gives answer to the question every woman has asked at one time or the other of a particularly useless boyfriend: what purpose do you serve?

The vocals and the harmonies are as pure and sweet as any nice country girl could make it and the lyrics are hysterical (Listen for Papa Willie supplying a very specific vocal harmony on this number – it's one word only so if you're not careful you could miss it) This song is only the beginning as Amy and Cathy demonstrate time and time again that not only are they wonderful singers and clever songwriters they have a wicked sense of irony.

But what really makes songs like "Motherfucker Got Fucked Up" work isn't the crassness of the language but their ability to play everything straight. You can't tell from the tones of their voices or the sound of the music whether the song you're going to be listening to is a sweet song like "Try To Say Goodbye" written by Jackie Guthrie or the satirical "In Case We Die".

While the former depicts the break-up of a relationship in real terms, the latter pokes fun at the idea being scared of the future with lines like "We could trip over our own feet, or how about the psychos we could meet". In view of all those potential hazards it only makes sense to "kiss me one more time before you go".

Country music has long been the butt of people's jokes but usually they are sung by people who don't have the affection and respect for the music that Cathy Guthrie and Amy Nelson have. These are intelligent and well-crafted songs that show respect and admiration for the genre and that makes the songs twice as funny. Of course Folk Ukeis also the first folk album I've seen that carries a parental advisory warning on the cover – so don't let your parents listen to it until you think they can cope.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:16 PM | Permalink

A couple of years ago I received a CD in the mail from a blues label with some of the finest blues guitar work I had ever heard. Slide work on National Resonator guitars that could make you weep and picking that was absolutely extraordinary were sufficient to make me think that Bob Brozman should be ranked as one of the world's top guitar players.

Latter that year I received a DVD from the same company (Ruf Records) of Bob in concert in a German nightclub. Nothing in that performance did anything to make me change my mind about his abilities except maybe to hold him in even higher esteem. The DVD also included an interview with Bob and I liked what he had to say about music and the state of the world.

By the time I watched the DVD I had found out quite a bit more about Bob and the extent of his musical expertise. Not only was he an astounding blues guitar player, but he had also played music with musicians from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, with stops in the Indian Ocean and the Sea of Japan. I had barely heard of Reunion Island let alone known they had their own remarkable musical heritage, and yet there was Bob's smiling face looking back at me from the cover of Dig Dig.

This was the CD where he joined forces with Rene Lacaille from Reunion Island to play the music that is unique in the whole world to this island in The Indian Ocean. Papua New Guinea, Hawaii, Okinawa, and everywhere else it seems there was music to be played, he had been, studied and learned how to incorporate it into his music.

Eventually there comes a point where you have to decide what you are going go do with all this accumulated knowledge that will do it proper honour. Of course he had already made albums with the people who taught him the various styles of music, but what about combining all the music and the instruments into one album of music? Would it even be possible?

Well Bob's new release on Riverboat Records, his first for theWorld Music Network, Lumiere is as a resounding a yes to that question as you'll ever hear. Jokingly he calls himself The Bob Brozman Orchestra, (look at the cover, all of those guys in Shriner caps are Bob) because of all the different stringed instruments he plays. But he is serious about the concept of orchestrating sound, tone, and timbre to create universal emotional experiences that can be shared by people from all the cultures he draws upon for his musical inspiration.

His description of how the album was recorded tells you all you need to know about the man's quality as a musician and an artist. For each piece (these are not songs, they are short orchestral pieces for plucked and strummed string instruments with percussion accompaniment) he would start with a literally small instrument, (the Bolivian charango, a ten stringed cousin of the ukulele is one he sites) and play an improvised solo based on the theme that had been decided for the particular piece.

If it was to be in the style of a tango like the first piece, "Tango Medzinarodny" appropriate instruments would then improvise parts in reaction to what had already been recorded. Arrangements would be created on the fly, as the parts were being played, allowing for a completely spontaneous emotional reaction on Bob's part as he played.

The way he describes the process, talking as he does about calling upon muscle memory (the idea that the muscles of the body know how to play the music without the brain's interference) makes it sound akin to a spiritual experience. While that element exists it also requires exquisite talent and years of work to achieve the level of accomplishment needed for playing an instrument to be part of the involuntary muscle structure of the body.

If anyone has any doubts about Bob Brozman's ability to carry out this seemingly impossible venture even a cursory listening to Lumiere is enough to lay them to rest. But don't just put this disc on to play in the background; it would be tantamount to insulting the creations. Each piece of music on this disc is a marvellous creation that reflects not only Bob's passion but flashes of the world's cultural soul as well.

Each piece is a magnificently crafted work of art where Bob takes the archetypical elements of familiar themes like the Tango, Ska, Calypso, Blues, and Creole to places they've never been before. But instead of it sounding unusual or odd, Hawaiian slide guitar in a Tango for instance, you wonder why it's never been done before.

I may sometimes get into a bit of a huff over the term "World Music" as I wonder why somebody else's music is called world while music in North America or England is called pop or rock and roll. But you would get no argument from me if you were to classify Bob Brozman's Orchestra Lumiere under that title because it truly is of the whole world.

I can quite honestly say that I've never heard anything close to as original and stirring as the music on Lumiere. If Bob was to be as successful in harmonizing different cultures in politics as he is in music – he would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Lumiere goes on sale on July 17th and is worth every cent, centime, rupee, shekel, or whatever currency you use to purchase it with. Bob Brozman has set the standard by which we will judge all world music in the future. I guarantee you'll have never heard anything like it before, and that once you hear it you'll want to hear it over and over again.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:38 PM | Permalink

A lot of folks say a lot of things sometimes and knowing what to take as fact and what as fiction can be hard to tell. Some folk even go so far as to show evidence in the form of pictures to back up what they're saying. Take for example the issue about who listens to The Blues. If you were to judge by what some people say, and the pictures they show you, you'd think it was only white people who were listening to The Blues.

Black people don't listen to the Blues; they listen to Rap and Hip-Hop is the authoritative word from those "who know". Look at the crowds at House Of Blues and other places like that – how many Black people do you usually see in the audience? None – well there you go- Black people don't listen to the Blues.

Of course there's no way that the possibility exists that Black people just don't go to the House Of Blues, I mean who wouldn't want to go hang out in a House Of Blues? Nope it must be that Black people don't listen to Blues anymore.

Well somebody needs to tell the people of Chicago that because they don't seem to be paying any attention to the voice of authority. All you have to do is watch the Delmark Records release of Trail Dragger's DVD My Head Is Bald recorded live at Vern's Friendly Lounge on the West Side and you'll see how out of touch Chicagoans are. The audience is at least three quarters Black and none of them seem to be to upset about finding themselves there.

I've seen the inside of a lot of bars that look like Vern's but I've never been in one where the band setting up in the corner has Lurrie Bell on lead guitar and Billy Branch with a tool belt full of harmonicas. There's also a young white cat (Kevin Shanahan) with really long hair fooling around with an old open body Gibson, and the rhythm section of drums (Kenny Smith) and bass (Bob Stroger) looks to be the same one I had seen playing on another live DVD from Delmark.

The people are all ages, and they are all here for the regular Sunday five pm show put on by Tail Dragger. Now that's not his real name of course, supposedly Howlin" Wolf hung it on him when he used to sit in with him in the sixties. He was born James Yancy Jones in Altheimer, Arkansas in 1940.

When he moved up to Chicago in 1966 he was still working a day job, but would hang out at the Blues bars at night and sit in when he could. In the sixties the old Masters like Howlin' Wolf could be found playing at place like Vern's and the Blues that Tail Dragger sings is still what he learned at the feet of those people. There's nothing cultured or slick about it, it's as raw as an open wound, as rough as sandpaper and will send shivers up your spine listening to it.

Tail looks to be about six feet seven inches tall, but he's built like a bean pole and wears a massive Stetson hat on his head so it could be an illusion and he might only be six-two. But he sure is resplendent with his sparkling grey shirt, bow tie, and Stetson. He carries himself with the assurance of a rooster who knows he's king of the coop, and Mick Jagger could take lessons on how to strut from him.

But the real show begins when he starts to sing. After telling everybody about how he's old now and hopes they don't mind if he sits down while he sings, he coils himself up in a chair just in front and between Lurrie and Billy. He gives an imperious nod of his head, and they're away..

After only about two lines of "Sitting Here Singing My Blues" he's on his feet and walking the length and breadth of the bar for the whole number. He shimmies and he shakes, singing and flirting with the women in the audience while keeping track of the band. Every so often he'll turn back to the band and call out "take it Lurrie – or Billy –or Kevin and the named player will solo.

I've been avoiding the subject of Tail Dragger's voice for as long as I could but I can't put it off forever. The problem is how do you describe the indescribable? I could use some fancy, almost romantic language, about it being the voice of experience; that it is a road map on which can be read the pitfalls and joys that come with living life to its fullest or other such shit.

But that doesn't even come close to describing the experience of seeing Tail Dragger open his mouth and start singing and his whole heart, mind, and body being forced through his throat and out his mouth. But even when he's singing stuff like "My Woman Is Gone", and walking right up to every woman in the bar and singing it to her, it sounds more like a song of joy then someone mourning a break up.

Tail Dragger might be singing the Blues, but its Blues that expresses a passion for life, that recognizes that even the stuff that causes pain has value and needs to be celebrated in song. The truth doesn't win very many beauty contests, and Tail Dragger's voice isn't likely to be even voted in as Miss Congeniality, but it has a beauty far richer than anything you're liable to find emitting from an easy listening station.

Sexuality, passion, pain, joy, mischief; anything and everything you can think of that’s part of being human and feeling is contained in the voice. From the humour of the title track "My Head Is Bald" (which had every man in the audience with a bald pate removing their hats with pride) to the sting of "Prison Blues" Trail Dragger's voice covers every emotion under the sun and all the ones that come out at night too.

People who say that Black people don't listen to the Blues anymore have obviously been listening to the wrong bands playing in the wrong bars. How many Black people are going to go to white bars to hear white people sing their music when the can go to Vern's and listen to people like Tail Dragger sing it the way it was meant to be played.

With My Head Is Bald Delmark Records delivers another great recording of a live performance from a local bar in Chicago. The camera work is wonderful, staying with Tail Dragger when needed and switching back to the band for the solos. The sound quality is spot on too with every little nuance of voice and musical instrument being caught to perfection. You can also set the sound for whatever your system can handle, from plain stereo right through to DTS, which ensures the best quality for everyone.

Watching My Head Is Bald by Tail Dragger is an experience that shouldn't be missed by anyone who loves and adores the Blues. This is what it's really all about and what I've always thought the Blues should sound like.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:06 PM | Permalink

When it comes right down to it, what do we expect from music: to have our emotions stirred, to be inspired, to be entertained, or some combination of all three? Of the three I'd say only the latter, to be entertained, is usually a conscious choice on the part of the listener, but it's a performer's ability to accomplish the first two that guarantees their success.

Think about all the one hit wonders that have come and gone over the years. A performer produces some fluke combination of elements that makes a piece attractive for a short period of time, and then both the song and the performer disappear without a trace.

The expression flash in the pan, with its implication of sparks without anything to sustain a fire, used in this context makes perfect sense. The song has all the technical ingredients required to make it enjoyable, just like a spark will temporarily provide light, but it has no substance to burn so it quickly fades away to nothingness.

The music that stays with us is not only entertaining in some form or another, but also has the elements required to stir our emotions and inspire us on a subconscious level. It's the difference that separates the songs of bands like The Rolling Stones and the Beatles from groups like the Monkees and the Osmonds. They all had hit records in and around the same time period, but whose music has stood the test of time?

Harry "The Hipster" Gibson was born in 1915 and lived until 1991. He is a prime example of a performer who not only could entertain his audience, no matter what era he played, but also had the gifts necessary to make an indelible impression.

He made his first recordings in the 1930s and his last in 1989 for Delmark Records of Chicago. Who Put The Benzedrine In Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine? contains studio recordings of some of Harry's favourite songs drawn from the length and breadth of his infamous career, and also contains six tracks from a live recording he did with an anonymous blues rock band in bar from the seventies.

Harry grew up in the South Bronx borough of New York City and learned the jive talking of his black neighbours as naturally as he did the rest of his vocabulary. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, and far too many pop musicians today, it never sounded like an affectation when Harry jived. Not only did he have the patter, his accent was far too South Bronx to ever question his "street credibility".

But what really set Harry apart from the majority of his more formal white brethren who were playing jazz and blues in the thirties and forties, was his full tilt Boogie style of playing piano and his disregard for convention when it came to lyrics. It was songs like the title track from this CD, "Who Put The Benzedrine In Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?" (an updating of an old Irish folk song "Who Put The Overalls In Mrs. Murphy's Chowder?") that ended up getting him black listed from radio play and put his career on a downward slope it wouldn't recover from until the seventies. "She never ever wants to go to sleep/She says that everything is solid all reet" may not sound so off to us, but for the far stiffer morality of 1944 that was taking things just a little too far.

Scroll back up the page for a second and look at the picture on the cover of the disc, remind you of someone? I don't about you but when I see a picture like that Jerry Lee Lewis springs to mind. Harry was barrelling his way through barrelhouse, ragtime, jive, and boogie-woogie, doing things that no one had ever done before while playing the piano long before Little Richard and Jerry Lee came along in the fifties. He was an outlaw in an era where it was still dangerous to be one, and long before it became fashionable.

Fast forward to the seventies where Harry made a second career for himself by playing up tempo/rag-time/blues – rock music all the while still writing the types of outrageous lyrics he had been famous for. He wasn't going to get much airtime on the radio with lyrics like "I'm the kinda of guy, always high/ on reefer, hash, and snow" but his style of music wasn't exactly top ten anymore either.

Which isn't to say it wasn't great stuff because it was. Listening to Harry singing and playing on Who Put The Benzedrine In Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine? is a great treat. He can put more expression into a phrase with his raspy, Louis Armstrong sounding, voice then any emotionally overwrought pop singer you'd care to match up against him.

He wasn't only writing songs about the joys of recreational drug use either, which in the "Just Say No" era of Regan's United States took some nerve; he had a wonderful sense of humour that was put to good use as well. "Get Hip To Shirley MacLaine" is a part mocking, part respectful take on her New Age proclamations of the 1980s.

"Dig what I'm saying/It's all in the brain/When you don't have nobody else/You always got your higher self" is delivered in a tone of voice that invites you to laugh, but at the same you're not quite sure if the old "Hipster" isn't quite taken with the idea of never being alone again, or the fact that he could have been here before and loved you since 1448.

The live cuts on the disc aren't of the greatest sound quality, but what they're really good for is giving you a glimpse of the easy rapport he enjoyed with audiences throughout his career, and his amazing abilities on the piano. He is able to seamlessly blend his ragtime piano to fit into a rock band format so that when they do the old standards "Maple Leaf Rag" and "The Entertainer" it sounds like that's the way those songs were always played.

Harry "The Hipster" Gibson never failed to entertain his audiences, whether a contemporary one that was thrilled by his references to drug use, or his original audience back in pre-war New York City with his wit and barrelhouse piano. But he was more than just another novelty song singer; he was an exemplary piano player with a passion for his music and life that shines through on all his songs.

You might listen to his songs for amusement's sake initially, but almost in spite of your self you'll come away inspired and moved. Who Put The Benzedrine In Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine? is more then just a piece of nostalgic fluff, its a fitting tribute to a consummate artist.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 12:27 AM | Permalink

Well the Canadian armed forces have finally cottoned on to a trick the American Army has been utilizing since the beginning of their invasion of Iraq. The best way to make sure that everybody believes what you tell them is to suppress any evidence that contradicts your version of events.

Last spring there was a great stink raised about what was happening to Afghani people detained by Canadian soldiers. It turned out that our soldiers were being asked to turn over all detainees to the Afghan security forces even though they knew full well that the majority of those turned over would not be treated according to conventions regarding the treatment of combatants captured during a war time situation.

Detainees were being denied access to basic human necessities, forced to defecate in their cells, and tortured. At first the Canadian government said that the Red Cross was monitoring the conditions of individuals who Canada handed over. When that turned out to be false, and the agreement signed by General Rick Hiller, head of the Canadian Armed Forces, with the Afghan security forces made no allowances for monitoring the treatment of individuals turned over by Canada, the government promised changes.

You see not only was that behaviour a violation of the spirit of The Geneva Convention, it also was in direct violation of Canadian law. Any person detained by Canada or its representatives, in this case the army, can not be turned over to a foreign power if there is reason to suspect they will be subject to cruel and unusual punishment as defined by Canada's laws.

The fact that a Canadian newspaper reporter was able to reveal the conditions the detainees were being kept in through the simple expedient of getting a list of their names and then going to interview them was not lost on the Department Of National Defence (DND). So just as the government promised changes have been instituted that affects the army's dealings with detainees. They just might not be the changes people expected.

To give the government their due it's true they never said what the changes would be, but I'm sure most people figured it would be something along the lines of improved monitoring of conditions to ensure compliance with the laws of Canada. Instead the office of General Hillier has announced that all further requests for information about detainees captured by Canadian soldiers would be denied.

It doesn't matter if you phone them, ask real nice, or apply through the Access to Information Act they're not even going to tell you how many, if any, were captured. Why? Well because according to them revealing to the public how many Afghanistan prisoners Canadian soldiers have captured could endanger the lives of those same Canadian soldiers. (The fact that they are in Afghanistan endangers their lives too but that doesn't seem as much a cause for concern)

The Strategic Joint Staff, a new group set up to advise General Hillier, after reviewing all the information made public leading up to last spring's revelation has told the DND's Director of Access to Information, Julie Jansen, just what she can and can't release anymore for reasons of (All Together Now) National Security.

Information that is considered to be damaging to the Canadian Armed Forces ability to carry out its duties in battle includes detainee transfer logs, medical records, witness statements, and other processing forms. Gen. Hillier himself interceded to ensure that Canadians don't find out how many individuals are captured, such was his concern for the welfare of the troops.

When asked point blank if there was any proof that this information had compromised the security of Canadian Soldiers, DND spokesperson Marc Raider said that information couldn't be provided for reasons of operational security. Orwell couldn't have written it any better.

Interestingly enough all the information that has become so potentially threatening to soldiers in the field is the same information DND had no problem releasing in 2005/06 which led to the revelations of abuse of detainees by Afghan and Canadian forces (allegations that three detainees were abused by Canadian soldiers are currently being investigated). Professor Amir Attaran of the University Of Ottawa had been the one to make the requests for information and who had revealed the discrepancies between reality and what the Canadian government was telling people.

He contests the only way this information could harm Canadian soldiers is if there was evidence of wrongdoing on their parts. In particular if documents proved that senior military officers in Canada's military had played any active role in the proceedings, or even aided and abetted wrongdoing, it could be a matter of war crimes.

The professor also stated that it would be very hard for the military to justify in court blocking the release of information they had no problems with making public less then a year ago in some cases. A court of law might think that the defence offered by Lieutenant Colonel Dana Clarke of the Strategic Joint Staff, attributing the release of information at that time to the fact that the Forces had not been in a combat situation since the Access to Information Act came into play, a little suspect.

Ignorance of the law is no defence when you're caught breaking it, and considering that the Access to Information Act has been around for twenty-four years claiming ignorance of how it would affect your behaviour is a pretty flimsy excuse. In fact for a department where secrecy can be of such paramount importance not being familiar with those aspects of an Act that directly impacts on you amounts to gross incompetence.

Although that is troublesome, what should be of more concern is the reaction of the Military, and therefore this government to the whole situation. They were confronted with a set of circumstances that the people of Canada were unhappy about. Instead of taking steps to prevent the problem from occurring again in the future, they've decided it's better if nobody knows if there is a problem or not.

No one can accuse the Conservative Party of Canada of being slow learners, as they've shown themselves quick to emulate their idols in power to the South time after time. It was only a matter of time before they learned the tricks of the Pentagon when it comes to fighting that most hated of enemies during wartime, the press. What they don't know can't hurt you.

It's one thing in a time of war to not publicize troop movements and locations, that's only common sense and will hopefully give soldiers a better chance of survival. But to prevent the dissemination of information only because it reflects badly on your behaviour or to hide illegal activity is not just morally wrong it's also illegal.

In a democracy nobody is above the law, especially the military. Any suspicion of incorrect behaviour needs to be dealt with quickly and openly. Behaviour like this from the Department of National Defence dishonours the memory of the men and women who have died in this or any war by putting their actions under a cloud of suspicion.

That is the worst injustice of all.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:31 PM | Permalink

In November 2005 I entered the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) contest just for the fun of it. The idea of the contest is to attempt to write 50,000 words within the month. Obviously 50,000 words isn't enough for a novel, but it's usually enough to tell you whether you have something that will turn into a novel eventually.

At the time I was also eager enough to write a companion journal, called "NaNoWriMo Notes" and published weekly instalments of it online at Blogcritics and my own site, before, during and after the contest. I kept publishing because instead of it just being a journal about the contest it had evolved into a record of my attempts to complete a novel.

You see by the time November had come to a close that year I had written somewhere between seventy and eighty thousand words and was too far-gone to stop. I've had plenty of fitful beginnings before, but none had ever cleared the thirty thousand-word mark, let along gone as far as this one had, so I was determined to finish. I couldn't let all those words languish in obscurity; I had a duty to them to see them published.

Since I was already in the habit of keeping a running commentary it wasn't that difficult to continue. In fact there were weeks when I managed to get more accomplished writing about what I didn't accomplish, then actually accomplishing anything. I have to admit that not only were those particularly frustrating weeks, they were also the ones where I know I came perilously close to self-pitying navel gazing.

Even when I had finally finished the manuscript, including re-writes, edits, and proofreading, I continued to monitor my progress in attempting to find a publisher via the "Notes". But there is only so much you can write about that without repeating yourself.

Since I was still without a happy ending for "Notes", getting the book published, and I was contemplating self-publishing it through Lulu.com a print on demand company I decided for publication purposes that NaNoWriMo Notes: An Exercise In Creative Insanity would end with the completion of the novel so it at least had the illusion of a happy ending.

In April of 2006 I sent off my first submission of a chapter and synopsis of the novel to a publisher. Almost immediately I received a request for the next three chapters of the manuscript. To say I was excited was putting it mildly. They must have really liked it if they wanted more within a week of receiving the first chapter.

After three months of not hearing a word back from them since that request for more chapters my excitement began to ebb substantially. Friends who had been published many times over reassured me that it meant nothing – publishers can take up to year sometimes to respond to even a query letter. But when the rejection letter eventually showed up I wasn't surprised at all, it had become inevitable.

As I had decided only to apply to one publisher at a time it wasn't until October of 2006 that I sent off another submission. This time I called in a favour and asked a friend of mine if he would write a letter of support for me to his publisher. I hoped this would at least guarantee it being read. He had no problem with doing that and so I sent a full manuscript to the offices of Penguin India.

What with getting the manuscript copied – 300 plus pages would have been too much for my desk top printer to handle and the ink alone would have cost more then the commercial print job – and mailing, it cost me eighty dollars to send it off to the publisher. As recently as just a year prior to my submission Indian publishers had jumped at the chance to publish the work of foreign English language writers, so the money looked well spent as far as I was concerned.

Of course a lot can happen in a year, and Penguin India had recently changed management and policy. With burgeoning Indian nationalism the company's focus had switched so that now they only published a limited number of foreign nationals. I had already started picking up signals to that effect so wasn't overly surprised to find a lovely piece of stationary in my mail one day from Penguin India regretting they wouldn't be able to use my manuscript.

That was in December of 2006 and I've only now sent off another unsolicited manuscript. Oh I've been busy, true enough, but even to my own ear busy sounds like a feeble excuse. How long does it take to stick a chapter and two letters in an envelope and mail it? Even sorting out which publisher you want to send it off to next shouldn't take seven months but that's how long it took me.

One of the sticking points was trying to find the publisher most likely to publish the manuscript before submitting it. Now of course that's a sensible precaution within reason. You're not going to send a piece of fiction to a publisher that only puts out non-fiction obviously, but I was going a little further then that.

I would go to a publisher's web site and before I'd even check to see if they were accepting unsolicited submissions I would check out what type of books they sold. I'm not even sure what I was looking for, but I do know that if I didn't like the feel of their site, or their work struck me as being not the type I'd want to be associated with, I'd pass.

In other words I could always find an excuse not to send off my manuscript: too intellectual, not intellectual enough, wrong type of attitude towards publishing, too big, too small, and so on. If you try hard enough you can always find a reason not to do something.

I finally clued in that I had fallen into that trap, and from there it wasn't such a great leap to figure out that I didn't want to send my manuscript off again because I was scared of being rejected again. That might not sound like much of a revelation, but it actually took me by surprise that I felt that way.

After I recovered from the shock, and accepted that's what had been happening, it became surprisingly easy to send off a submission. I found out the name of a the contact I needed to write too, and sent a package off to one of the smaller presses who's books I've been reviewing. That may sound like an easy route, what with name recognition and all, but it will also make a rejection all the more bitter.

So why, if as I just said I'm so afraid of rejection, have I submitted to someone whose rejection would have an even more devastating effect on me than another publisher? For the simple reason that if I can work up the courage to submit to them I'll be able submit to anyone. Of course it could also be that I'm hoping, that because they know me and what I'm capable of, that they might be more likely then others to at least consider me.

If I'm being honest I have to say it's a split between the two. I guess you could almost call it a paradox – submitting to someone you know because you hope it helps your chances while at the same time being even more afraid of submitting to them because the rejection will feel that much worse. Of course the real problem is most likely that I think too much and should just get on with it (I heard you out there in the peanut gallery – don't think I didn't).

So here I am sitting waiting for an answer and not expecting much in the way of anything. It's been almost two years since I finished the book and although I've been pecking away at its sequel there's times when I read through it and it feels like someone else wrote it. Of course if they write back asking to read the full manuscript that will all change and you'll see how quickly I'll start to care.

But for now I'm going to at least hold on to the illusion of sang-froid and just continue on with my daily business as if my life didn't hang in the balance based on someone else's opinion. Which it doesn't, really it doesn't, I couldn't care less one way or another…And if you believe that I've got some great land in Florida I'll sell you sight unseen

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:46 AM | Permalink

I know this might come across as some sort of reverse ageism, but I've always wondered how a twentysomething musician could legitimately sing the Blues? That's a pretty pejorative statement I know, but looking at some of these guys with their perfect teeth, expensive leather jackets and fancy guitars nothing anyone tells me is going to convince me they know what the Blues are.

Oh technically they've got the chops; they can play guitar, blow harmonica, and sing, but a machine can be programmed to do most of the same things. I was very deliberate about saying guys because for every new woman Blues singer that comes along there seems to be about twenty young turks who in spite of having no real affinity for the music call are called Blues musicians.

If I have to hear another CD of some young white guy singing misogynistic songs about hot chicks, being dumped, dumping someone, or "hey babe let's have a good time", I might puke. I know that a lot of old time Blues guys sing "done me wrong songs" but there's a big difference. Those old time songs were vehicles that most readily expressed the emotions that the Blues evoked and weren't really about the topic of the song. With the young guys today it unfortunately comes across like they really mean what they are saying in the songs instead of only using them to express a universal emotion.

Maybe its because women still have a harder row to hoe in society than men, or perhaps because they really are more in touch with their feelings, young female Blues singers usually have a much better feel for the music than their male counter parts. Gina Sicilia's first release, Allow Me To Confess is a great example of a person with an obvious affinity for the music taking the first steps on what could a long and successful career.

Obviously nobody has a crystal ball that can predict what will happen to somebody in the years to come, but judging by the skill and range of emotion that's displayed on this disc, Ms. Sicilia's potential is obvious. What's even more impressive is not only is she confident enough to write and perform her own material, (eight of the eleven songs on Allow Me To Confess were written by her), but the material is as varied as it is intelligent.

She can just as easily write a slow, torch song type ballad as she can an upbeat rocker or a gospel tinged spiritual. But what's truly impressive is the emotion contained within the song and the intelligence in the lyrics. Her song "One Of Many" is a perfect example of this and also a great example of her maturity as a performer.

The song talks about a young woman from an abusive home that's forced out onto the streets at the age of sixteen and into a lifestyle that will kill her quick. Not satisfied with just pointing out the obvious, Gina describes the girl's emotional and physiological decline in language that's as precise as a surgeon's scalpel. She never trivializes the subject while at the same time keeping it real and never allowing it to become sentimental drivel.

That's where her skill and confidence as a performer comes in. A lot of young performers would be tempted to wring as much emotion out of a song as they could with their voices. Instead Ms. Sicilia trusts the power of the words to be able to speak for themself and doesn't resort to histrionics to "sell" it.

She obviously trusts her voice as much as she trusts her lyrics because there is hardly ever an occasion where she sounds like she could be considered to be forcing the issue. Emotions occur naturally and without effort as she allows herself to respond seemingly intuitively to the message behind the lyrics.

When the mood of the song is playful, like "I Ain't Crazy", you can hear a sense of mischief coming out as she runs through the reasons why we should consider her sane despite the song's evidence to the contrary. She also show she has the ability to growl out a good time on the old Etta James number "Pushover" where she not only captures the spirit of the original but puts her own spark into it.

Her voice seem most comfortable in the lower registers, and is far more emotionally sincere when she works down there, but she is also able to utilize the upper end of her range to good effect as a counterpoint. This added dimension allows her the ability to have more then one way to make an emotional impression on the listener and increases the impact and strength of individual titles when she uses it judiciously.

The only occasion that she gets away from the approach that has served her so well on the disc is on the last song, the Gospel tinged "When My Ship Comes In". Even here the only reason it strikes a false note at all is because of just how effectively she had used her voice up to that point. It has the potential to be a beautiful song, but for the only time on the album she falls into the young performer's trap of thinking more power and higher pitched vocals equate to emotional strength.

Sometimes I worry that Blues music is in danger of becoming a parody of itself like Country does on occasion. I'm just waiting for someone to come up with a Blues version of the old joke about only needing a train, a pick up truck, you're dog dying, and going to prison to have the necessary ingredients for writing a Country song.

But then, thankfully along comes a singer of the quality of Gina Sicilia. Her first release, Allow Me To Confess, (along with a few others), available on Swingnation Records, has gone a long way to restoring my confidence in the next generation of Blues musicians.

Now if only the guys could get it together. Oh well we all know boys take a lot longer to grow up than women so there's still hope for them too.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:18 PM | Permalink

I know it looks like I do a lot of reviews, mainly music and books, but the truth is I could probably be doing double the amount that I do now. If I were to review every CD, book, or DVD that was sent or offered to me I'd have to be posting twice a day just to keep up.

I sometimes wonder if I, basically an amateur who does this for fun, receive this many offers of review material, how many are the people who get paid receiving? Since some days I receive as many as ten such requests, either by the item showing up in the mail unsolicited or via an email offer, the potential boggles the mind.

It really makes wonder how the record companies and book publishers do business. What exactly is their idea of quality control? Do they work under the assumption that the more items released or published the more chance that they will luck into something people will want to buy? For all their talk about artistry and demographics there is more than a slight whiff of an infinite number of monkeys trying to produce Hamlet about their marketing methods.

Of course once they think they've stumbled on something that strikes a chord with people they immediately saturate the market with it and similar items in an effort to make as much money from it in as short a period of time as possible. When people begin to tire of the product almost as quickly as the market has been flooded (somebody should really explain to them the principle of diminishing returns – the more of the same that is produced the less profit you make) the monkeys are sent back to the typewriters.

Of course it's the public's fault the pundits tell us, everybody has such a short attention span these days that they won't stay interested in anything for more then a nanosecond. Have they ever stopped to think that the problem might be that it's only by offering people real choices that they pay attention to anything? If everything sounds the same what is there to listen to after a while?

If variety is the spice of life then corporate music needs someone to pass them at least the salt, if not some basil, and maybe even some cumin. Their idea of variety is… well to be honest I don't know if they even know what it means. Making sure that the flavour of the month has a different cup size from last month's or that their hair is peroxided a different shade of blonde doesn't quite make it in my book.

I mean there is only so long you can look at a pretty young thing before you realize how damned annoying her voice is. It doesn't matter how many topless or bottomless photos of them show up on the Internet – they all just start to blur into one bimbo who can't sing after a while and if people start to flip channels or it's equivalent who can blame them?

The book publishing industry is just as bad as music; they think they're onto something that the market loves. So they pay millions of dollars in advances for true confession, daytime talk show style books without bothering with something as simple as fact checking. When that crashes and burns, instead of thinking about chickens and baskets, they sink even more money into the next big thing.

I could almost understand the first part of the approach, the monkeys and Hamlet, if they weren't only focused on finding the one big thing to be ground into oblivion in a year or two. Would it be so bad if when they found somebody or some group that resonated with people that instead of spending a fortune trying to clone them, they invest only what's needed to allow the original to continue its development?

That would leave them more money to continue to tap into the typing pool of monkeys and work with more than one band or author ensuring the public has real choices. I know it’s a bit of a novel concept, but why not let people decide what they want to read or listen to instead of dictating their choices for them?

I bet that if people were given real choices instead of more of the same on every page and in every CD you would find that their attention spans would improve. They won't all pick the same thing to rave about, but I'm sure you would see fewer one hit wonders and more bands and authors with good sales records.

Instead of industries having to wonder where their next "big hit" is going to come from in order to survive, they would have sizeable numbers of consistent sellers that more than recoup their initial investment in publicity and development costs. Every body would turn a tidy profit and more writers and musicians would make decent livings. There doesn't appear to be any lack of people out there trying to produce something of quality so lack of material to choose from shouldn't be a problem.

You don't need an infinite amount of humans to produce a variety of interesting music and writing, that's been proven many times over. You do need producers and publishers who are willing to believe that there is more than one way to write Hamlet and people would like to choose which version they read. Is that asking too much?

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:27 PM | Permalink

One night in the early eighties I was lying in bed listening to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's late night show "Brave New Waves". The announcer came on, and I can remember as if it were yesterday what she said: "Laurie Anderson played in town tonight". That was it, nothing else, because from then until her sign off at 4:00 am she played United States the recording of Laurie Anderson's stage show.

In an era when New York City was spitting out experimental musicians and artists, Laurie Anderson was not just another face in the crowd. Of all those claiming to be "performance artists, she was one of the few with a completely realized vision. Deceptively simple; one woman, a keyboard, a violin, and a microphone; her performances were part concert, part storytelling, and part visual presentation that utilized the most modern technology available to examine society's reactions to technology's quick development and sudden availability to the general public.

Remember in the early 1980's we were just starting to enter the era of the personal computers – does anybody else remember buttons saying I Love My Commodore 64? Or tape drives for your computer, or having to lay your telephone's handset into a cradle like what came with your phone to connect to the Internet?

By some fluke of nature Big Science, an album made up of excerpts from her stage show, placed her squarely in the public eye. The song "O Superman (for Massenet)" climbed to the top of the charts in Britain and performed almost as well in North America. Listening to the promotional copy provided by Nonesuch records in advance of their re issuing the album on July 17th, I'm as puzzled now as I was then at the widespread popularity it enjoyed.

There's absolutely nothing about it that says "popular" no matter what era of music we're talking about. Brilliantly crafted compositions using tape loops, found sounds, voice, live music and vocal overdubs run through processors and voice machines that openly question the values of society and mock some of the most popular icons of mass consumerism don't normally equate to hit music.

But there is something about Laurie Anderson's voice that sounds so very comforting. At times she maye very acerbic and scathing, and at other times barely even human, what with some of the effects she uses on her voice. But then you hear her untreated voice and you feel that she could understand anything you'd have to tell her.

It's not like she promises she has answers to questions or anything silly like that, but you know that she will actually listen to what you tell her. Nobody can tell stories with such humanity and sincerity, and yes, humour, the way she does without being an amazing listener.

That's of course what makes her art so successful, that ability to listen and observe and report back to us clearly on all that she has seen. Viggo Mortensen described his photography and writings as a means of keeping a record of everything he saw. Laurie Anderson goes a step beyond merely preserving what she has seen, and actively communicates it to us.

Whether we listen to her singing on a CD, watch her in a video, or see her live stage show it's her direct involvement that makes the piece. I can't honestly imagine anyone ever "covering" one of her pieces from Big Science any more than I can imagine anyone but Vincent Van Gogh painting his infamous "Self Portrait".

It's not that the pieces are about her, far from it. In fact they usually address universal themes, but without her they don't exist, any more than Mr. Mortensen's poetry would exist without him or Van Gogh's paintings would without Van Gogh. Instead of paint or words Laurie Anderson uses Laurie Anderson to communicate with us. Much as we read a book of poems or go to an art gallery to see paintings, we listen to, or watch Laurie Anderson in order to appreciate her art.

All the things she does on stage, or in the recording studio, combine to make a piece of art that includes her as the central medium of expression. Unlike typical performers in bands or singer songwriters, there is more to what she is doing then singing a song. She creates small performances that communicate a thought or idea, and those performances in turn are linked together by a common theme.

In the case of Big Science the theme is our relationship to technology and each piece is a different scenario that addresses that. Even her performance itself is a reflection of that theme as she makes full and effective use of the technology available to her at the time as enhancement.

But technology isn't the be all and end all, and in the end her work is so effective because of her; not any tools she uses or machine she plugs in. A computer can only carry out the tasks we are able to program it to do, and there is a very real human behind her machinery with thoughts, opinions, and emotions.

Ultimately that is what makes Big Science such a great collection of work – the fact that Laurie Anderson understands the human condition and is able to comment on it so effectively. Any art that has the ability to strike a chord of recognition with its audience will achieve some level of distinction. The real test of art is the test of how well it stands up to the passage of years.

Some of you might make noises about how primitive the technology is on Big Science but that is irrelevant. Listening to it for the first time in more then twenty years I was struck again by how intelligent and insightful her lyrics are, and how all the pieces on the disc fit together. Big Science is not the work of a pop musician or rock star, it is a work of art as much as any painting hanging in a museum or poem in a book. It just comes in a different package than most still aren't accustomed to.

Get used to it, because Laurie Anderson is back with a brand new collection being released in 2008 on Nonesuch Records called Homeland and will be touring across North America in support. I hope she comes to my town.

The edition of Big Science that is being released on July 17th this month is what's known as an enhanced CD. So if you pop into an optical drive on your computer, or a DVD player that can handle that type of disc, you'll get a couple of special extras. The original video for "Oh Superman", which is brilliant and still blows anything else ever made since for a song out of the water, and the original "B"-side track to "Superman", "Walk The Dog". You have to hear that one to believe it, I'm not even going to attempt to describe it.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 11:22 PM | Permalink

Even within the insular Jewish community Hassidic Jews are considered isolated. They live in their own communities, have their own schools, and rarely marry outside of the sect. Hassidim is a relatively new sect of Judaism having only come about in the 1700s, and is still only practised by a minority of the world's Jews.

The Hassidic faith had its beginnings in Eastern Europe during a time of intense persecution and was a reaction against the staid, almost academic nature, of the accepted practice of the time. They created a means of worship emphasising an emotional base for prayer involving music and song to help express the passion felt by the supplicant.

Basya Schechter, founder of the band Pharaoh's Daughter, grew up in an Hassidic household and community. On the Sabbath night she would join her father and brothers at the table and learn the rhythms that were beat out on the table and songs that accompanied them in worship of the day of rest. Perhaps it was this love of music that gave her the courage to break away from the community and go out into the world.

Judging by the music contained on Pharaoh's Daughter's new CD Haran she may have left the community physically but she ended up remaining tied to it musically. According to the liner notes of the disc the title is an indication of the types of music represented on the disc. Haran was the name of an ancient city in Western Asia at the head of a caravan route that joined the East and the West while the music on its namesake is a similar type of conjunction.

Even more importantly, as far as Jews and Muslims are concerned, the name has also been used metaphorically as the starting place for Abraham's (Both religions consider Abraham the father of their faith) spiritual journey. Basya says that for the band the name is an expression of their own musical journey drawing upon the influence of ancient Eastern and Western cultures while incorporating contemporary sound.

You only need to read the track listing to see that this is not an idle boast when it comes to the drawing upon of both Muslim (east) and Hebrew (west) traditions for this disc. Not only are the song titles give a ways, "Ka Ribon", "Samai", "Lev Tehro", and "Yona" to site a few, but the brief note accompanying each track listing the original composer, the language it is sung in, and its cultural background serve as final confirmation of their heritage.

Of course the real proof comes in the listening. Anybody can claim a heritage and how much a culture influences them, and have impressive liner notes and still produce crap for music. But that's not the case with Pharaoh's Daughter and their disc Haran. The sounds and the rhythms that are created by the combination of musical instruments woven together into a beautiful texture captures what must have been the emotion behind the original song.

Basya's upbringing may have inspired her to search for music of her own heritage, and assisted her in the singing and adapting of songs like "Hashomer", "The one who observes", a 13th century Talmudic text about the rewards of keeping the Sabbath. (The Talmud is the codification of Jewish law). But she would have been equally out of her depth when it came to songs in Ladino (the language spoken by Jews who lived in Spain and Portugal prior to being expelled in the 1400s) ancient Aramaic, and Arabic as the rest of her band mates.

What they have done is take the traditional songs, use instruments appropriate to the culture, or the physical region, and incorporated some modern elements into each. From the infectious joy and fun of "By Way Of Haran" the opening song of the disc one knows that this is not only a labour of love, but something they are all taking a great deal of pleasure in.

Taking her lead from the wordless songs of Hassidic schoolgirls, Basya's voice on "By Way Of" emphasises the enthusiasm of the song's tune and rhythm without the restraining influence of lyrics. "Ka Ribbon", the second song, takes her back to her Sabbath table singing songs for the Sabbath, but in Aramaic, the old common tongue of the Jews. But then they bounce across one of the biggest cultural gaps in our world to sing "Samai", an Arabic song complete with accompaniment by instruments appropriate to the music. Both the oud, a Turkish style of Lute and the ney, a Turkish bamboo flute often used in sacred music, are incorporated and performed with the same amount of ease as all the other instruments used on the disc.

Each song is given equal care and presentation and becomes a celebration of not just that song but of life. It is as if Pharaoh's Daughter has followed the Hassidic idea of music being a means of expressing praise for life and creation and expanded upon it. Perhaps thinking of their music in terms of how some of the best Black gospel music sounds will give you the right idea of the spirit behind this music.

Obviously the two styles of music sound nothing alike, but what's important is that you understand the motivation for singing is the same. Maybe Pharaoh's Daughter aren't necessarily singing in praise of God, although only one song on Haran is not specifically religious, but their fervency for the music is such they might as well be.

Haran by Pharaoh's Daughter is one of those rare discs where the combination of ancient music and traditions have not suffered being carried out of their time and into ours. Perhaps it's because their shepherd Basya Schechter (she did the majority of the adaptations) was raised in an environment where similar music still lives on as it has for centuries. You might be able to take the woman out of the Hassidim, but you can't take the Hassidic out of the woman completely. And for that we should be counting our blessings.

If you want to hear music from the cradle of civilization, the birthplace of Western and Arabic cultures alike, played as you've never heard it before, perhaps as it is meant to be heard today, pick up a copy of Haran by Pharaoh's Daughter. You will be moved like you have rarely been moved by music in a long time.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:35 AM | Permalink

True innovators in any field are few and far between. Far too much of what we are likely to refer to as innovation has merely consisted of an adding on to something that has previously been done. In my mind true innovation is to take something old and make it brand new or even better start from nothing and make something original.

The Irish illustrator and stained glass artistHarry Clarke most definitely fits into anyone's definition of innovator. His illustrations, while spectacular pen and ink renderings, would not have been sufficient to secure him a seat among the geniuses of the twentieth century. But what he accomplished with stained glass had never been seen before him, and it is doubtful that many have approached him since his death for his use of colour and complexity of composition.

Clarke was born in Dublin Ireland in 1889 the son of a stained glass craftsman. As most children of skilled craftsmen did in those days he followed in his father's footsteps with the assumption being that he would one day take over the business. When he started his apprenticeship at fourteen if became clear the young Harry had the family affinity for the trade, but he also had something else – true talent and artistic skill.

Not a stupid man his father realized that Harry's skill should be nurtured instead of crushed under the boring routine of apprenticeship. Once he had mastered the basic skills needed for the working with stained glass he went to The Dublin School of Art to refine his talents. In 1910 he was awarded the gold medal for stained glass work in the Board of Education National competition.

Upon leaving school he immediately began working in his father's studio and began filling commission of his own. Unfortunately Clarke's life and work were curtailed by his chronic ill health. When he was born his mother was suffering from tuberculosis and it wasn't long before he too was struck with the illness. Working with the noxious chemicals involved with the creation of stained glass couldn't have been good for him, and combined with his life style of spending long hours in the studio most likely led to his early demise from the disease in 1931 at the age of forty-two.

In an effort cast light on this enigmatic and mysterious man and the demons that haunted him film director John J. Doherty created the documentary Harry Clarke Darkness In Light that not only traces the life of Harry but recounts the trajectory of his career.

Chock full of interviews with art historians, stained glass specialists, and even poets who have an understanding of Clarke's sources of inspiration, the movie is part history and part art appreciation. It covers the territory of his biography in good and intelligent detail, especially as it relates to his artistic development. But more than anything else the movie focuses on what is important: his art.

Before I go any further I want to mention the amazing job that was done in filming the art. I would think that being able to capture stained glass on film, and the effect that natural light has on it, would be exceedingly difficult. Every pane of glass is lovingly framed and allowed to gleam with it's own internal light. Delicate nuances of shade and hue stand out as much as they would have in their original surroundings. Figures as diverse as characters from Joyce and the Three Wise Men stare down at us from Church Windows for the latter, and a gallery for the former.

Instead of the flat, nearly Byzantine representation of figures that is usual for stained glass, these are faces full of animation and life. Perspective is utilized, just as it would be in illustrations and paintings on paper and canvass, so figures appear alive, right down to the creases and folds in their ornate, richly coloured clothing. A comment made by one of the critics interviewed was how amazingly accurate Clarke was in recreating the clothing of the medieval period when so many of the saints he depicted lived.

When Clarke had just graduated from Art school, he became seriously ill for a year. When he was on the road to recovery it was thought that a season of sea air would do him good so he was sent to live in one of the smaller island off the west coast with some fellow students. It was here that he drew so much inspiration from the land and the sea for shapes that would appear in his work at a later date.

Look closely at some of the imagery and you will see depicted tiny sea creatures and other life forms from the islands making an appearance. It could be in the decorative scrollwork that strolls up the side of a window, or a design worked into a fold in a character's gown, but still their presence is felt.

What I found especially gratifying about the segment dealing with the island period of his life is that they interview a poet who obviously shared the same affinity for the location. He was able to offer insight into what an artistic mind might have seen there that would have stimulated Clarke to such an extent that he would hold onto it for the rest of his life.

Of course no documentary on the life of Clarke would be complete without discussion of his illustrations. It's here that the Dark in the title of the film comes from. While his illustrations for the stories of Hans Christian Anderson were fairly respectable, when he turned to the works of Edgar Allen Poe his vision became macabre to say the least.

Nightmarishly distorted bodies, flesh pulled back to expose muscles and veins, and faces expressing the horrors of the deep, they seem to be figures taken from the imagination of some sick perverted soul. One of the critics was obviously distressed by this aspect of Clarke's work and kept repeating that nothing in his background or family allowed him to understand or explain where Clarke could have drawn his inspiration for these visions.

Unfortunately this attitude was prevalent during Clarke's lifetime and ended up having an effect upon his last work. He had been commissioned by the new Irish government in the 1920s to create a pane of stain glass for a League of Nations building in Geneva. Unfortunately Clarke's choice of material, scenes from the writings of great Irish writers, weren't what they had envisioned as appropriate to represent the new Ireland.

Clarke literally killed himself finishing this piece, and even though the Prime Minister of the new state initially said it was a stunning piece of creative art, something quickly changed his mind. Soon the word disposal, as in how can we be rid of this work, became the word most associated with Clarke's masterpiece. For years it actually vanished from sight because it ended up in private collection. But now it resides in of all places a museum in Miami Beach Florida.

Director John J. Doherty has put together a beautiful documentary movie commemorating the work and life of the extremely enigmatic and talented Harry Clarke. Harry Clarke Darkness In Light is a fitting tribute and intelligent critique of one of the twentieth century's true geniuses.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:03 AM | Permalink

I've written about issues pertaining to suffering from post traumatic stress disorder brought on by childhood sexual abuse in the past and in doing so have touched upon my own personal history. Each time I've emphasised that I'm not looking for sympathy from anyone, it's just that I happen to be a handy example to use for the topic at hand.

There's still not a great deal written about men who suffered from being abused as children, or men willing to talk about it publicly because of perceived stigma's attached to it. Being raped by a man as child has as much chance of "making you gay" or making you les of "a man" a falling down the stairs would. Being rapped, especially being rapped as a child has nothing to do with sexuality and everything to do with exerting control over someone else.

It's all about power and being able to exert it without any fear of repercussions. How many young children, no matter what their gender, are going to go running to somebody to say that their father was raping them? The rapist usually makes sure that it won't happen through a combination of threats –"If you tell anybody everybody will know that you are lying and you'll get in trouble" and the use of cajoling lies –"Don't you love me, this is how all good little boys (girls) show that they love their father"

The last statistics I read about this subject were something like one in four young boys are sexually abused by somebody they know as a child, while the figure is doubled for young girls. Of course these are only reported cases, and I'm sure the figure for men would spike significantly if we were to know the real numbers.

Although the event is horrid enough as it is, the individual who is abused really begins to pay his heaviest price in adulthood when they begin to discover how fucked up they are. It's like a time bomb had been planted in their mental/emotional systems during the events and was set to go off when they had to start dealing with adult emotional stimuli.

Survivors of childhood sexual abuse establish coping mechanisms based on what happened to them. Love, violence, sex, affection, caring, abandonment, and neglect have all become mixed together in their heads and they lack the ability to separate one from the other. They will either be continually waiting for the person they are involved with to either lash out at them or leave them.

This will lead to vastly different modes of behaviour; either they will be completely subservient in the hopes of making the other person happy enough that they will never hurt them or leave them, or they will find excuses to end relationships early in order to prevent themselves from getting hurt.

There is also the potential for a survivor to go the route of becoming an abuser and carrying on the work started by his tormentor on others. I'm eternally grateful that I have no personal experience in that matter so can't speak to it, although I can see how given the right circumstances it is highly possible.

Abandonment and neglect can leave behind such residual resentment that a person would feel that they were justified in doing anything they had to in order to get their own back. The world did this to me, it owes me, and so I'm going to do it back to the world. Don't get me wrong; I'm not excusing that behaviour just offering an explanation. I know from personal experience how resentment can twist your thinking and corrupt your heart.

Unfortunately I've not been able to avoid the other consequences of being a survivor and have had to deal with more then my fair share of shit over the past fourteen years. As it stands I'm still peeling back the layers like one would work to expose an onion's core. At times and element of frustration sets in, and I wonder if it will ever stop and if I will ever find something akin to peace.

Where I've been fortunate is that I have a very good doctor to work with and have been able to isolate the base elements that are the root cause of a lot of the emotional baggage that I'm carrying. So instead of being overwhelmed by a huge barrage of emotional symptoms, I have only a few things that I need to focus on that make me feel like there's progress.

This is so important for a person who is going through this type of experience, be they male or female, because it is so easy to become emotionally overwhelmed. A survivor is usually a series of raw nerve endings where almost anything is a potential trigger for an abuse memory. Reducing the amount of stimuli, or even learning to recognize what they are and what they do is the first step in being able to recover control over you're emotional stability.

From there it becomes a matter of understanding that your reactions are being controlled by events that happened in the past and aren't necessarily the ones you want to have in a situation today. If for example the person you love says "I love you" and your reaction is to wonder what they want from you, it isn't coming from you, it's coming from how you were treated when you were abused.

Realizing that is the major step in reclaiming you life and overcoming the effects of what happened to you. Gradually you learn how to have reactions based on present circumstances not on the past. It's a lot of work and it doesn't happen overnight; reactions you've had for thirty plus years are not going to disappear on demand. But at least now you know who you are capable of being and have the means to become that person.

This is not easy work, nor is it very enjoyable; who likes to realize that what they've thought of as normal behaviour for years has actually caused no end of grief. I sure as hell didn't. But ultimately the feeling you'll have is one of immense freedom and relief.

So if you're still at the stage where every little thing, no matter how trivial, can send you into orbit, fear not, there is a means of escape and I'm proof that its possible. Find someone you trust who you can work with and learn who your really are and what you really feel. You'll love yourself for it.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:44 AM | Permalink

The other day I made some reference or other to Canada Day, Canada' s birthday, to an American and she completely missed it. So I wrote her back and said, "Canada Day, it’s a lot like your Independence Day on July fourth except less weapons are involved". And come to think of it Canada is one of the few I know of that don't celebrate with a parade of armed might for the world to see.

Of course that could be explained easily enough by the fact that we probably don't have enough equipment to parade anyway. Most of our troops are already being shot up in Afghanistan by friendly fire from American pilots who can't tell the difference between enemy and allied troops.. Can't really take that personally since during the invasion of Iraq the largest number of casualties they incurred were own kills. ( I don't know if that's true or not but I wouldn't be surprised if it was)

Anyway the fact that Canada Day, July 1st and July 4th, are so close together got me thinking about the differences between our two countries. One difference can be found in the name of our respective countries national holiday. Up to a few years ago we referred to our day as Dominion Day, in while the American national holiday is called Independence Day.

On July 1st 1867 Canada was created by an Act of the British Parliament, The British North American Act, witch also served as Canada's Constitution until the 1980s. The American's on the other hand were a bunch of dissatisfied British nobility who had grown tired of sending a tithe of their takings back to the homeland. This is what provoked the now infamous Boston Tea Party.

Its interesting to note how the two countries have such different attitudes to government and its role in society. In Canada we have no problems, in general, with government run programs that act as a social safety net. In the United States the thought of government controlled Health Care is considered a dangerous threat to liberty by more extreme factions and tantamount to socialism and communism by others.

Some where along the line in the development of America they began to consider themselves an Empire and exhibit the attitudes that come with that. The first sign of this was the Monroe Doctrine of 1810 that claimed it was the United States' Manifest destiny to rule the entire Western Hemisphere without the interference of any foreign power.

Not surprisingly they tried to invade British Canada in 1812 but were repulsed. In fact British troops landed in Washington DC and burnt down the White House and were barely repulsed in Louisiana when they landed troops there. After that the American's concentrated of expanding their interests into South America.

Unlike America Canada has only had two minor internal wars. The first took place in the 1830s when leaders in both French Canada and English Canada fought for more responsible government and sought to break the power of the few families who controlled the political power in that area. The one in English Canada lasted all a day when the leaders were allowed to march through the streets of Toronto until they met barricades manned by armed militia and trained solders. Quebec was different story as the revolt lasted for two weeks as they based themselves in the rural areas and were simply harder to hunt down.

The second major revolt took place after Canada was formed and involved Louis Riel leading the Metis and Natives of Manitoba and Saskatchewan in a desperate attempt to hold onto their land against the onslaught of settlers who were taking treaty land without offering compensation. Riel paid for having the nerve to stand up against the government with his life. (He was also used as an excuse for ensuring that Canada's national railroad was built – but that's another story for another day)

The United State on the other hand almost tore themselves apart with their civil war pitting the Northern part of the Country against the South in a vicious war that lasted nearly five years. With the North trouncing the South it was a victory of industry over agriculture and the economic path of the country was set

Not only had the war been a spur to build rail lines everywhere, it ensured the quick development of an industrial base which helped propel them to becoming the economic power they are today. It was in this time that the Americans began serious empire building and exercising their manifest destiny to the south. They had long ago stolen Texas and California from Mexico and were set to begin their economic conquest of South America.

The carrot and the stick were used to great effect throughout the region. With the carrot being bribes for political support of whatever corrupt officials they could find to endorse the American way and the stick military might to pacify any popular resistance to slave wages, exploitation of natural resources, and the theft of indigenous lands.

Sometimes it became convenient to provide an excuse to go to war, and so the American's sank a decommissioned ship called the Maine in Havana harbour and declared it an act of armed terrorism they would not stand for. They invaded Cuba, installed a puppet government who did what they were told by the Sugar and Fruit companies.

It was pretty much the same all over South and Central America until Fidel Castro and Che Guevara came along and liberated Cuba in the 1950's. Unfortunately Cuba was an anomaly and South America has only just begun to remove itself from under the heel of the American boot in the last decade. As late a the 1970's and 80's they were involved with either propping up repressive regimes who favoured their policies and doing their best to remove from power those who opposed them.

While the United States was busy setting up their empire what was Canada doing? Well, Canada was setting up its country. The biggest problem was finding people to settle the western Prairie Provinces to prevent the land from being taken by Americans and having to pitch our neophyte army against the hardened Americans to protect it. So the government sent out agents to Eastern Europe where conditions were similar, but land was less plentiful and offered the equivalent of forty acres, a cow, and plough to anybody who would take their families to a brand new country and hostile weather conditions and homestead.

Which explains to this day why there are so many Ukrainian and other Eastern European names scattered throughout the ranch land and farms of Western Canada. We were also getting caught up in the Wars of Great Britain, first the Boer War in South Africa and then the First World War. It wasn't until the 1920's that Canada was allowed control of it's own foreign affairs.

Canada's development on the world stage didn't really flower until the 1950's and the Suez Canal crises. It was Canada's minister for foreign affairs who won the Nobel Peace prize for coming up with the idea of sending in a multinational force of troops under the lead of the United Nation to serve as buffer between the warring parties. Thus were born peacekeepers thanks to Lester B. Pearson .

Canada began to excel in the role of compassionate middle power country that all sides in a dispute would trust. As a result Canadian soldiers would find themselves in some of the hottest spots of the world from the Golan Heights to Cyprus being asked to keep people from killing each other.

In my mind it is this that separates Canada and the United States. While the United States thinks of the world in terms of what it can take from it and use for itself, Canada looks to see what it can do for the world. Since the time of the 1950's we have geared our soldiers to be either rescue workers delivering care and comfort where needed. (This also explains our high casualty rate when it comes to our soldiers in Afghanistan as they are not equipped or trained for combat situations of this nature)

It wasn't until 1990 and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney wanting to look impressive sent troops to the first Gulf war that Canada's role on the world stage began to emulate the American one. We weren’t becoming empire builders, but we were being seen to be their buddies, which was bad enough.

But at the same time we still considered ourselves to have a moral obligation to help right injustices in the world and believed in the ideal the United Nations. While Canada was working to help free Nelson Mandela and supporting aid programs to the developing world, the U. S. were propping up the Afrikaner government in South Africa and not paying their dues to the UN.

They considered the U.N. to be almost an enemy, as they do to this day, because they will not act as a rubber stamp for American ambitions. The United States of America is the biggest obstacle in the road towards helping Africa pull out of it's downward spiral of poverty and disease because it is not in their best interests for it to happen.

Canada and the United States live side by side in North America, but they are miles apart when it comes to how they view their places in the world. Canada sees itself as a citizen of the world with responsibilities toward helping her fellow man. The U. S. on the other hand sees the world only in terms of what it can do for the United States.

We are most definitely two different countries

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:05 AM | Permalink

It's become a familiar story in the press; lone gunman enters a school and kills as many students as possible before turning the weapon on himself. (Having never heard of a woman carrying out an act of this type the male pronoun is more than just a convenience) But when it happens on the grounds of an exclusive private school in Scotland and the lone gunman happens to be a former member of the Special Armed Services (SAS), the elite British Commando Corps and a wounded survivor is a local Member of the Scottish Parliament's (MSP) son, questions are asked as to motive and means.

In Ian Rankin's novel A Question Of Blood Lee Herdman, ex of Her Majesty's SAS, had walked into Port Edgar Academy on a beautiful sunny afternoon at break time, entered the student's common room and fired four shots. The first two killed two boys, the third wounded another, and he lodged the fourth in his own brain. "What a blessing" everyone said that most of the students were out on the grounds, or who knows how many he would have killed before taking his own life.

Of course that's small compensation to the parents of the dead boys, or the police who are forced to conduct the investigation in an effort to figure out why Herdman did what he did. Their not helped any either by the survivor's father attempts to make a political name, and exact a measure of vengeance on the police, by demanding "Something Be Done About Violence". (The distinguished gentleman had been caught in the company of a "working girl" during a police sweep of a neighbourhood – and although able to worm and squirm his way out of it all by claiming he was "researching" he still believed the police deliberately targeted him and leaked his presence to some of the louder tabloids)

Under normal circumstances Detective Inspector (DI) John Rebus wouldn't have had anything to do with the investigation as it occurred in another station's territory. But the officer in charge, a former colleague, remembers that Rebus had once almost been accepted into the SAS. That's enough to ensure Rebus be considered someone with insight into the way the brain of a discharged trained killer works and to get him attached to the investigation in an "unofficial capacity" as an advisor in the hunt for a motive.

Unofficial capacity because as seems to be usual for DI John Rebus, he's skirted a wee bit too close to the edge of not playing by the rules and has been suspended from the force. This time might be a little more serious, as he was the last person seen in the company of a man who was found bound and gagged, or at least his charred remains were found, in his apartment after a house fire.

Unfortunately Rebus and the remains had a history, which had included a complaint of harassment against Rebus (dropped) and the corpse giving Rebus's junior officer, Detective Sergeant (DS) Siobhan (pronounced Shi-v-on) Clarke a black eye. The fact that Rebus shows up for work two days after the fire with his hands heavily bandaged from burns is just an extra-added bonus to toss onto the pile of evidence assembled against him.

All in all it's just another day at the office in the world that Ian Rankin has created for his character DI John Rebus to muddle through as best he can. A Question Of Blood, written in 2003, has John middle aged and alone. Over the course of thirteen previous books he has run two relationships into the ground, arrested his own brother on drug charges, alienate his daughter, come perilously close to being thrown off the force, and drink himself to sleep every night in his arm chair listening to classic Rock and Roll of the late 1960's.

It's no coincidence that some Rebus novels share titles with Rolling Stones album titles; Let It Bleed and Beggar's Banquette; as Rebus is addicted to that period of music. A sign of refusing to let go of his youth and age gracefully, or perhaps his way of underlining his status as the most non-conformist of the non-conformist? However you want to take it, his enthusiasm for the music of that era it appears to be his only interest that isn't work.

Even here though his interest boarders on the obsessive – a trait that has been pointed to as a detriment in his character by any who have attempted to place themselves between him and an investigations. An unwillingness to "Just let it go John" has landed him in the soup more times than nought, and inevitably ticked off many a puffed up government appointee in a uniform who never walked a beat.

On the other hand it has also always produced results in the past when it looked like wells were dry. With the cynicism typical of the breed the political types will acknowledge his achievements while awaiting their next opportunity crucify him. But like the armed forces needs men like Lee Herdman to carry out their dirty work the brass need cops like Rebus. So although they'll make his life as miserable as possible, they'll also hold onto him until he becomes too much of a liability that he'll harm their chances of promotion.

As in the earlier books the Edinburgh that is Rebus' beat is not the one you'll hear the local tourist board exclaiming over enthusiastically. Council Flats (subsidised housing), snitches, prostitutes, drugs, and violence don't sell quite as well as history and a Fringe Theatre Festival. But they are part of that world which most of us never see, one that both criminal and police find themselves equally at home in.

Ian Rankin's ability to bring those streets and its denizens to life, and to allow the line between the good guys and the bad guys to blur, if not vanish on occasion, gives his novels the continual underlying tension that would be the part of life on any modern police force. Long gone are the days, if they ever really existed, of gentleman crooks and unarmed Bobbies. While officers like Rebus still don't carry weapons as a part of their uniform and those that do have to radio in for permission to draw their weapons before leaving their car, as drugs flood the historic streets, guns for villains have become as readily available as taxis.

While DI Rebus and DS Clarke are both on the sides of the angels, more and more they are finding themselves having to make decisions that make it harder to look in a mirror in the morning. Perhaps that is the real distinction between them and those they arrest; they are bothered by their consciences. Even Rebus' excuses to himself for his behaviour are beginning to sound hollow in his own ears and yet he can't seem to find an alternative way to get the job done.

Whether dealing with one of his snitches or exchanging barbs with the investigators the armed forces has sent to assist the with the delving into the reasons behind one of their former employee's actions Rebus is equally acerbic. Its just not in his nature to be very trusting of anyone anymore, and there is something about the about the latter pair that raises his hackles

All their attempts to build a stone wall around the case does is make Rebus push all the harder to find out what they are trying so hard to conceal. Like a terrier after a rat he won't give up until he's got his prey in his grips, and he'll push to accomplish this even if means bringing the wall down on top of him.

A Question Of Blood by Ian Rankin is a tautly written, neatly woven, story that manages to not only follow two plot lines with ease, but also continues to delve deeper into the heart and soul of one of the most complex detective fiction characters ever created. What amazes me about the Rebus books is not just Rankin's ability to come up with original plots each time out, but that here in the fourteenth book his main character is still a fascinating enigma who remains as much a mystery as the plots he unravels.

Part of the joy in reading these books is the way each of them peels back another layer of the onion like character of John Rebus and we see deeper into his soul. He is a complex man in a world where black and white have long since ceased to exist. We may always be on the outside looking in on John Rebus and his world, but it is one of the best views in contemporary fiction.

Long may DI John Rebus continue to patrol the streets of Edinburgh and continue to do what he does best: be a police officer who cares too much.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:56 AM | Permalink

I had picked up a mystery story the other day and it made me think about how they are one of the few genres that seem to be universally enjoyed by all people. I know that today mystery stories are no longer confined to the pages of pulp fiction magazines and come in many guises and fashions. But in the end, they all still revolve around finding out "who done it".

The mystery story as modern fiction has had as long and colourful a history as some the characters that have occupied its pages. You'd think, because of this, finding a definition for what one is would be easy.. But in checking out the pages of Wikipedia looking for information on mystery stories I discovered that nobody can even agree on what to call them let alone come up with a definition.

In fact the term "Mystery" isn't even used. Instead, the much more specific "Detective Fiction" is used as the general term. From there they've come up with all sorts of sub-classifications that sound like the work of people with too much time on their hands or trying to come up with names of television shows. What the hell is "Unexplained Supernatural Speculative Fiction" when it's at home?

People seem just as reticent when it comes to talking about the history of the genre. The most they'll commit to saying is Edgar Allen Poe is the father of the modern mystery. But even that gets qualified by mentions of the Dickens novel Bleak House which features the mysterious death of a much hated character as a major part of the novel. But even those two books only date back to the 1830s for the Dickens book, and I seem to remember a few books being written before that time.

Although the printing press had been developed in the 1500s, it wasn't until the 1800s that the technology existed for mass publication. But that didn't prevent stories from being told, in one form or another, prior to that and mysteries being part of that lexicon. In fact you could say that the mystery story was one of the first stories that was ever told.

One of the ways the Church was able to spread the word and teach the gospel to people in the early part of the first millennium was through the use of performances called Mystery Plays. These plays would usually feature scenes from both the Old Testament and the New Testament, and always gave the devil a starring role. The subject matter usually centred around the Church's definition of good and evil and what the rewards of each would be.

The mystery referred to in the title was of course nothing to do with solving a crime, but the greater mystery of life, the universe and everything under God's green earth. The explanation, or the answer to this "Mystery", was explained as being God's will and people weren't encouraged to delve into that too deeply and accept everything on faith..

As theatre began to develop over the years the repertoire began to expand into more earthy matters and by the time of the Renaissance in Europe and Shakespeare in England plays were dealing with human events over biblical stories. Any mystery that was involved in these plays was for the most part up to the characters in the plays to solve, or resolve.

The audience usually already knew "who done it" and the mystery involved finding out how they got theirs in the end. But there were plays that set the stage for today's mystery story. In Hamlet, our buddy in black has to find evidence that the king did indeed kill his, Hamlet's, Dad before he will justify meting out justice and killing the king in revenge. Hamlet was one of the first characters to take up the role of amateur private investigator.

Considering the results of his investigation – the play ending with four bodies littering the stage and two killed earlier on, one would think playwrights would have backed away from the practice in the future. They may have backed off from the private investigator role, but that didn't stop them from littering the stage with bodies for a while.

You want to see gratuitous sex and violence; you need look no further than a good Jacobean tragedy. There's no mystery as to who did it, but the bodies start piling up in the first act – heck sometimes even the first scene – until the by the end of the play the stage is usually knee deep in them. The only thing that put a stop to this developing any further was Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans taking over in England for thirty years and closing the theatres.

Even when they re-opened the only mystery that was offered up by the period known as Restoration theatre in the late 1600s, was who was going to get into whose pants. By the 1700's the best written literature was already being created more for reading then performing, with English (and Irish) verse and prose catching up to their contemporaries on the Continent..

While perhaps Alexander Pope's poem "Rape Of The Lock" could be considered a mystery in the sense of having to try and figure out just what the heck he was talking about, the majority of writers were concerned more with satirizing social mores than anything else. As the century progressed and the world heated up with revolutions in France and America and nationalism swept through Europe political tracts and pamphlets were published, whose only mystery involved the odds around the author surviving their publication.

That brings us back to the time of Mr. Poe again and the birth of the modern mystery story. The first really great detective was "born" by the end of the 1800's in the person of Sherlock Holmes, creating either the prototype, or archetype, for all future crime-solving individuals. Ms. Marple to Philip Marlow might seem a stretch, but they both have Sherlock and Mr. Conan Doyle to thank for their existence.

But am I any nearer to answering my question as to why mystery stories appeal to so many different people? Go back a moment to the "Mystery Plays" with their absolute certainties of right and wrong, and judgement. That's not overly different from our modern detective story with its villain and hero, and the bringing of the villain to justice.
No matter how many shades of grey a writer may imbue his world with, the majority of time we are given the same guarantees offered by the "Mystery Plays". In today's world the certainty of the final resolution offered by most mystery stories is a break from our own uncertain world. On some level they offer us the same reassurance offered our ancestors by the "Mystery Play"

In these days of cynicism and mistrust for those who used to be the bulwarks of our society, church and state, it is the mystery story, by whatever name we want to call it, which gives us the assurance of good (in all its shades of grey) eventually winning over the nominally bad. The heroes and villains may not be as cut and dried as they were in Dame Agatha's day, and the distinctions between good and evil may not be as clear as they used to be, but its still a darn site tidier than what reality has to offer.

In an age of uncertainty anything that can offer a semblance of steadfastness will be clung to like a life preserver. Is it any wonder that the biggest hits on television these days among continuing serials are variations on the mystery story? For however long we are absorbed by either the book or the television we are in a world where we know for a fact that eventually justice in one form or another will be done. And that can't help but be a relief.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:37 AM | Permalink