Leap In The Dark

Stop the presses: Tonight at 8:00 pm EST people, cities, and businesses around the world will be turning off their non-essential electricity for one hour. Earth Hour is the brain child of the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) who have co-opeted the idea from an event staged in Sydney Australia last year where 2 million people and 2,000 businesses shut off power for an hour. The idea was to show people easy and effective means that can be taken to save electrical power on a regular basis.

This year the WWF (no not the World Wrestling Federation - see above) have taken the idea global by encouraging people, cities, and businesses to sign up on-line to pledge taking part in a simultaneous world-wide hour of turning out the lights and shutting off the power. To date only about 230,000 people and twenty major cities have pledged to go along with the idea, which isn't even a tenth of the number who took part in last year's event in Sydney. In other words it's looking like this hasn't exactly caught too many people's imaginations.

Now I'm sure that there are going to be people who will say things like the television stations and advertisers aren't going to want lose that hour's worth of prime time audience on a Saturday night, so they're not going to go out of their way to promote it. It will be easy enough to point the finger of blame at some big media conglomerate who doesn't want to lose a penny, for why this event doesn't fly. It's far better to do that than to admit that the whole exercise is pointless and just another sap to people's consciences that won't accomplish dick all.

It's just another joke like Earth Day, and the corporate sponsored pick up a piece of garbage programs that take place every April 23rd. You know those events where everybody gets in their cars and drives to some spot with garbage bags and collects some of the crap that our society produces on a daily basis so that it can be added to overflowing landfill sites, burnt in incinerators, tossed in the town dump, or buried in abandoned mine shafts. Yep, then every one gathers round and has a barbecue consisting of hamburgers made from cattle that acres of rain forest were cut down to make room for. Very ecological.

I hate to break it to everyone but no amount of Earth Days, Earth Hours, Earth Minutes, or even Earth Seconds, is going to change the condition the world is in. If you want to do something constructive for the environment it is going take a commitment far in excess of anything that any of us, and I include myself in that us, are probably willing to take. One only has to consider the environmental impact we each have going grocery shopping each week to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

According to statistics reported by Barbara Kingsolver in her book Animal, Vegetable, Mineral if you were to remove the products made with corn, soy, and canola from the supermarket, close to 97% of what's on the shelves would vanish. Soy and corn are not just found in soy milk, tofu or your can of creamed corn from Green Giant these days. Check the ingredient list on the next box of frozen chicken breasts that you buy and you'll notice some interesting additions; soy protein and maybe even corn meal. Both are added to the "chicken breast" as filler to give it more weight. Yet that's only the surface, because a great deal of the packaging that your food comes in has used corn in the manufacturing process.

Now that might sound "ecological" until you start factoring in something else, how much of our agricultural land is now being used to grow what used to be know as feed corn - corn unfit for human consumption but you could feed it to your cattle - that can be processed for manufacturing purposes? In order to make that box your chicken product came in we've wasted land that could have been used to grow food in order to create packaging that has to be disposed of somehow or other.

Then there's the matter of how that packaging was manufactured. How much fresh water had to used for the paper to be pulped, for the inks to be manufactured? How much electrical power was needed to for the various stages of the manufacturing process from the cutting down of the tree that supplied the wood that made the paper until the box ended up on the factory floor where the frozen chicken bits were stuffed into it? What happened to all the waste product from the manufacturing process all the way along the chain?

None of that even takes into account the chicken that was used in the process to make the contents of the package. Skipping over the whole ethical thing about factory farms for now let's just consider chicken shit. That's the real problem with all these factory farms is the disposal of the animal waste product. You get thousands of chickens in one place you're talking about one hell of a lot of chicken shit that you have to get rid off somehow because you can't just have it piling up on the floor. So where does it all go?

All of that just from buying one box of frozen chicken breasts at the supermarket. If you were to take every product you purchase in the grocery store that came pre packaged and start tracing back through the manufacturing process for each part of it, you'd come up with a similar scenario. Even those so called "green" products we all buy are packaged and contribute somewhere along the way to the damage we're inflicting upon the planet.

So things like Earth Hour and Earth Day are meaningless jokes when compared to the damage we inflict upon the world we live in every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every year just by going about our daily business. No one off event once a year will change that. Sure turn your electric power off for an hour tonight if you want, but while your at it why not sit down and look at the real impact of your personal habits on the planet earth.

Oh and everybody, don't rush to turn on your electricity all at once; the power spike could black out North America for hours.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:30 PM | Permalink

I remember an interview with John Cleese of Monty Python fame where he described how they came up with the skits they performed on their old television series. They would, he said, simply take the most illogical premise to its logical conclusion. That was all very well and good, but half the time I don't think I could even get my head around what the premise was on half the old skits on Monty Python's Flying Circus let alone working them out to their logical conclusion.

In fact the thing I used to like best about that show and a few others of similar ilk was that they didn't have anything for the logical brain to hold onto. All you could do was sit back, enjoy the ride, and don't be too bothered about not understanding the whys and what-for of the action. It was a blissful descent into pure and utter chaotic anarchy that seems to be something uniquely English. Maybe it has something to do with living in a society which has been so rigidly class bound for so long that invites such out and out anarchy as a response.

Whatever the reason, the Brits have a long history of being right over the edge when it comes to comedy. Predating Monty Python with The Goon Show and Beyond The Fringe, and continuing on with stuff like The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and Red Dwarf. It's not only television and radio that's been host to their comic insanity (Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy first saw life as a Radio show) but comics as well. Of these, the reigning queen of over the top is without a doubt Tank Girl

The Tank Girl comic, and the indomitable character herself, first saw the light of day in 1988 thanks to the talents of writer Alan C. Martin and illustrator Jamie Hewlett. Together the two men created three graphic novels featuring the outrageous adventures of the girl and her tank. She and her friends fight a never ending war against injustice, anybody that pisses them off, and perform feats of daring that usually involve high powered ammunition and lots of things that go boom. Cutting a tank wide swath through the Australian Outback, they eat well, drink lots, and knock over the occasional bank when in need of cash.

While it might appear on the surface that Tank Girl and her friends are random acts of violence simply waiting to happen, there's far to them than meets the eye. To gain a deeper understanding of the maelstrom that is Tank Girl, you really need to read Tank Girl: Armadillo!, her first completely prose adventure written by Alan C. Martin and published by Titan Books.

Tank Girl: Armadillo! features a novella of the same name, plus some bonus features including a couple of comic scripts awaiting illustrations, poems, and other short writings where our heroine is in full action mode. It's the novella though where most of the action takes place and also where we get a whole bunch more information about Tank Girl herself, and a little bit of insight into the philosophy behind Alan C. Martin's creation.

In his introduction to Tank Girl: Armadillo! he talks about how we are continually bombarded with sensual stimulation until we are literally drowning in information overload. To combat this we raise shells to defend ourselves and learn how to shut off our sensory receptors. Unfortunately by doing this we also block our flow of creative energy. In this way, Martin says, the modern world refuses us our right to be who we are.

Like armadillos we're naked under our armour, and if we didn't create this armour we would be swamped and overwhelmed. According to Martin we need to take control of our armour and not let it form as a reaction to the greed and manipulation of advertisers, politicians, and the rest of the information merchants in order to survive. That's where Tank Girl comes in; her armour is in plain view and she makes damn sure that nobody is going to sell her snake oil of any shape or form.

So that's the context for reading Tank Girl: Armadillo and it's all very well and good, but I defy anybody to remember that while reading the story. Well maybe it's percolating somewhere in the back of your skull, but the truth of the matter is that it's far too easy to get caught up in the sheer crazy, insanity of the story. I think the secret to enjoying this story is that you make sure your seat belt is securely fastened, your dis-belief checked at the door, and you hang on tight because your in for the ride of my life.

You see the self righteous folk of the town of Chankers, (rhymes with wankers), have been abusing the love of Tank Girls' life, Booga the kangaroo, since he was just young. Now they have finally crossed the line by kidnapping him, tying him up in the basement of the town church and punishing him for being a sinner. There's only one thing to do in a case like this; bring down death and destruction with all the armament the tank can bring to bear.

Of course it's not just death and destruction, there's also some random acts of stupidity and other completely nonsensical incidents which don't bear repeating, but are all good clean fun. Well not really - more like heavy duty anarchic chaos that's good for the soul and bad for the establishment. That's the thing about Tank Girl, she's got a fine sense of justice and a good notion of right and wrong. Sure she might over react just a teensy bit now and then, but sometimes the only way people are going to listen to you is if you drop a small nuclear device on their town.

I think what I appreciated most about Tank Girl: Armadillo! is Alan C. Martin's writing. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this book when it came to how the story was going to be told, but not only can he write some mean chaotic prose, he also give us pauses in the action which are not only poetic, but actual poetry. It might sound corny, but these poetic interludes show us the Tank Girl who would exist if she didn't have to be concerned about wearing armour to protect herself from the havoc of everyday existence.

Tank Girl: Armadillo! is the natural heir to the British comedy shows of the 1960's and 1970's like Monty Python's Flying Circus in that it also takes an illogical situation to its most logical conclusion. The only difference is that Tank Girl: Armadillo! has far more basis in reality than those other shows did. On the surface this is a hoot and a holler, but underneath it all is a call to arms.

We could all use a little more Tank Girl in our lives and Tank Girl: Armadillo! is just the answer. It goes on sale in mid April at book dealers of class and style everywhere.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:00 PM | Permalink

Probably most people don't remember the days when K. D, Laing used to show up for gigs in a wedding dress and claim to be channelling the spirit of Patsy Cline. She wasn't doing the middle of the road drivel that she passes off as music now either, she was playing a high energy country music that was the forerunner to what people a would eventually call alt-country. Basically it was country music with a punk sensibility; everything was played a little faster and there was a healthy disrespect for the "traditions" of country music as represented by folk like Garth Brooks and all the other cross over stars.

Something really wonderful started to happen because of that alt-country movement, people started to become interested in the real sound of country music from the days before it fell into the hands of the studios in Nashville and being played by people in bad leisure suits and cowboy hats. The movie O Brother Where Art Thou? was the high point of that resurgence and people like Alison Krouse and Union Station, and Gillian Welsh began to receive widespread recognition.

After years of hearing sentimental songs about truck drivers, cold women, and warm beer that were as real as the rhinestones and sequins that decorated the performers costumes, hearing the old gospel tune "I'll Fly Away" played on real instruments and sung with sincerity was like a breath of fresh air. Of course the novelty wore off pretty quick, but not before it became obvious that there was a market out there for bands who were willing to play music in the old style on acoustic instruments.

You can see that connection still alive and kicking in a band like the The Wilders with their high tempo music that gets its roots from the Ozarks and its soul from a honky-tonk. They make no bones about being a country band, their only concession to modern music is the use of an electric bass and a couple of overdubs on their forthcoming Someone's Got To Pay CD on Free Dirt Records. At the same time that doesn't mean they can't burn the house down with speed and energy that would put the Clash to shame.

Nearly half of Someone's Got To Pay is turned over to a series of songs based on the experiences one of the band members had serving on the jury of a first degree murder case. The defendant had shot and killed his ex-wife out front of her apartment block in front of her sister, and as he was listening to the testimony Phil Wade couldn't help but notice how the whole thing sounded just like one of the old murder ballads come to life.

While some other songwriters might have just written some tear jerker "story-song" about love gone bad, what Phil and the rest of the Wilders have done is create a song cycle based on the trial. Four of the songs are short piano instrumentals with titles like "I Raised Up My Right Hand", and "An Old Murder Ballad Come To Life" that serve as bridges to the other parts of the disc, while the other five detail the different aspects of the trial. By doing this is ensure that they don't make the murder out to be something it's not.

There's nothing romantic about some asshole shooting his ex-wife. By keeping it in the court room, where all that matters is the facts of the case, not idle speculation about the guy's broken heart or motivations that make it look like there was any justification for what he did, they are able to avoid using any of the standard "Country & Western" cliches about how I loved her so much that I had to kill her. Shooting someone in cold blood is not an act of love- it's an act of violence. The song cycle that the Wilders have written about this case, and about Phil Wade's involvement as a jury member, make sure we know that.

Listening to the music on Someone's Got To Pay one quickly realizes just how talented a group the Wilders are. Unlike a lot of bands that can play fast and furious, the Wilders can also slow down and taste a song. Their vocal harmonies and playing are such that they prove that energy in music doesn't translate as only speed. Energy is the passion that you bring to what you're singing and playing; and passion is something the Wilders have in spades.

There are lots of Bluegrass bands out there that can play really fast, who get boring real quick because every damn song they play starts sounding like the one they just played. The Wilders aren't that kind of fast band as each song they play has its own distinct character or feel. Whether they accomplish it through the vocals or the instrumentation, or a combination of the two, one way or another they make sure that none of their songs sound the same.

Soneone's Got To Pay is being released on April 15th, and if you've never heard the Wilders before this is a great opportunity to check out one of the finest examples of "real" Country music going today. This is a talented, skilled, and passionate band who know how to bring great music to life.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 11:02 PM | Permalink

I'm sure most people have noticed how numbers play this strange trick on the human mind; the higher they get the less meaning they have. I mean when somebody mentions the size of the American government's deficit as being in the trillions of dollars, does anybody really understand what that means? Or if they do why aren't they as upset about it as let's say you or I are about our personal debts that may only amount to a few thousand dollars?

The whole, the higher the number the less it means is especially telling when dealing with casualty figures. While we can get whipped up into a state close to hysteria when we read about the killing of one person, the deaths of millions of people won't cause us to turn a hair. Is it simply a matter of protecting ourselves, in that if we ever let ourselves feel the horror that we should feel from that many deaths we would never stop crying? Or is it because numbers that high are just incomprehensible?

When the death of one person is reported in the news we are usually given details of that person's life. We learn about those left behind to grieve, what they had accomplished to date, and what they have been prevented from accomplishing by their untimely demise. When the death total is from an earthquake or other natural disaster we might be told something about the town or city which has suffered the calamity, and be shown pictures of collapsed buildings, but we won't learn anything about individuals and the grief will stay impersonal.

Currently there is somewhere between 26 and 30 million people infected with the AIDS virus in the continent of Africa. To give you some idea of what that number means it's the equivalent of saying that nearly the entire population of Canada has AIDS, as we have a population of around 33 million. Those numbers are only estimates, as many governments in Africa are either unable or unwilling to provide an accurate count of the numbers of people with the virus.

A trade paper back edition of Stephanie Nolen's 28: Stories Of AIDS In Africa, that was first published last spring by Random House Canada, being released this coming April 15th, is a timely reminder that there are faces and lives that go with each one of those 26 to 30 million people. Each of them have families, had hopes and dreams that are now withering, just as surely as anyone who is killed in a car accident or a house fire.

In the introduction to the book Ms. Nolen explains her rationale behind choosing twenty-eight as the number of people she would profile in the book; one person for roughly every ten million infected with the AIDS virus. She also says in the same introduction that she fears that even the thirty million figure quoted above is a conservative estimate based on how deeply rooted AIDS has become in Africa and how often she witnessed case numbers far exceeding official estimates in areas she visited researching this book.

In 2003 Ms. Nolen convinced her editors at The Globe And Mail, Canada's national newspaper, to allow her to investigate the AIDS pandemic in Africa. She moved to Johannesburg, South Africa and spent four years travelling across the continent and attending international AIDS conferences, as she struggled to come to grips with the enormity of the situation facing Africans of every race, creed, nationality, and social status.

The amount and depth of her research is obvious when you read the introduction to 28; its probably the best written history of AIDS, not only in terms of Africa, but the disease period, that I've ever read. The disease did not spring up overnight among North American homosexuals in the early 1980's as I'm sure many believe. The first known human cases of AIDS can be traced back seventy years ago to Cameroon. Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) is a disease found in Chimpanzees, an animal that used to be fairly commonly eaten and hunted in Africa. A virus that is non-lethal in one species, can be death to another, and such was the case with SIV which was not particularly dangerous to chimps, but as HIV has proved incurable in humans.

Scientists figure that it would only have taken ten or twelve incidences of hunters butchering infected chimps and becoming infected themselves for HIV to take root successfully among humans. Once that happened it was only a matter of time before it spread. Thankfully HIV, in spite of any propaganda you might hear to the contrary, is not one of the easily transmitted diseases and requires the transference of bodily fluids in order to have a chance at survival unlike airborne ones like TB, Ebola, influenza or the common cold.

There's no way of knowing for certain how many people were infected with the disease prior to the discovery in the mid 1980's of the test we now have to detect its presence, but Africans were dying of what they called "Slim", a mysterious disease that caused people to waste away since the 1950's. As we learned in North America when people caught HIV from tainted blood products, there are many more ways than sex and drug use to catch the disease. In Africa, mass immunizations where thousands of people were vaccinated with the same needle, looks to be one of the ways AIDS was able to establish a firm grip among the general population.

While Ms. Nolen's skills as a journalist make the introduction invaluable reading, what makes 28 Stories Of AIDS In Africa so compelling are the stories of the twenty-eight people of the title. Some of them will be known to you, like Nelson Mandela, who in 2005 announced to the world that his son had died of AIDS. Since his retirement from the presidency of South Africa has dedicated himself to the fight against the pandemic. Others, like Manuel and Philomena Cossa, a migrant gold miner from Mozambique and his wife, you'll have never heard of, and their stories will break your heart.

From 1967 until 2005 Manuel would spend two years at a time away from home and family working in the gold mines of South Africa. Most of those years were spent working under the iron fist of apartheid for little more then slave wages, but it still meant he brought money home to his family. But in 2005 he came home sick, and both he and his wife have now tested positive for AIDS. They now have no income; because Manuel did not test positive until he was home the mine owners don't have to pay him a disability pension as they would if he had tested positive while on the job. No income means their children have to drop out of school, or can't even start school because they can't afford the ten dollars for school fees.

Alice Kandzanja is a nurse in a hospital in Zomba in southern Malwai that operates at 400% capacity, meaning that each bed has three patients laid out head to foot. She has seen 2,000 of her sister nurses die since the AIDS epidemic hit Malwai. In 2006 Cynthia Leshomo of Botswana won the Miss HIV Stigma-Free pageant by taking her medication as part of her traditional wear portion of the competition. In Botswana, which used to have a lower infant mortality rate than most of Eastern Europe, people didn't get AIDS because it was only a poor person's disease. Yet in the year 2000 37% of pregnant women were HIV positive.

That is the real face of AIDS in Africa, how it effects more than just the person infected, and cripples the futures of so many people. Governments don't have the money to provide free education to their people thanks to the policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that have demanded they cut social spending if they want to get any aid money or debt forgiveness. A country like Mozambique doesn't have enough doctors and therefore no way to distribute drugs to people who need them even if they could afford to buy them.

One of the most common questions that Stephanie Nolen reports being asked is how can the world let this happen to us? Even when they do finally cough up money, as the Bush administration admirably has done to the tune of $15 billion dollars over five years, it's a case of too little too late, and with far too many strings attached. How can you insist that money for AIDS prevention not be given to groups that advocate condom use or planned parenthood or stipulate that only expensive patent protected American drugs can be purchased with the money?

From South Africa to Egypt in the north, tens of millions of Africans have been diagnosed with AIDS. Each day there is a good chance that a baby is born somewhere in Africa who is HIV positive, and the numbers continue to grow. Although conditions have improved since the early 1990's when governments in Africa refused to acknowledge AIDS even existed and in 2000 when funding was non existent, the hole that has been dug is so deep that it might take decades just to reach the surface.

28: Stories Of Aids In Africa helps you remember that behind the numbers in the headlines, and behind the politician's talks of costs, are human beings who are suffering. I defy anyone to read this book and still feel that governments the world over are doing enough to make a difference.

28: Stories Of Aids In Africa is being released as a trade paperback on April 15th/2008 by Random House Canada and can be purchased directly from them or from an on line retailer like Amazon Canada.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:55 AM | Permalink

The saying getting there is nearly half the fun was obviously never meant to apply to travel by airplane these days. What with having to show two hours early for every flight to allow for potential cavity searches usually being followed by being crammed into a too small space next to an air sick child who screams the whole flight there is only a limited amount of fun to be had. In fact aside from fantasizing about pushing the aforementioned child out an emergency exit at 30,000 feet the only fun left in travel is the relief felt upon arrival.

That's not to say that the saying is completely archaic and without it's uses anymore, because it still holds true when reading successful epic fantasy novels. Authors like Steven Erikson, James Barclay, Ashok Banker, and Roesmary Kirstein have made the how we make the journey to the conclusion of their multi-booked series as an integral part of the process as the plot. These writers, as well as others, have put such effort into creating the worlds their stories take place in they take on a life of their own outside the actions of the characters that you're reading about.

Of course the journey to whatever conclusion awaits is also enhanced by the number of plot lines most of these authors seem able to juggle simultaneously. Instead of merely following the trail of one central figure as he or she rights the wrongs of the world, we follow the fortunes of any number of loosely connected characters, who may never even know of each other's existence. Each one of the characters play not only a vital role in seeing the story through to it's conclusion, they also make the world they live in that much more believable.

The Born Queen is the final chapter in the series The Kingdoms Of Thorn And Bone by the American author Greg Keyes. Over the course of the first three books of the quartet, The Briar King, The Charnel Prince, and The Blood Knight, we have followed in the footsteps of the various characters he created as they have struggled to overcome not only the foreign powers that threaten their homeland of Crotheney, but the mysterious forces of entropy that have been released upon the world that threaten to devour all life.

The Royal Family of Crotheney has been decimated through treason and assassination until its only surviving members by the time the fourth book roles around, are the late King's wife, her son, who is mentally unfit to rule, and the youngest daughter Anne. Anne is now Queen and is battling to not only preserve her country from invasion by mortal forces, but for control of the ancient supernatural forces that control life in her world.

While she's fighting the war in her way, two of her subjects are off on their own conducting investigations into both the supernatural powers that Anne is trying to control and the force of entropy that is gradually killing all the living things of the world and giving birth to horrible monsters of devastation. When we met Stephen in The Briar King he was a naive student of history with a gift for languages heading to a monastery. Now he has grown in strength of character to the point where he is strong enough to face up to the challenges of uncovering the lost secrets of the mysterious power that could rule the world that has lain dormant for thousands of years. Yet once he uncovers those secrets will he be able to withstand their control over him - or will he succumb to their power and become another threat to Anne?

Asper had been the guardian of the King's Woods, keeping them safe from human incursion and poachers, when we met him back when the story began, and it was he who discovered the first signs that the woods were dying. He and the young woman he loves, Winna, have spent the books in pursuit of the foul monsters, and their masters, in an attempt to find a means of rescuing the natural world. Now that he might finally have the answer as to how he can achieve that goal, will he be able to? When the answer to his prayers appears to be sacrificing his and Winna's unborn child, and he has no control over whether or not it will happen, he feels his heart being ripped asunder.

Than there are the mysterious Sefry, who on one hand are helping Queen Anne in her battles with the mysterious forces that she is seeking to control that will allow her to decimate her enemies, but on the other hand are also working in concert with the foul creatures who are destroying the world. That they are the descendants of a race that had at one time enslaved all mankind until Anne's ancestor, the first Queen of the Dare family line, overthrew them, is yet another reason to wonder at their motivations.

Throw in the head of the Church also looking to control the mysterious powers for his own gain, and making pacts with various forces of evil; the undead brother of the late King lurking in the shadows killing people with a mysterious piece of music that he had the court composer write; a few other sub-plots, and you might wonder how Greg Keyes is going to wrap all this up in one book. The answer is with the same amount of grace and elegance he brought to the first three books.

His characters continue to develop and grow as people throughout the pages of this book, even up to the last couple of pages as they learn about who they are and what their purposes are in the world. Like in life the story doesn't end here on the pages of The Born Queen, it just pauses after this stage of its journey. Throughout the quartet Keyes has shown himself to be a writer of great patience and gifted with an impeccable sense of timing. Not once do you have the feeling that he is rushing the story so that he can wrap it up in this book; if the story demanded you have the feeling that he would have written a fifth volume.

In The Kingdoms Of Thorn And Bone Keyes created a world with enough similarities to ours that we could identify with the environment and the people. Even the magic and and the mystical beasts all have an air of familiarity about them that strikes a chord of recognition for us from tales in our own world. The struggles the characters face are ones that we can identify with on an emotional and human level, even if we have never, or will never, actually experience the exact circumstances they live through.

The Born Queen is a superb conclusion to a masterful series that represents epic fantasy at its best. The Kingdoms Of Thorn And Bone is definitely a journey where all the fun is in the getting there. Readers in Canada can pick up a copy either directly from Random House Canada or through an on line retailer like Amazon Canada

Posted by Richard Marcus at 11:06 PM | Permalink

It used to be in romance novels when the girl fell for the guy who had a dark side it was that he made his living as an international jewel thief or something along those lines. Those bad boys of the past have been superseded in today's newest entry in the soft core world of romance novels: the paranormal romance. How can a simple jet setting jewel thief compete with a vampire or a werewolf when it comes to falling for the bad guy?

Talk about a girl getting in touch with her dark side! The paranormal sex thing is nothing new of course as the movies have been playing up the sexy side of blood sucking for ages with all kinds of night moves being made on the necks of low cut bodices for years now. Violence and sex all in one scene - what more could a Hollywood producer want? I guess the only surprising thing is that it's taken this long for Harlequin world to start exploring it's supernatural side.

Of course the only thing better than having a boyfriend from the dark side, is to have a heroine who likes to walk on the wild side as well. In these liberated days you can't get away with having your heroine only getting weak kneed over the boy anymore, spending the book worrying about whether or not he's mister right isn't enough or a role for today's leading lady. No she has to be a successful career girl now, or in the case of the paranormal world, have her own personal demons to deal with.

Kelley Armstrong has seven previous titles to her name in the paranormal romance field, so she's well on her way to becoming a franchise. In the world she's created for her characters human and "supernatural" co-exist with the former mostly unaware of the latter's existence. Supernatural is a catch all term that seems to cover everybody from vampires and werewolves to the children of demons who can read the trail left by strong emotions to create a picture of past events.

In Ms. Armstrong's latest instalment, Personal Demon published by Random House Canada, her heroine, Hope Adams, is a part demon beauty who can recreate events based on the taste of strong emotions left behind at the scene of a crime. This skill comes with a price, which is her personal demon of the title, that she can become addicted to the chaotic sensations caused by extreme emotions. Put her next to someone whose just been the victim of a violent crime and she will forget everything except the sensation of experiencing the chaos of their emotions.

While Hope tries to pass as human, holding down a job working for one of the tabloids reporting on "the supernatural", the majority of those like her work for one of three of four crime style families called the Cabals. These Cabals are more like feudal overlords than anything else for their employees, providing them with everything from communities to be part of to safe doctors to attend to their specific illnesses. All they require in return is your life; once you sign on with a Cabal the only way you leave usually is feet first. Natural causes if you play by the rules, or slightly less natural ones if you decide to seek other employment.
Of course the supernatural world isn't that much different than the human world and comes complete with it's own set of ingrained prejudices. Like any other corporate environment men still rule the roost, and if you're a werewolf you need not even bother filling out an application.

Then there are those pesky young folk who don't want to play by the rules and set up their own little operations - or gangs. The Cabals let them operate in their territory as long as they stay within certain boundaries; like not making it obvious to humans that there are supernatural elements among them. If they start stepping over the line the Cabals step in and put them in their place. In Personal Demon one of these gangs has started to step over the line and a Cabal that Hope owes a debt to calls in their marker to get her to infiltrate them to find out what's going on.

Now it's not just Hope who owes the debt to the Cabal, her sort of ex-boyfriend Karl owes as well. Karl has issues though, not the least of those being he's a werewolf whose been a lone wolf for way too many years, and the thought of permanency had sent him scurrying with his tail between his legs. Anyway, Hope's a big girl now and doesn't need anybody's help to get the job done.

Needless to say that doesn't turn out to be the case and Karl ends up sticking his snout in. Predictably once Hope had infiltrated the gang she had managed to find a young man to get hot and bothered with. Not just physically either because he was just full of lovely, chaotic emotions she could feed off as well. That relationship is cut short not just because Karl shows up but because her young man and his best friend in the gang are kidnapped. When all the clues point to the Cabal who hired her as the culprits for the snatch, Hope and Karl soon find themselves investigating what looks like an internal coup within the Cabal.

Of course while they are investigating they manage to re-ignite the old flame and let Karl get over his issues and they get to have their obligatory supernatural soft core sex scene, with him feeding her some of his milder adrenaline rushes to give her an extra thrill. The story line progresses along with Hope having to deal with her attraction to the "dark" side of her powers, before they can bring everything to it's final resolution.

Ultimately this is a romance novel, and if you come into it with any expectations for anything else you will be disappointed. The characters are cardboard, the dialogue is stilted and the action contrived. The pity is that the premise of the novel - which is what attracted me by the way - could have been interesting if the characters and their lives had been the real focus and the world of the supernatural not just another exotic locale to put a heroine and her manly man in.

This time the jewel thief happens to be a werewolf, and the international gangs have supernatural powers, but Personal Demon proves that a bodice ripper by any other name is still a bodice ripper. For those interested you can pick up a copy either directly from Random House Canada, through Amazon Canada, or other on line retailer.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:23 PM | Permalink

When my mother's grandfather came to Canada in the 19th century from Bucharest, Romania (according to family legend he knifed a Cossack during a pogrom and had to leave in a hurry) they chose Quebec because they were fluent in French. Bucharest, along with a couple other cities, considered itself the Paris of the Danube. It was common for educated Romanians to be bilingual, and even favour French over their native tongue as a sign of their cultural refinement.

While this influence waned in the twentieth century, especially after Romania was "protected" from the corrupting influences of the West by the Iron Curtain, French cultural influences could still be found in certain areas. At the same time, while, like everywhere in Eastern Europe, Romania's gypsy population had suffered horrible deprivations in World War Two due to being one of the Nazi's targeted inferior races, the influence of that culture on popular music that was performed in clubs in the cities, or community events like weddings in the country was undeniable.

While the music was undeniably gypsy, with the familiar sounds of the tzimbal, violin, and accordion leading the way, and the language being sung was Romanian, the first time I heard Gabi Lunca sing I was reminded of Edith Piaf and others of the great French chanteuse tradition. Perhaps it's because I wasn't paying any attention to the lyrics, as I don't speak any Romanian, but only listening to the sound of the singer's voice, that I made the connection. Whatever the reason, there was no denying to my ears the connection between the two singers.

I only heard of Gabi Lunca because of the German record label Asphalt Tango that specializes in recordings of Russian and Eastern European music with an emphasis on the music of the Roma or gypsies. Not only have they been responsible for bringing some of the best in contemporary gypsy music to Western Europe and beyond, but they have produced a series of CDs featuring the music of performers from the Communist era who were largely unknown in the West.

Like the majority of the series the music on Gabi Lunca: Sounds From A Bygone Age - Vol.5 has been culled from the archives of the former Romanian State Radio in Bucharest, and re-mastered for CD. On this disc they have been able to find music that spans the years that Gabi Lunca was in her prime as a vocalist, from 1956 to 1978. Lunca was considered one of the "grande dames" of the Romanian music world and performed with some of the premier musicians of her time so what you're hearing on Gabi Lunca: Sounds From A Bygone Age - Vol.5 is representative of the best of the popular music of the time.

Gabi was born in 1938, one of twelve children left to violinist Dumitru Lunca to raise by himself when his wife died when Gabi was three. It was music that rescued her from a life of poverty as in the mid-fifties she entered and won a singing competition beating out fifty other entries. With her winner's certificate in hand she presented herself at the headquarters of Romanian State Radio, and was rewarded for her daring with her first recording the same year. While she had a slight hitch in her career in the shape of an early bad marriage, she soon moved full time to Bucharest and never looked back. She retired from public life in 1990, as the constant demands of performing were getting too much for her husband and herself.

During her heyday she was referred to as "Tziganca de matase", the silken gypsy woman, and listening to her sing you can guess at least one reason for that title. Her smooth, velvety voice caresses lyrics, and she appears almost effortless in her delivery. Even the slight tremor, or strain that one occasionally hears in her voice, is more indicative of being caught up in the passion of the moment rather than an effort to reach a note. According to the extensive liner notes included in the disc, the type of music she sang was meant to lift the weight of sadness from the listener's soul.

They were songs of the quiet yearning that's caused by homesickness, or missing one's mother or sweetheart. In the wrong hands I'm sure this type of material could be deadly; sickeningly sentimental saccharine that would make your teeth hurt just to listen to. Fortunately Gabi's voice has a quality to it that makes her sound so genuine that one can't help but feel the passion she sings with, even though you don't understand a word she says. It was this passion, and the intensity of her delivery that made me think of Edith Piaf and the French chanteuse tradition.

Although Gabi Lunca grew up listening to Romanian radio and singers whose music was predominately of gypsy origins, she was also part of a generation of singers who inherited the legacy of a culture that had been heavily influenced by France. Perhaps it's because of the similarities in the cadences of the two languages, Romanian and French, that I was so forcefully reminded of Piaf when I firs heard Lunca, but I also think it was something deeper. Both women had an almost instinctual understanding of how to communicate emotion to their audience in such a way that no one listening could doubt their sincerity.

It wasn't as if Lunca was imitating the way the Piaf sang, I doubt it was a conscious decision on her part to imitate anybody, it was more a reflection of how the two cultures had historically merged decades earlier. What's truly amazing about Lunca is her ability to seamlessly merge the chanteuse tradition of France with the gypsy music of her personal heritage. Of course considering that France has its own gypsy population it's always possible that the styles that influenced Piaf could have had their origins in gypsy music.

How ever it came about, what really matters is how Gabi Lunca sounded, and if the disc Gabi Lunca: Sounds From A Bygone Age: Vol. 5 is an accurate representation of her career, she was astounding. The passion in her voice and the passion and the energy of the music that accompanies her sound as if they were made for each other. A voice that's as gentle as a caress, but as strong and eternal as the wind that blows through the trees is not going to be easily forgotten once you've heard it, and I won't be forgetting Gabi Lunca in a hurry.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:14 PM | Permalink

A man, a guitar, and some songs; that's become a familiar part of the musical landscape of North American pop culture since the days of Robert Johnson. A man telling a story dates back to the beginning of our creation as a species and over the millennia has evolved into a myriad of forms, from the playwright to the abstract painter, but the guy who can put those stories into verse, or better yet into song, has always held our attention just a little bit more than anybody else.

When the fierce Norsemen went a Viking travelling with them was always a bard to make a record of their voyage. He would recount their heroic deeds, remember the dead, and heap scorn upon their enemies. As night closed around their longboat, leaving it adrift among the oceans of stars, the bards would tell the stories of past heroes and Gods to ease the loneliness of men leagues from home and stoke the fires of their courage during the long cold hours of darkness.

It was said among the ancient Celts that in order to become a Bard you needed to serve a twenty-one year apprenticeship. How could you sing about the world if you hadn't experienced it? How could you even hope to sing with honesty about human emotions if you've not lived long enough to understand them yourself? Bards were also expected to have the courage to go inside themselves and face up to their own personal demons, for how else could they sing about others with honesty if they couldn't face their own truths.

We don't have near the same expectations for those we entrust with singing our stories these days, and although I'm not saying a twenty-one year apprenticeship should be considered de rigour in order to sing and write songs for other people to listen to, the idea that they have a degree of life experience and some understanding of themselves is a good one. Being groomed for, or grooming yourself for stardom. and then "suffering" from the attention of the press doesn't quite count as learning about the human condition.

Part of the problem is people don't even know what they're missing. Being spoon-fed sentimental cliches from the first moment we are planted in front of a television hasn't done much for any of our critical faculties. It's only when you hear somebody like Grayson Capps unaccompanied by nothing save his guitar and one other person on violin and harmonica that you can truly appreciate how shallow those raising the flag, bring a tear to my eye moments, at a football game, really are. Listening to his release Songbones, on Hyena Records, might not make converts out of the masses, but it sure will be breath of fresh air for anybody in desperate need of a reminder of what it's like to hear somebody sing with more on their mind than their place in the charts.

Those of you familiar with Grayson's work with his band the Stumpknockers will have heard some of the songs on Songbones performed with a full band before as this is something he recorded almost on the spur of the moment back in 2002. He and Tom Marron, who accompanies him on violin and harmonica, had gone over to Mike West's studio/home after a gig and decided to keep playing. They sat down in front of some microphones and over the course of the next five hours recorded the bares bones versions of the songs you hear on this disc. (As Grayson puts it in his liner notes they are in their most naked form: Songbones)

I've been struggling for a couple of days trying to figure out how to best describe the experience of listening to Grayson Capps for the first time. I could say it was like listening to so and so the first time as a means of describing the enormity of his impact, but that would also imply a similarity of style or material that isn't valid no matter who was used as the basis of comparison. Certainly he has attributes in common with people like John Prine, Steve Goodman, Woody and Arlo Guthrie, and Bob Dylan, in terms of the integrity of his music and his ability to communicate emotions honestly, but he brings something to his songs that's different from anything I've heard from anyone else.

There's the sense that he has an understanding of individuals and their feelings in a way that perhaps only Woody Guthrie approached with his songs about the dirt poor farmers in the depression or that John Prine brings to some of his material. Yet there is something about Grayson Capps's approach to his subject matter that is different from any of the others. While they are telling people's stories, you get the feeling that Grayson might actually have lived what he sings about.

Whether he did or not is not the point, anyway he'd be long dead by now if he had. What is important is that he seems to have the uncanny ability to see the world through the eyes of the people who populate his songs. Perhaps it's because in each of his songs he is able to bring the world his people exist in to life around them, thus allowing us to experience a small piece of their reality. His ability to create an atmosphere where we can empathize with the character the song is about, no matter who or what they are, is something that I don't think I've experienced to the same extent before in the work of any songwriter.

On those songs where he relays a story from his own perspective, there is something about the manner in which he is able to convey his thoughts and feelings that make them seem less a personal statement, and more an expression of universal sentiments about a set of circumstances. He's not telling us how to feel, instead he has the ability to show us a more compassionate way of being without lecturing us. He is able to let us walk a mile in the shoes of people most of us wouldn't normally have the time of day for, and let us see just how a person could end up in a place we don't understand.

Tom Marron plays violin on the songs that are presented on Songbones in harmony both with Grayson's guitar work and with a song's melody. Not only does it sound beautiful, it adds a layer of atmosphere to the songs that makes them even more powerful. I've not heard songs like "Mermaid", "Washboard Lisa", or "I See You" performed by Grayson and his band, but if these are only their bare bones, they must be close to overwhelming powerful.

Songbones is the first collection of music that I've ever heard by Grayson Capps, and it leaves me wanting to hear much more of his work. For people like me who aren't familiar with him, it's a great introduction to his work, and I think for those of you who do know his material, the versions of the songs on this disc will deepen your appreciation for his talent. Grayson Capps writes songs of power and grace, and Songbones is a wonderful showcase of that talent.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:57 AM | Permalink

Back in 1759 when the British finally conquered New France one of the things they did to ensure the loyalty of the French population of Quebec was pass legislation protecting their rights of language, religion, civil law, and education. What this did was ensure the survival of French Canadian culture as a distinct society within the rest of Canada.

Aside from ensuring that French Canadians in Quebec, and later the rest of Canada, would have their language rights protected, it also made certain that the musical traditions they had brought over with them from France survived as well. The majority of settlers in New France had come from the Normandy and Breton areas of France, so the music had a distinct Celtic feel to it, similar to the music of Scotland and Ireland, but with its own unique flavours.

While the music was played mainly in rural areas in the late 1960's and early 1970's part of the nationalist movement that swept Quebec included a revived interest among young people in traditional music. You could hear that influence in the work of pop groups at the time; Harmonium and Beaux Dommages from Quebec, and from Ontario, Collective Artistic Nord Ontario (CANO). Like the English bands Renaissance and Fairport Convention, they utilized traditional folk tunes and conventions in a pop setting.

Today the interest in the traditional folk music remains strong among musicians in Quebec, and one of the newer groups performing the reels and revels of their fore bearers are Le Vent du Nord, who have just released their third CD Dans Les Airs on the Borealis Records label. The band was formed in 2002 and has quickly garnered a reputation as one of the best traditional acts in the folk music community. In 2004 their first CD won the Canadian music award, the Juno, for traditional album of the year, and in 2005 they were named traditional artist of the year in Austin Texas.

Like other Celtic groups from around the world that perform the music of their community the musicians of Le Vent du Nord (The Wind Of The North) do their best to perform the music on instruments that are as authentic as possible to the region. These include instruments that most of us are familiar with; guitar, violin, accordion, and squeeze box, and one we may not have heard before - a viellie a roue, or hurdy gurdy. The only references to hurdy gurdies that I've ever come across before had been the Donavon song "Hurdy Gurdy Man" and street vendors with dancing monkeys. I had always considered it to be along the lines of a player piano in that you couldn't actually play the instrument - but turned the crank so it could play a scripted piece of music.

Although the hurdy gurdy is a stringed instrument it actually sounds more like a set of bagpipes. When the player turns the crank it in turn causes a wooden wheel to rotate and rub against a set of strings similar in action to that of a violin bow. Instead of fingering the strings for notes, the musician uses a key mechanism. The droning sound that we associate with pipes is produced by four additional strings sounding individual notes continuously as a backdrop for the melody. Some hurdy gurdies also have sympathetic strings, which while not actively played, resonate with the instrument as it's played.

Now I have to tell you that I've never been much of a fan of straight traditional Quebecois music as I've heard it played in the past. Reels and other fiddle music that are normally associated with square dances usually end up boring me to tears. It turns out that while the barn dance may have been one of the mainstays of rural life in Quebec, it isn't the only type of music that was played. Either that or the four men in Le Vent Du Nord have the talent to make the reels and hornpipes that used to turn into an irritating drone on par with the sound of a mosquito after a couple of songs, a lot more interesting then anyone else has in the past.

Even though a number of the songs on the Dans Les Airs are ones that have been handed down to the group from previous generations, they sound as fresh and interesting as if they've been written this year. Of course some of their material is original, "Petit Reve lll" for example, or traditional lyrics adapted to new tune. "Les Larmes Aux Yeux" uses lyrics from a song that one of the band member's grandfather used to sing to him as a child and sets them to a tune of the band's composition in honour of one of their children finally falling asleep.

If you're like me and your French language skills are minimal to non-existent, the meaning of the lyrics are going to be lost on you, and your enjoyment will come from listening to the sound of the voices and the instruments working together to make music. In the past I think this has been why traditional Quebecois music, or any similar barn dance style music, has failed to sustain my interest; the lack of variety in tone. That's not the case with the music of Le Vent Du Nord as they not only create lovely vocal harmonies, but each song has it's own unique identity instead of being simply another reel that sounds like the previous reel.

Dans Les Airs by Le Vent Du Nord is a fine example of how traditional music does not need to be stuck in the past but can continue to grow and evolve. Traditions can be a trap that hold us in place if they refuse to change, but if every generation is allowed to breathe new life into them they are renewed and invigorated. Le Vent Du Nord is a north wind blowing new life into the traditional music of Quebec and keeping it alive for us to enjoy today.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:19 PM | Permalink

I have no idea where the misconception came from that satire has to be funny. Satire can be funny on occasion, but as it is a means of criticizing society there are going to be times that it won't be funny in the slightest. Anyway, the things that one person finds problematic in life, another person is going to believe in devoutly, meaning that there's always going to be someone who doesn't get the joke no matter how funny you make satire.

Classic satires like George Orwell's Animal Farm, where he equated Stalinist Russia with a barn yard revolution and showed the leaders of the revolution becoming as corrupt as the usurped masters, isn't funny at all once you understand what's being depicted. Yet for far too many people it's become a silly cartoon to be taken at its surface value where you laugh at the antics of the funny animals. For the modern satirist to be successful, which in my mind means getting his or her audience to question the status quo, he or she has to find a way to bring their audience to the point where they see how ridiculous things are, without their attention being diverted by the humour.

The other major difficulty facing a satirist is ensuring that the object of the satire doesn't become the object of the audiences' affection. If you start identifying with Homer Simpson or Archie Bunker, how are you going to see them as the objects of ridicule that they are supposed to be? If a character is to represent an area of malaise in society what does that say if the audience feels sympathy for him? While it could mean that society is a lot worse off then the author thought, it usually means that the character's creator hasn't been as honest in his depiction as necessary.

In his latest novel, Callisto, Australian author Torsten Krol has created a character, who while not necessarily un-likeable, isn't going to be someone that most of his readership are going to want to admit identifying with. Odell Deefus is what most people would call a few bricks short of a load, or any of the other euphemisms people might have for the genuinely stupid. If his IQ were any lower he could be considered developmentally challenged, and somewhere else he might have been, but not in the heartland of America, Yoder Wyoming, where Odell was brought up.

Of course as Odell is our source of all information for his little adventure in twenty-first century real-politic, he's not about to admit to the fact that he's what a generous person would call slow. In fact he goes out of his way to draw our attention to his great intellect by informing us that he's read The Yearling sixteen times. (It won the Pulitzer Prize so it can't be a book for dumb people) Anyway, Odell is intent on reassuring us about his intelligence because he wants us to take the story he's about to recount seriously.

Once he starts telling us the story you begin to understand why he's so desperate to assure us of his grip on sanity, and his ability to think straight. Through an amazing series of coincidences, misadventures, misunderstandings, (there are a lot of those when Odell is involved), and straight out stupidity, Odell ends up involved with a scheme to run drugs into a local prison, a murder investigation, and the attention of the good folk at Homeland Security on suspicion of terrorist activity. To think it was all because he was making his way to the enlistment centre in Callisto Kansas so he could do his patriotic duty and go over and kill some of them Islamic extremists.

He figures he stands a good chance of being signed up, even though he doesn't have a high school diploma, because they now have a test you can take instead. Besides they're so desperate for recruits they're offering a bonus for signing up, so they're not going to be too bothered about whether a fellow's graduated or not. Anyway what else kind of work is available these days for a guy without a high school diploma. Nope the army is just thing for a guy like Odell, and the millions of others like him across America.

Odell is not the only character in the book of course, but he is the centre of everyone's attention from the moment his car breaks down on the outskirts of Callisto when he's on his way to the recruiting centre. (Which had been closed for about a year by the time Odell gets there due to lack of interest) Most people on meeting Odell for the first time realize what a golden opportunity he is for whatever plans they might want carried out. A born again Christian preacher, drug running prison guards, a right wing politician, the FBI, and the boys from Homeland Security all see him as the answer to their prayers. What none of them count on is Odell's own unique way of seeing the world and how it will enable him to thwart them at every turn.

Torsten Krol, (whose a bit of a mystery as he does no publicity and only communicates to his agent by the internet leading to intense speculation as to his true identity), has created in Odell Deefus a character who is almost to naive to believe. Yet, once we learn to accept Odell's vision of the world and allow ourselves to see it through his eyes, everything he does makes perfect sense. Torsten has imbued him with an emotional depth, and honesty, that is humbling. For we, like all the other characters in the book, have the tendency to stop treating him like a human being and only see the surface fool.

Krol exposes our own callousness through Odell, and we can laugh all we want at how he's being deceived by the other characters in the book until a couple of things strike us. What happened to our compassion that this person who is being treated like dirt by everyone around him elicits our scorn instead of our sympathy? The second thing is that we slowly realize if we're laughing at him for still buying the line about duty and patriotism being more important then civil rights; that if we're laughing at him for any of the things he's honest enough to admit being taken in by, aren't we laughing at ourselves just as much because we've been taken in as well.

For the world that Odell Deefus lives in is the same world we live in. While some of the characters, are slightly cartoonish, they are very real representations of the types they represent in our world. Beneath the buffoonery reality is there in all its stark ugliness, and in the end not even Odell's delusions can protect him from it. To me this is satire at it's finest, as Krol creates characters and situations that are nearly cartoon, but have enough reality in them for us to recognize them as our own world, while ensuring all the while we are laughing at ourselves without knowing it.

Not everyone is going to like Torsten Krol's depiction of life in America, or enjoy the book that much for that reason. Unfortunately it's not always a pleasant thing to look in a mirror and see yourself on a particularly bad day, and that's what Torsten Krol has done - caught America in the midst of a very bad day.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:05 PM | Permalink

Many years ago, well in in the fall of 2005 anyway, when I had just started reviewing books and was still only reviewing ones that I had bought on my own, I stumbled across a book called The Hickory Staff by Robert Scott and Jay Gordon. It was the first book in a trilogy called The Eldarn Sequence and I thought it was great.

I e-mailed the authors and sent them a link to my review not really expecting anything in return, so was pleasantly surprised to receive a thank you note from Robert Scott. (Quotes from that review have now ended up on the back covers of both the second, Lessek's Key, and third books, The Larion Senatores of the series) The result was that we arranged that I would send him some interview questions and we'd publish the result on line.

A month later his co-author and father-in-law Jay Gordon had died. Robert and Jay had started working on the series when Jay had been diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. ALS is one of the nastier ones out there as the victim's system gradually shuts down without them ever losing awareness. If you're really unlucky you can linger for a long time, suffering horrible pain and completely immobilized.

Jay had always loved Epic Fantasy, so although neither had ever attempted this type of writing before - Robert had been a Classical Guitar player and a history major in University and Jay a technical engineer - they began to create their new universe. When Jay died in November of 2005 Lessek's Key had been handed in to the publishers, but The Larion Senators had only been roughed out leaving Robert to finish the series on his own.

When The Larion Senators was published last fall, I asked Robert if he'd like to do a summation sort of interview and he agreed. Unfortunately he had also just started a new job as a high school principal, and was swamped with work, life, and trying to actually write non-Eldarn related material. Somehow though he found time to answer these questions, and as usual is very candid about the whole process.

If you've read the trilogy I'm sure you'll find the conclusion of Jay and Robert's epic, as interesting as you did the final chapter of The Eldarn Sequence itself. For those who haven't read the books I hope it encourages you to do so, as they are a great read. There are some spoilers included in this interview - but only in a general sort of way and won't really spoil the story for anyone - but Robert is nice enough to point them out anyway for those who care about such things.

The last time we talked Hickory Staff had been released for about three months, Lessek's Key was with the publishers, and you were gearing yourself up for writing The Larion Senators. "Senators" was the only book you ended up having to write almost completely by yourself. Did you find that easier or more difficult?

Robert: (Spoiler warning!) Working on the Eldarn books with Jay was one of the most important things I’ll do in my lifetime. I’ve had a few years to think back on it, and while it wasn’t Tuesdays With Morrie, it was something special. I didn’t think much about it while we were working, but looking back now, I am staggered at how much Jay suffered without complaining and how the Eldarn stories provided him with a much-needed break from the emotional and physical exhaustion he faced each day. Starting The Larion Senators, I had a significant pile of notes, mostly driven by un-addressed story or character strands we’d left unresolved in Lessek’s Key. Jay and I had discussed the end of the series, even before we knew how The Hickory Staff would wrap up, and I endeavoured to stay true to that original vision. A few times along the way, characters took the story in a different direction, but that had been happening for years, and I didn’t think Jay would object too much – as long as Steven and Gilmour ended up on Jones Beach as we had planned.

) I'm sure that you anticipated there being a difference without having Jay there at least to bounce ideas off, but did you run into anything that you hadn't anticipated?

Robert: By the time Jay died, he was communicating via blinks and eye movements – selecting vowels and consonants from a laminated grid pasted to a cut up cereal box. It was brutally slow, but one could see that he wanted to be heard and understood. He was less concerned with my progress on Lessek’s Key and more interested in the evolution of the Jay M. Gordon Foundation. When he felt up to it, though, we worked. I told him about wanting to add a few chapters on Steven’s adventures at sea, and we spent a few days pouring over books on eighteenth century sailing vessels and deciding how Mark Jenkins might harness the Larion spell table on a ship. I think Jay trusted me to stick to our plan: writing a traditional epic, like the novels we read in the 70s and the 80s, books that started us down this road thirty years ago. So, no, I didn’t really run into anything I hadn’t anticipated, but as a fledgling scribbler, I wasn’t sure what to anticipate! I confess that the bit about the carrack was something I added in the end. I wanted to bring some closure to Brand Krug’s character, and Stalwick Rees was just such a buffoon, I had to get a bit of extra mileage out of him. I wasn’t expecting him to be so pitiable, but by the time that carrack chapter was finished, I was pleased with Brand and Stalwick – that was unexpected.

What was the hardest thing technically about writing this without Jay's input?

Robert: The technical aspects were probably the easiest. From the earliest drafts of The Hickory Staff, I did the writing – Jay was unable to type; he lost dexterity in his hands early on. The tough part about finishing the series was communication. We tried all manner of strategies to ask and answer questions. Often, my wife or I read passages to Jay, and he asked questions, pointed out inconsistencies, or made suggestions about characters or plot dilemmas. But progress was slow. We were patient, and Jay was a trouper. He was trapped in that bed, trapped in that body, and it was the least we could do to wait while he blinked out his thoughts. If he didn’t have editorial comments to make, Jay would select “OK” on his communication board, and we’d move on. He trusted Jo (Jo Fletcher: Editor from Orion books) and me to finish the series according to the original vision, and, for the most part, we did.

I don't think I can imagine what if must have been like trying to write "Senators" on your own considering the history of the trilogy, and the reasons for writing it in the first place. How difficult was it emotionally to work on it?

Robert: Actually, it was easy. The story was something I had to finish. It was bigger than Jay or me by that time, and I owed it to Steven, Hannah, and Mark to see them home safely – or to see them dismembered by a grettan! There were plenty of emotions wrapped up in the process, but few of them slowed me down. If anything, the motivating stress had me looking for more time, more hours sequestered in my basement scribbling the next chapter. Jo Fletcher was instrumental in seeing the series through to its end. She checked on Jay every week and made certain that Susan knew how the books were doing. Knowing that The Hickory Staff and Lessek’s Key were selling in bookstores, airports, and drug stores around the world, Jay was always up for a planning session. I kept my nose down, writing and editing, even the weekend we were in town for Jay’s funeral. I admit that when I finally had copies of all three books side-by-side, I took a few minutes just to sit and look at them there on the shelf. It was a ten-year commitment; I was glad to see it through. I’m not sure I’ll ever amount to much of a writer, but I know we did something important in finishing those books.

At the end of book two, Lessek's Key you had plot line and characters scattered all over two worlds, did you ever have any concerns about how you were going to be able to pick up all the pieces and tie everything together neatly by the end of "Senators"?

Robert: No. Most of the wandering our characters did over the course of the first two books (much of which we were chastised for by readers who didn’t believe it would ever come together) was deliberate. I knew I wanted Steven to pull together an array of experiences, thoughts, ideas, and concepts when he faced the final challenge on Jones Beach. When The Hickory Staff was released, I received plenty of e-mail from people who were either angry that we had left so many plot and character lines hanging or were tentatively trusting that Jay and I would eventually tie things up. It was the same when Lessek’s Key ended as well. We dealt with most of Nerak’s baggage but still hadn’t addressed the entity that had possessed him. We established a few things early in The Hickory Staff that linked directly to that entity. I was pleased when I finally received e-mail from readers who had stuck with the Eldarn books all along. People were happy to see that unexpected bits of story lines or characters’ experiences came around two books later. The map of symbols, characters, story lines, and questions is a 12-foot section of butcher paper I had hanging in my basement. There are so many arrows, circles, lines, and scratch marks all over it, I’m sure that given another year or two even I won’t be able to decipher it.

I know I'm going to regret this but here goes – throughout the trilogy the character of Steven Taylor is obsessed with Maths and what starts off in the first book as an amusement becomes something he has to master if he has a hope of defeating the minion of evil and controlling the Fold – Do the maths he uses have any basis in reality and what did you have to do to come up with it? (Somebody could get the impression that you're a high school principal or something with comments like "the calculus you never thought you'd use in real life")

Robert: Steven’s maths obsession is perhaps my favourite part of the Eldarn series. From Malagon’s lock box, to Egyptians squaring the circle, telephone and calculator keypads, Larion timepieces, and trapezoidal deductions on Jones Beach, I love every line of a story whose hero is a math geek. How many epic adventures end in a sword battle, a David-and-Goliath fist-fight, or a square-jawed Horatio standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his square-jawed colleagues? For my money, it’s too many. Yes, I suppose that’s the high school principal in me showing the colour of my biases, but hey, fire me; I’m a teacher at heart. Given the state of math instruction and assessment in American public education these days, perhaps we could use a few more epic heroes who, when their lives are on the line, rely more on their mathematics knowledge than their ability to rig a brick of C4 inside a villain’s Cadillac. There are a few elements of Steven’s character that I’d change if I were ever to do it all over again. His obsession with deductive reasoning in mathematics isn’t one of them. As a side note, readers should check out the list of people I acknowledge in each book for ensuring I understood enough maths to write those sections. My own math knowledge is abysmal. I sometimes cheat off the diners at the next table when calculating the tip at a restaurant. Figuring a three-dimensional trapezoidal volume equation with multiple variables is a couple touchdowns beyond the y = mx +b I barely mastered back in 1984.

One of the things that impressed me the most was how the character's developed over the course of the three books. Was that something you and Jay had plotted in the before starting out, or was did they develop organically along the way

Robert: We knew with a few of the characters that we wanted them to do more of their development later in the series. Writing 750,000 words of continuous narrative, Jay and I introduced characters in The Hickory Staff who didn’t emerge as key players in the story until well into Lessek’s Key. Those decisions were deliberate. I joke often with readers kind enough to e-mail their questions that they can chart our characters’ critical developmental turning points back to the most recent death. Versen or Brynne’s death, for example, represented key moments when Jay and I allowed secondary characters – Brexan, Sallax, and Mark – to evolve. By Senators, pushing our main characters to evolve much more would have seemed contrived. So instead, we introduced new players – Captain Ford and his crew or Major Tavon and her officers, for example – to act as catalysts for what was brewing in the final act.

As a writer was there a process you used for developing a character. Take Garec for example – he takes a long and complicated journey through the trilogy coming to grips with what he is capable of doing as an archer. How did you go about plotting his development? Did you deliberately decide to have a character who knew it was necessary to kill people to win the war, but hated the idea that he was good at it – and he became that archetype?

Robert: Garec and Mark are two of my favourite characters because of how they developed over about seven years of planning and editing these books. As for Garec, I knew I wanted him to be a trained killer who, in Book 2, wrestles with what he’s done. I hadn’t known at the time that I needed him to get shot and nearly killed. But when Jacrys shot him at the end of The Hickory Staff, it seemed like a perfect opportunity for Garec’s character to shift significantly. His return to killing, facing a cavalry charge by himself, was another moment, late in Book 2, when it seemed appropriate to shift him back for the final act. He picks up his bow and serves the Resistance with the same brutal accuracy he had wielded in Book 1, but he has changed. The Garec we know in The Larion Senators is only a shadowy reflection of the young killer we met early in the series. Again, developing these characters was a study in how and when to share details of their personalities. We played them pretty close to the vest throughout The Hickory Staff, largely because we were nervous we wouldn’t have anywhere to go with them in Lessek’s Key. (This truly pissed off a lot of readers, and were I to do it over, I might try something different.) Looking back now, I’m happy with how Brexan, Mark, Sallax, and Garec all emerged as key players as the series wound its way through Eldarn.

The end of The Larion Senators is wide open in terms of potential for what could happen next in Eldarn – have you any plans to continue the story. I know I'm curious as to what could happen to the world next – and what happens to certain characters – aren't you?

Robert: Due to a variety of circumstances, I am taking a bit of time off from Eldarn. I accepted a job last summer as a high school principal and have been buried to the neck in deadlines, parent complaints, teacher grievances, and student mutinies ever since. It’s a great job, and if I didn’t love it, I would have leapt from the roof of the building by now. My students are half fascinated and half bemused at the idea that their principal writes epic novels, but I think I’ve inspired a few potential scribblers to get busy and stay busy writing. As for books, I’ve finished a collection of short stories for young readers and am into the second volume of that series now. I needed to do a bit of writing that my own children could read; dismemberment, sex scenes, grettan attacks, and off-colour, Eldarni profanity are a bit edgy for grade school kids. So I created a new character, a fourth grader whose misadventures rival any white collar felon in corporate America. I enjoy writing the stories, and the local school children howl when they read each new tale. My agent has the first collection now, and I’m hoping for good news on that front in the coming months.

I’m also working on a magical realism piece. It’s a mystery/thriller – in first person – that has evolved into a science fiction/horror novel. After 750,000 words of epic, third-person storytelling, I am ready for a change, just something to stretch my legs a bit. Then I’ll get back to Eldarn. I anticipate finishing a draft of the mystery piece this coming summer and will decide then what happens next in Eldarn. I did keep the far portals viable. I don’t know why, except that I believed eventually someone needed to go back to Eldarn, if only to sweep up the damned mess we’d left there. I like the idea of a story that jumps back and forth between Lessek’s early experiences and Milla’s efforts to bring order back to Sandcliff Palace, especially one in which Milla’s decisions now somehow impact Lessek’s choices thousands of Twinmoons earlier.

10) A while ago you had mentioned to me you were working on a non- Eldarn novel, and had already started some rather extensive research (including attending a ritual disembowelment – or was that an autopsy). I seem to remember that your father was a Police Detective and you had been fascinated as a kid listening to the details of his cases over dinner. Is that the mystery/crime/thriller/sci-fi sort of novel you're working on?

Robert: That’s the one. It’s based on the most grisly, terrifying, unbelievable story my father ever told around the dinner table. Our house was the place all the neighbourhood kids wanted to come for dinner, because my father invariably regaled us with hideous stories of true crime – things from Frank Miller’s worst nightmares. What appalled us most was that Dad’s stories were true; he had the photos to prove it. I’ve never seen a graphic novel or read a Stephen King story that truly captures the essence of what happens when some raging drunk takes a chain-saw to his wife’s lover, or when five mob killers boil their lawyer in a bathtub (two examples from my sophomore year in high school). It’s astonishing, and any New Jersey homicide detective could write (and illustrate!) a book that would have the heartiest of us pissing ourselves. Looking back on it all – Dad’s long retired. He works now for a mortician; that’s poetic justice for you! – the most frightening aspect of those stories was that the killers were generally someone who lived across the street, or worse . . . down the hall. Rarely did a lunatic drifter terrorize a beach-front town. But the local pharmacist or Kiwanis Club treasurer did it all the time!

My current novel is loosely based on the worst of the worst, the one time when my father came home with orders from the state medical examiner to remove all his clothes and burn them in our yard before coming anywhere near us . . . nope, not making this up. Granted, I’m stretching an ugly criminal case into a magical realism piece with elements of horror and science fiction, but the fundamental bits of the story actually happened. And it’s a tale that’s just begging to be told, a real testament to homicide investigators everywhere.

I'd like to thank Robert Scott for taking the time to answer these questions for me, and I hope you enjoyed this conversation with him. For those who haven't yet had an opportunity to read The Eldarn Sequence you can pick up copies of the three books at any on line retailer or book store near you. Although this marks the end of Robert and Jay's story, it doesn't look like it means the end of our visits to Eldarn, and I look forward to the return.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:25 PM | Permalink

It's funny how popular music always seems to get such a bad name for itself when it's just starting out. Everything from early Delta Blues to Rock and Roll has been referred to as "The Devil's Music" at one time or another in their existence. Yet while other music always seems to somehow or other become "civilized", or acceptable to mass audiences, the Blues has continued to be on the outside looking in.

Back in the 1920's when Robert Johnson was playing in juke joints and honky-tonks in Mississippi the Blues was considered the dark side of what was sung in the church on Sunday. Instead of setting people's minds to thinking of the sacred, it kept their minds firmly fixed on the profane by singing about wine, whisky and women. As they years have gone by the secular nature of the Blues has come to matter less and less, but while it retains a core following of faithful listeners, it has never achieved the wide spread success that so many of its offspring have realized.

Even though Rock and Roll co-opted Blues for the majority of its sound, and a great many of its early hits were Blues songs re-worked to suit the new genre, the Blues continued to be marginalized. The Blue's biggest strength, its raw passion and emotional power, has probably been the primary reason for its lack of commercial success with the mainstream audiences in North America. Most people look to entertainment as an escape from the real world, and the Blues' isn't about running away, its about testifying to the troubles of the world.

You only have to listen to somebody like Dave "Honeyboy" Edwards' latest release, Roamin' and Ramblin', on the Earwig Music label, to hear how how raw and honest the Blues can be. "Honeyboy" was born in 1915 in Shaw Mississippi and is one of the last of the great Delta Bluesmen left among us anymore. Like most of his contemporaries he did very little commercial recording early in his career, with his first tracks being recorded by Alan Lomax in 1942 for the Library of Congress. Like many other African Americans, Honeyboy left the South in the early fifties and moved up to Chicago which has been his home base ever since.

It was a hard scrabble life playing in small clubs, and on street corners for a while. In 1953 he recorded several songs with Chess records, but they were never issued until recent years. That's not to say he didn't make any records, but the majority of his music in the appears to have been released on various anthologies, rather than under his own name up until the late 1970's. In 1979 when Michael Frank founded Earwig Records, Honeyboy recorded his first disc under his own name since 1953 with the release of Old Friends. Since then he has released another eight albums, won a Grammy for best traditional Blues album for Mississippi Delta Bluesman in 2001, and in 2007 was awarded the W.C. Handy award for Acoustic Blues Artist of the year.

For Roamin' And Ramblin' producer Michael Frank wanted to create a tribute to all the fine harmonica and guitar duets that Honeyboy had taken part in over the years. In his career Honeyboy had played with played with probably every great harmonica player to come down the pipe from Little Walter to Cary Bell. Unfortunately not only are many of these great players no longer with us, some of them never recorded with Honeyboy. The next best thing was to recruit two of the best harmonica players on the Chicago scene, Billy Branch and Bobby Rush to record with Honeyboy for this album.

Mixed in amongst the tracks recorded for this disc are older recordings taken from some live gigs with Walter Horton on harmonica in the seventies, a couple with Michael Frank sharing the stage with Honeyboy, and two from those Alan Lomax sessions back in 1942. The first time I listened to the disc, I didn't have the cover in front of me, so wasn't aware of the particulars of each track, and while there are some obvious difference in sound quality between the tracks recorded in 1942 and the ones recorded in 2007, I defy anybody to date them by the sound of Honeyboy's voice or the quality of the music.

"Crawling Kingsnake" was recorded in September of 2007, "Jump Out" in 1975, and "Army Blues" in 1942, and each one features a strong voiced, impassioned singing, and high energy performance from David Honeyboy Edwards. Whether he's performing solo with his guitar like he did in 1942, or matching note for note with a harmonica in 2007 the man is an incredible performer. At ninety-two years of age, which he was in the fall of 2007, he had more get up and go in his performance than most guys even one third his age seem to be able to generate.

Of course the stuff that make his performance so remarkable is the very stuff that's been working against Blues music ever really gaining widespread popularity. Its full of raw, honest emotion without any compromise. He sings directly from the heart at all times and makes you truly understand what the word soul means when talked about in terms of music. Hearing his rough hewn voice accompanied by the lonesome sound of the great harmonica players on this disc is enough to send chills up your spine on more than one occasion.

Sometimes when a musician is billed as a living legend, or the last of his kind, he's hauled out like some museum piece and placed on display like an exhibit. His or her talent might be a thing of the past but that doesn't stop people from exploiting them for their own purposes. That's not the case with David "Honeyboy" Edwards' latest collection of Blues music, Roamin' and Ramblin' This is as fine a collection of acoustic Blues that I've heard in a long time, and proof positive that the Blues are still some of the most emotionally honest and powerful music to have ever been performed.

This is one legend who doesn't rest on his laurels, and can still teach anybody who listens to him a few lessons in how to live life to its fullest. Roamin' And Ramblin' is a great recording by a great performer, and a must own for any fan of the Blues.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:29 PM | Permalink

There used to be a time when live albums were a mixture of so-so sound and versions of a performer's greatest hits peppered with extended guitar solos and the occasional drum solo. Although some groups were far better in concert than they ever sounded in the studio, recording technology was usually insufficient to capture the energy that made their performances so dynamic.

Some live recordings were worth owning as a record of an event, Woodstock for example, or because they featured one of a kind performances with combinations of performers that would never exist elsewhere like The Last Waltz, but on the whole they would quickly become boring. I remember owning any number of live recordings, even illegal bootlegs, at one time, and how many of them I never listened to more than once for that reason.

These days of course things are a lot different as improvements in recording technology have made it possible for a recording of a life concert to have sound with as good quality as something a band would do in a studio. So now if a performer I know puts out a live recording I'll be far more inclined to grab a copy then I would have even only ten years ago. Listening to Live At The Glenn Gould Studio, the new live CD by Harry Manx, on Dog My Cat Records, proves that live recordings not only match ones done in the studio for quality, but are finally able to capture the excitement and immediacy of a concert as well.

The Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, Canada, where this disc was recorded is a live audience facility maintained by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for the recording of performances for radio and television. On occasion it's also used for live concerts by performers because of its great acoustics and the potential for making a live recording. It's a room ideally suited to those using a variety of sounds and tonal ranges in their music, as the equipment is sensitive enough, and the technicians are good enough, to not only make crystal clear recordings, but also capture the feel of a live concert.

In other words it's the perfect atmosphere for creating a live recording of the type of music that Harry Manx performs. For those who aren't familiar with Harry's music the best way to describe it is as a mixture of traditional Delta Blues and classical Indian Ragas. He studied Classical Indian music with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt during the twelve years that he lived in India, and on the completion of his studies was presented with one of the special twenty string guitar/sitar hybrids called a mohan veena, that Bhatt had built. So now when Harry plays the Blues he uses an instrument that allows him to combine the qualities of the two vastly different musics to create one unique sound.

If one were to think of Blues in terms of the earth and Indian music as air, in Harry's music you find the meeting place between the two elements. It doesn't sound like it should work, in fact it sounds like the worst sort of New Age nonsense when you only read about it, but listening to how he manages to get the two sounds working together you can't help but feel he's created something special. Live At The Glen Gould Studio has some wonderful examples of just how effective this synthesis of his can be.

For this concert he was joined by musicians representative of both sides of his musical make-up, with Classical Indian vocalist Samidha Joglekar and tabla player Ravi Naimpally representing the East, and Steve Marriner on harmonica, Kevin Brett on guitar, and George Koller on bass from the West. With Harry as the meeting place for the two styles and the impetus propelling the performance, both sounds are constantly working with, and feeding off, each other.

For the listener the effect is akin to at one moment listening to music that is trance inducing, and then the following moment music that makes you want to get up and dance. While that may sound like you're going to be pulled in opposite directions, Harry and his fellow musicians are able to strike this amazing balance whereby the two work in harmony. Instead of being carried away by the trance like qualities of the Indian music, you are carried into a deeper appreciation of the Blues by the way they are blended together.

The order of the songs in the concert and on the disc are arranged so that this effect is maximized. With the opening song, "Point Of Purchase" featuring a beautiful and haunting vocal performance from Samidha being immediately followed by Harry's version of the traditional Blues tune "Take This Hammer" the relationship between the two musical style is formed right from the start. It's not until the fourth song on the disc though, that they meet in one song, and I promise you that you've never heard a version of Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Child (slight return)" quite like this one.

Banjo and tabla are not instruments one normally associates with Hendrix's Blues/Rock classic, but somehow when accompanied by electric guitar, bass, harmonica, and Samidha's vocal harmonies, its as powerful a version of the song as any that Hendrix ever did. Hendrix recorded two versions of the song, one the popular hard rock song, the other a slow Blues number, and this is a cover of the latter. There was always a heavy spiritual element to Jimi Hendrix's music, but most people never really paid much attention to it. Harry and his band not only pay attention to it, but they bring it out so strongly that one wonders how it ever could have been missed in the past.

For people who are fans of Harry Manx and have never had the opportunity to hear him in concert, Live At The Glenn Gould Studio is a disc you don't want to miss because not only is the sound quality amazing, it also captures the immediacy and intimacy of the live concert experience. For those who aren't familiar with his unique style of music, this a wonderful way of being introduced to what he does. You will hear how West and East can meet, with beautiful and harmonious results. No matter how you look at it, Live At The Glenn Gould Studio is great music.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:30 PM | Permalink

After you read a certain amount of fantasy or science fiction you begin to wonder how many more stories there are still to be told. Sometimes you'll be reading a story and it will begin to sound familiar even though you've never read it before. I'm not saying that authors are deliberately copying other people's work, just that they've ended up telling the same story that someone else had.

It only stands to reason though, how many stories can there be? We used to tell stories as a means of instruction, to teach us how to survive or how to behave. Naturally those stories would change as we changed our manner of living - we didn't need stories that taught us how to hunt when we settled down as farmers, we needed stories that taught us the best way to grow our crops. Along with the Christian creation story, and the stories that have been associated with religious teachings, these have provided the basic blueprints for most of the stories we now tell.

So to find a new way of telling tales that derive from Western culture is nowhere near as easy as you would think. The fact that we can all pretty much identify the same archetypes, X=evil and Y=good, means that we can accept certain concepts in a story without having them explained, but it also gives everything that air of familiarity. So when an author is able to accomplish what Tom Lloyd has done with the first book of his The Twilight Reign sequence, The Stormcaller and create a world where the reader has little or nothing to hold onto that is familiar, it is quite an accomplishment.

Isak is a white eye, and white eyes are different from all the other people born into the world. They are bigger, stronger, and faster than other people, have a natural affinity for magic, and on occasion are chosen by one of the Gods or Goddesses of the land to be the recipient of gifts that set them even more apart from the humans they share the planet with. If that isn't enough to make people fear, and even hate them, white eyes are also quick to anger and low on patience.

Their anger can be horrible to behold as it can quickly turn into a beserker rage that will see them attack any and all who they perceive as being in their way - in other words anyone in the nearby vicinity. Isak is no exception to this and has only been kept in check in his childhood by a former mercenary who guards the caravan of wagons he and his father travel with. Isak's father hates him because as a white eye he killed his mother while being born; they are just big for a normal woman to birth. Ironically white eyes can only be born of a non-white eyed women so they all sacrifice their mothers in order to be born.

But even for a white eye it seems Isak is special, for when barely sixteen he discovers that he is the chosen heir of one of the most powerful rulers in the land. If that isn't hard enough to deal with for somebody who has been raised as a peasant, it seems one of the Gods has special plans in mind for him. The gifts that the God of Storms brings for him are the armour and sword of a great and powerful king who was the last single ruler of the land. According to prophesy whomever next dons that armour and bears that sword will be the saviour and destined for greatness.

What the Gods want and what humans want of course can be two entirely different things, and various people have various ideas on just who should be wearing that armour and carrying that sword. Not only humans want to have their say in the matter either. Other races who haven't been seen or heard from in a long time start making their presence felt; vampires have started to be seen again andt even more disturbing is the fact that the elves are massing on the borders.

The former king whose armour Isak has been given, just happened to be an elf, and they want it back. Unlike most other fantasy stories where the elves are founts of wisdom and goodness etc. etc., these guys are nasty, and would like nothing better than to exterminate a few thousand humans. So they and their troll friends take to the battle field in an attempt to win back the armour. Yet bad as these troubles all seem, they are merely the disturbance on the surface of the water, and underneath it all some deep and disturbing troubles lurk that no one can quite fathom or see yet.

As in all first books of a series a lot of time is spent introducing the various characters, and plot lines that we will be following throughout the series. Initially I found it hard to keep track, as there is a wealth of information to be absorbed, and for a while it was a distraction. While as the story progresses Tom Lloyd takes some steps to lesson the confusion, I realized that in order for us to properly understand Isak we needed to share in his confusion at the events going on around him, so he has left us deliberately in the dark.

It's important for the reader to remember that in spite of his formidable power and abilities, Isak is still only a young man, not even twenty by the end of the first book. Unlike the majority of the people he now consorts with he didn't grow up among the elite of the world and has little or no understanding of the forces that are being set in motion by his presence and his wearing the armour of the former king. Seeing the world through Isak's eyes, and not having much more of an understanding of what's going on than he does, helps us realize the enormity of the task that he is facing.

Who can he trust and what should he do? We really have no more idea than he does, as Lloyd is holding most of his cards close to his chest. While we see some of the plotting that is going on in the world around him, we can't be sure how it's going to end up affecting him. Tom Lloyd has done a masterful job of whetting our interest for the future of the series without giving anything away as to the future.

Lloyd's characterizations are wonderful especially the way he manages to make Isak appear both powerful and insecure simultaneously. He comes across like a typical teenager in some ways, only of course he has the power to destroy just about everybody he meets including himself if he's not careful. While some of the characters might initially appear to by a "type" we've seen before, he is able to give them all twists that take them into territory that makes them different from any characters we've met in other series.

Stormcaller by Tom Lloyd is the first book of his Twilight Reign, and if it is any indication, this series promises to be like no other series I've read before. It's nice to know that there is still plenty new under the sun. Stormcaller is published by Gollancz Fantsy and distributed in Canada by McArthur & Company.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:43 PM | Permalink

So I admit it, I'm a sucker for a woman in distress. It doesn't hurt that when she says my name it sound like a caress or that four foot nine of her five feet seven are legs. Those are just what we call fringe benefits in this line of work. Sort of like free drinks at a bar, or a discount on a sandwich for work done in the past.

So it was pretty much a no-brainer that when that husky voice, made even huskier by tears, washed over my ear I'd be saying yes to doing anything Ms. Magnesen wanted. If it means ferreting around in the muck of the quagmire that we call politics in Canada then that's what I'll be doing.

Lucy's voice sounded a bit calmer, less full of tears when she called me as agreed the next morning. If we were going to get to the bottom of this whole mess there was no time like the present to begin. I was hopping that she would be able to give me some clues, names of any of the Greenpeace and granola types that had been hanging out with her dad in those last days, would be a good place to start.

Unfortunately she couldn't remember any more details about them that morning then in our previous conversation. It looked I'd be getting on a lot closer terms with soy burgers, herbal teas and hemp shirts than what I'd consider good for a man's soul. But those are the sacrifices you have to be prepared to make for the job.

I'm sure you've noticed how groups tend to congregate into a geographical centre of activities, and the granola rollers are no different. In Ottawa they have taken over a couple of square blocks of what used to be the red light district until the girls got wise and moved out to where all the Embassies are and can now get work as escorts and blackmail material. (usually one and the same thing in the Embassy district)

In the end it meant another nice seedy neighbourhood falling victim to the let's improve the downtown core so people from the suburbs want to come here mentality. It's that type of thinking that has ruined more areas in this city then you can shake a by-law exemption on zoning laws at. The first signs of trouble are when the adventurous ones in their S.U.V.'s and Dockers start showing up in your favourite greasy spoon.

Then it's only a matter of time before they're telling their friends about this "place". The next thing you know there's a Starbucks on one corner, a health food store on another, a new age book store on the third and one of those shops that don't really sell anything in particular but whatever it is they do sell it's for quite a bit of money.

The people I wanted to talk to weren't going to be among that crowd; none of them would be caught dead driving anything powered by anything other than their own leg muscles, eating in a greasy spoon, or, if they drank coffee at all, sitting in a Starbucks. They'd be the ones you see working in the health food stores, or the whole earth type eateries that spring up like boils in these new neighbourhoods

You know the type; never smiling, with a pasty grey complexion from not eating enough protein who drift around filling the bulk bins at the health food stores. Or being your surly wait staff at the new eatery that displaced the greasy spoon within weeks of gentrification. They seem to take some sort of grim satisfaction in watching people pretending to enjoy their tasteless lentil and ground nut burgers or making bulk purchases of certified organic brown basmati rice.

The only time they're known to smile is when some pathetic soul tries to order something that gives them an excuse to for the "lecture". It comes in four standard forms; the evils of globalization, the evils of eating meat, the evils of trans-fats and other unhealthy by-products of processed foods, and the evils found in tap water and the air we breath.

The latter they seem to take special delight in listing while people are trying to eat lunch. Nothing like a graphic description of the effects of P.C.B.'s on a person's liver to turn you off your lentil and beetroot tofu omelette. Lucy had wanted to come with me on the grounds that she might be able to recognize one of the people who was visiting her father, but I told her that it wasn't necessary for the two of us to suffer, and besides I didn't know what danger we could be walking into.

So far all that I had risked was doing some sort of permanent damage to both my intestinal tract and any goodwill I might have towards my fellow humans. I remember reading about the Puritans back in history class somewhere and how they were dour folk who didn't believe in frivolity or fun of any kind. But compared to these environmental martyrs those guys would have been a laugh riot.

For all that I still was no further ahead before I walked into this ring of hell that Dante seems to have forgotten to describe. There was only one store that I hadn't been in yet and I didn't hold out much hope of finding anything there. Factual information and New Age bookstores aren't normally to be found within the same orbit, but as the saying goes no turn un-stoned. I've learned never to discard anything as a potential source of information.

Compared to the rest of the places I'd been in my tour through the pits of despair this was a fountain joy. Bright light, and no smell of rotting vegetation made an immediate improvement in my mood, which was only augmented by the smile and plunging neckline behind the counter. As they were accompanied by a pretty face and a cheery voice asking me if there was anything she could do for me, it almost made the day's efforts worthwhile.

Leaning casually on the counter, trying not to be distracted by what happened whenever she inhaled, I quickly spun the tale I had come up with to cover my real intent. My daughter was doing a school project on global warming and needed to find out more information about the Kyoto Accord. Did she happen to know anyone or could she recommend any good books that a single dad could get for his pride and joy to help her fulfill her dream of becoming an environmental scientist?

As soon as I mentioned the words Kyoto Accord I couldn't help notice an increased agitation in her breathing, how her smile had become a little more fixed, and a look had entered into her eyes that could only be fear. Pressing home what seemed to be an advantage I said surely amongst some of these books there must be something about global warming and the Kyoto Accord.

She was a lousy liar, that pretty little New-Ager, and she knew it. But she bite her lip and said no, that wasn’t the type of book they sold here. She then made a show of catching site of the time, and making her excuses about needing to see a doctor she hustled me from the store so she could close up for her appointment.

I quickly took up station in the doorway of a store a half block down; there was no way I was going to let my little bird fly without following her. If my guess was right she was the lead I had suffered lentil burgers for and all I would have to do was follow her to where I needed to be led.

Sure enough she came out of the store a minute later. After locking the door she gave the street the quick once over and began to walk briskly away from the store and me. I let her get a half block away from the store before I began to follow her. She was wearing a very distinctly coloured poncho with some sort of bird on it's back that made her easy to follow so I wasn't worried about losing contact with her.

At one point she dashed into a store for a couple of moments and when she came back out she had added a headscarf to her ensemble. If that were meant to fool anyone who was possibly trailing her she was in for a surprise. Not even the R.C.M.P. would be thrown by such a simple deception. I was being careful to keep well back from her so there was no chance of her catching a glimpse of my face or recognizing me by some other means, so I almost missed it when she turned off the main road.

When I got to where she exited stage right it turned out to be a dead-end alleyway with nobody in sight. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom I noticed a couple of doors in each wall. They were made of identical plain materials, banded with metal; obviously fire doors from the old days when the buildings were first constructed.

It was probably that momentary feeling of being nonplussed that distracted me enough that I didn't notice anyone behind me until I felt the first touch on the back of my head of whatever it was they used to knock me out. I can only assume that I fell like a ton of bricks because that's what you normally do under the circumstances.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:57 PM | Permalink

I've always found it ironic that countries that aren't one people, like the United States (What's an American look like anyway?) are called a nation, when nations that are one people have no land they can call their own. In North America alone there are hundreds of nations without their own land to control and similar situations exist the world over. When the European nations carved up Africa between themselves they did so with no regard to traditional national boundaries.

One result of this artificial delineation have been the various conflicts between ethnic groups that has scared Africa since the 1960's and culminated in the horror that was the genocide in Rwanda. While nothing comes close to matching ethnic violence in terms of human suffering, the impact of creating countries based on nothing more than convenience has been felt across the continent. Some of those most drastically affected have been the nomadic peoples that travelled the deserts as much a part of the natural rhythm of the land as the turning of the seasons.

The Tuareg people of the Sahara followed routes that now cross the borders of five countries; Libya, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Algeria. In the early 1990's the Tuareg finally had enough and began an uprising that only ended in 2001 with the election of governments in Mali and Algeria that have proven more responsive to their plight. Moussa Ag Keyna was fifteen when he joined the uprising. But a bullet wound and the assassination of his rebellion chief (also his uncle) sent him into exile in France in 1995.

He had bought a guitar and was set to form a band with friends and cousins when the war had broken out in 1990. It was in France that he decided to pick up his guitar again, and continue the fight for his people in a non-violent way. In music he saw the opportunity to tell the world about his people and their circumstances. Although the shooting has stopped the war is far from over, as the Tuareg's territory is coveted by the various governments for the natural resources, uranium, oil, and gold, hidden beneath the sand.

Along with his cousin, Aminatou Goumar, Moussa formed Toumast. While he is the lead vocalist and guitar player, she supplies guitar, vocals and spine chilling vocal ululation that can only be experienced and not described. Already they have had success playing in festivals and clubs around Europe and their first CD is being released in North America March 14th 2008 on Real World Records.

The CD's title, Ishumar, is the name that was given to the displaced young men of the Tuareg who had to leave in order to search for work during the droughts and famines of the 1970s and 1980s that plagued the Sahara. Unable to travel with the freedom of the past, they were left with no other recourse but to go into exile in the cities of Libya and Algeria.

It's not surprising given the title of the album that so much of the music on Ishumar is given over to songs that reflect displacement and loss. While a song entitled "These Countries That Are Not Mine" is an obvious reference to a life in exile, "The Falcon" and "My Camel" may not have you making the same connection without understanding the lyrics, which makes the English translations included very useful.

Both "The Falcon" and "The Camel" express the exile's yearning for home in his desire for the things that defined life among his people. "I know what my soul wants" is the opening line of "The Camel", and it continues to narrate the life of a nomadic herdsman; "To follow the drums in the desert/That echo in the valley". Listening to that lyric and visualizing the open expanses of the Sahara, makes you think about what it must have been like for people to come from that to living within the confines of a city and how trapped that must have made them feel.

Aside from songs about exile, Moussa has also written songs reminding his people of what they fought for, and now, just because the shooting has stopped they can't let it slip away. "Hey! My brothers/Don't forget/The causes you have defended/Hey! My brothers/Blood has been shed". Peace might have come to the lands of the Tuareg but it will be for naught if they forget about what has happened and the reality of the hardships their people still face.

While Moussa and Aminatou are the primary members of Toumast, they are joined on Ishumar by other musicians to round out the sound. Foremost among them is their producer Dan Levy who aside from taking care of the arrangements, recording and mixing of the disc also plays everything from bass to soprano saxophone. He has done a fine job of creating a two layered effect with the music. While the vocals and guitars of Moussa and Aminatou tell the stories of the songs, the other instruments create a nearly hypnotic atmosphere.

Drums, percussion, and on one occasion strings, combine to create a melodic rhythm that, if you allow it, transports you into their world when combined with the sound of their voices. Guitar and the ululating of Aminatou create a strange otherworldly harmony that reminds you they are singing of a world we know nothing about, and assists in carrying us to the desert. Even without understanding the lyrics, the music speaks volumes. There is something about it that communicates the emotions hidden within the mysteries of their language.

Ishumar is a haunting disc, redolent with the sense of loss felt by a displaced people while at the same time declaring their determination not to be pushed aside and become another one of the forgotten peoples. This is a beautiful and haunting CD that deserves to be listened to for the wonder that it evokes and the message that it carries. This is the voice of a people that deserves to be heard.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:45 PM | Permalink

The great thing about the Blues is how it changes from geographical area to geographical area but still manages to retain enough of its characteristics to be obviously the Blues. In Los Angeles they play what they call West Coast Blues, and in Mississippi they have Delta Blues. As befits its pride, Texas has laid claim to its own version of the Blues, while up in Oklahoma and Tennessee they played what they called Piedmont style.

Outside of the Mississippi Delta Blues probably the most well known and established of the sounds is the one that originated in the South West of Chicago. The origins of Blues in Chicago are tied up in the migration of African Americans leaving the Southern states looking for work. From the time that slavery was abolished at the end of the Civil War, until integration was enforced in the 1960's and Jim Crow laws were abolished, Illinois was the demarcation line denoting the end of sitting in the back of the bus for African Americans.

While Chicago still had its establishments that refused to serve "coloureds", at least there was work to be found and there weren't laws that enforced bigotry. After the end of World War Two, the flow of refugees from the South turned into a flood as people came North looking to take advantage of the post war boom. Chicago had been home to a thriving African American music scene since the early days of the twentieth century that was probably second only to New York City in size. So it was only natural that it wasn't just people looking for regular work that came North, but musicians did as well.

Eddy Clearwater was one of those who came up looking for a musical future and it didn't take him long to become a permanent fixture on the Chicago Blues scene. He was born in 1935 in Macon County Mississippi and in 1948 his family moved to Birmingham Alabama. He had to teach himself to play the guitar upside down as he was a lefty. His first break came playing guitar for the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, and when he arrived in Chicago his first gigs were with Gospel groups, but gradually he started hooking up with Blues musicians.

He started his career using the name "Guitar Eddy" but changed it for his first recording to Clear Waters (his manager came up with it as a play on Muddy Waters) which soon evolved into Clearwater. He was one of the first Blues players to incorporate Rock and Roll into his Blues, paving the way for him to be able to keep playing in the sixties and the seventies when the bottom fell out of the Blues market as he was able to play steadily on the North Side of Chicago for young white audiences more interested in Rock and Roll than Blues.

But no matter how you slice it, if you cut open a Blues man's music you'll always find the Blues at the centre of things, and Eddy Clearwater is no exception. At seventy-three he's just released a new album on Alligator Records called West Side Strut that not only rocks the joint, but reaches back to his Gospel roots and travels deep into his Blues soul. West Side Strut is an intergenerational, family affair, as both his nephew Ronnie Baker Brooks, and Ronnie's dad Lonnie Brooks take part. Well Ronnie does more than just take part as he produced the CD and he and Eddy wrote five of the tracks together, and Ronnie contributed "Too Old To Get Married" for his uncle and his father to duet on.

The first thing that your going to notice listening to this disc is how much fun everybody is having. It comes out in the banter that they exchange between songs or even during them as he and Ronnie exchange leads, or Eddy and Lonnie tease each other during their song together. "Too Old To Get Married" is one of those songs that has the potential to be "cute" if handled the wrong way, but not these two guys. They turn it into a humorous take on their own lives and use it to poke affectionate fun at the fact that they're each old men still playing a supposedly younger man's game.

Well, I'd like to see the younger man who can keep up to Eddy's guitar playing. With Ronnie Baker Brooks pushing him, he uncorks some incredibly hot guitar. Yet while he's fast on the fret board, he doesn't give you the impression, like so many younger players, of trying to cram notes into places they don't belong. There's more than just technique that guides his playing, there's the heart and soul of a man whose father picked cotton for a living and who grew up in the South in the thirties.

On "Came Up The Hard Way" Eddy and Ronnie each recount the stories of their respective early years, and they represent the difficulties that have faced, and still face today, African Americans coming of age as second class citizens. For Eddy it was the life of a field hand's son, and for Ronnie it was growing up in the inner city ghetto. In spite of the difference in environments, and a couple of generations separating them, their experiences on an emotional level are pretty much interchangeable making it one of the less enthusiastic endorsements for the American way of life and a great Blues tune and the same time.

Eddy also shows the depth of his soul on two beautiful songs, one of them co-written by his publicist, (a woman who I've received work from in the past) Karen Leipziger and the other he wrote with Ronnie. The former is summed up perfectly by its title of "Do Unto Others" the first words of the so called Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you", which hardly anybody abides by anymore. It's a beautiful, Gospel tinged plea, for people to try and show a little more compassion in their dealings with others.

"A Time For Peace" is another song where the title tells the story without too much elaboration needed. Its a heartfelt plea for peace in a world which really seems to have forgotten what that word means anymore. On both these songs Eddie digs deep within himself and shows the empathy that makes him such a fine Bluesman. You can't play the Blues with any sort of sincerity without being able to feel what other people are feeling, and in these songs Eddy shows us just how well he can articulate what so many people in the world are crying out for these days.

West Side Strut is a fine example of the great sound of Chicago Blues, played by one of the old masters. Listening to Eddy Clearwater is an experience that you don't want to miss, and now you have the opportunity to hear him in all his glory. From hard rocking Blues to soul stirring Gospel, this disc covers all the bases, and will have you believing that he really is Eddy "The Chief" Clearwater.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:26 PM | Permalink

There's something about Barrelhouse Blues music that gets under your skin and won't leave you alone. Perhaps it's the beat, the inflection of the singer's voice, or maybe it's just the easy swing that set's your hips to moving and your toes to tapping. Yet, a real good Barrelhouse player can also take you down a sentimental road full of tears and heartbreak without once making it taste like too much sugar in your coffee.

It's a real trick, and not one that many people can manage; Dr. John is probably the best known player, and I've heard one or two others who can carry it off. One of the guys I knew is no longer with us,Ron Hedland, and you probably never heard of him. I knew him in the early eighties when he was calling strippers at the Brass Rail in Toronto Ontario as his day job, and playing a Fender Rhodes Electric when he got the chance. He could sing an old chestnut and make it sweet, or he could reach down and play barrel house like he was sitting in with the whore house band back home in Virginia where he was born.

The other man you may not have heard of either, but he's still around and kicking, and at eighty-one Eddie Tigner doesn't sound like he's going anywhere in a hurry either. His voice is strong, and fingers fast on the keys of either his piano or the organ that he plays; kicking out some of the best, lowest and fattest Barrelhouse blues I've heard in a long time.

I guess you can be excused for not having heard of Eddie Tigner because it's been a while since he was in the public eye. According to his biography over at the Music Maker Relief Foundation's web site he's been spending his days recently serving lunches in a school cafeteria. Eddie started his piano playing career back in the forties when he was in the army (he figures he has played gigs at every armed forces base in the United States) and was actually playing Vibes in his first band.

Living in Atlanta during the 1950's he played with Elmore James during the early years of the decade, which is probably where he picked up his fine Boogie Woogie/Barrelhouse technique. Eddie's band, the Maroon Notes, played vaudeville shows in theatres in Atlanta and toured through small towns throughout the South down through the west coast of Florida. In 1959 the Ink Spots rolled into town and needed a keyboard player for the night and hired Eddie. That night lasted for nearly thirty years as he toured with them until 1987. Since 1991 he's been playing clubs in around Atlanta as well as "feeding the children" as he calls his day job.

Slippin In is Eddie Tigner's second release on the Music Makers label, and shows once again what a valuable service the folks who run that label are doing for American music. Not only are they making sure that deserving artists are able to record and make a living from doing what they do best - playing music - they are ensuring that the rest of us get to hear some of the best music around. Mainly through word of mouth they find the musicians who have slipped through the cracks and are barely surviving on low paying minimum wage jobs or social security, and give them the opportunity to regain their pride and earn some money by booking them for shows and recording their music.

As I said earlier Eddie is one of the best Barrelhouse style players I've heard. It's not just that he's a hot keyboard player, because I'm sure there are hotter ones, or that he's got the greatest voice in the world, it's the way he uses his talents that make him so good. He doesn't just play the piano, he teases and coaxes notes from it, so that it sings in that way that's specific to honky-tonks and old juke joints.

Listen to him playing "Please Send Me Someone To Love" on Slippin In and you'll hear what I'm talking about. In the wrong person's hands this would be the biggest piece of shalmtz this side of Las Vegas, but under his care this song sounds like the plea it should be. His fingers gently pull notes from the piano that are redolent with the sadness of a lonely man, while his voice, down in the lower register, states his case in an almost matter of fact manner. There's something that much more poignant about a song like this when it's delivered as a simple plea for compassion, instead of the melodramatic howl that so many people seem to believe is what constitutes emotion.

The musicians he plays with are taking their cues from Eddie and you can feel it in the way they have all caught the less is more attitude that his playing exemplifies. Listening to his composition, the instrumental "Slippin In", primarily a Hammond Organ and guitar duet, makes this really clear. Instead of either Eddie or his guitar player, Felix Reyes, playing speed of light solos with millions of notes that you never hear, they make each note they play tell a story. I'm not a big fan of organ music normally, but the way Eddie uses his Hammond made a convert out of me on this occasion. There was something about the way he was able to nurse the notes out of that instrument that made it sing beautiful harmony with the guitar unlike anything I've heard in along time.

Eddie Tigner is a great all around Blues piano player who can handle everything from a straight ahead Blues number like "Need Your Love So Bad", to the rollicking swing of "Knock Me A Kiss". He can sing it slow and sweet, or fast and loose and sound equally comfortable and always sound like he means every word that he sings. There aren't many people left who can do justice to Barrelhouse Blues/honky-tonk music anymore, but Eddie Tigner's Slippin In is proof that there are still some who have what it takes to make your spine get loose and remind you that you have hips.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:42 PM | Permalink

I guess it's only fitting that as a guy who edits a site called Epic India Magazine that I'm fascinated by Epic Poems and stories. I can date it back to the first time I read a version of Beowulf when I was a kid, and I've been hooked on them ever since. After that it became a matter of simply discovering them in order to read them.

First of course was Homer and the Odyssey, and that was followed by reading Virgil's Aeniad (in Latin - not because of any great ambition but solely because I was taking Latin in high school as I had no other course options left if I wanted to collect enough credits to get into university without taking any math or science). Then there was Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, in translation, because Old English is pretty much indecipherable as far as I was concerned.

Of course there have been all the modern equivalents as well that started cropping up in the fantasy genre with The Lord Of The Rings and Narnia for openers and continues today with Steven Erikson's Malzan Books Of The Fallen and of course Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling. Just as I was starting to lose interest in the genre, there's only so many good versus evil Judeo/Christian based myths you can take, I stepped outside the shelter of Western culture to discover another world.

In 2005 I began reading Ashok Banker's modern adaptation of Valmiki's three thousand year old epic poem The Ramayana that told the story of the great Indian hero Rama. Since then I've been keeping my ears open for word of other stories from other cultures that I could sink my teeth into. I've always been a firm believer in the theory that you can learn more about a people by reading their stories than through a history or other text book. So when the opportunity to read excerpts from the Persian epic The Shahnameh (The Epic Of Kings) by Hakim Abdol Qasem Ferdowsi Tousi (935 - 1020 CE) arose I was very interested.

Hyperwerks a newer graphic novel group, has just added to it's title's listing Rostam: Tales From The Shahnameh. Since I knew next to nothing about the The Shahnameh I decided that before reading the adaptations that Hyperwerks were offering it would probably be a good idea to read some of the original poem to get a feel for the style and to understand the context which these excerpts were being taken from. There are plenty of good translations of The Shanameh on line and I read the chapters that preceded Rostam's entrance into the story at the link above and also at the Iran Chamber Society's web site.

In the first four chapters the reader is introduced to Iran and how it's leadership evolved, and the countries in the surrounding area. Once the kingdom is settled and established the reader is told of the coming of the first hero of Iran Zal - who will marry Rodabeh and father Rostam.
The first tale of Rostam that the Hyperwerks recounts is actually one that takes place a little latter on in his history, but is also one of the most tragic; the story of Rostam and Sohrab
To tell you any of the details from that story would be to spoil it, and I'm not going to do that. What I will say is that the people of Hyerwerks have done their best to remain faithful to the original story in both issues of Rostam: Tales From The Shahnameh that have been published so far. It's not just in content that they have taken care, but in the graphics as well, for they have carefully reproduced not only the style of dress and armour that was used by at that period in Persian history, but all visual aspects including architectural and decorative arts.

They have also done a good job of telling the story with both illustrations and dialogue, in fact one of the things I liked most about the two issues I've read is their willingness to just use images to tell the story in places. There's no reason to say something like "his sword shattered on his opponents armour when you can just as readily show it happening. That's the whole idea behind graphic novels anyway, to be able to tell the story with the pictures and to find the right balance of dialogue and narration to include so you don't detract from the flow of the story telling.

At the beginning you many find the dialogue a little stilted and overly formal. Yet it's pretty much lifted word for word from the stories these comics have been based on. I don't know if that's the way people would have talked in the days the stories are set in, or just because Farsi and Arabic don't translate well into English. Yet, I found myself growing accustomed to the sound of the dialogue as I read it as my reading progressed, so I have a feeling it's more a case of this is the way the language was used in the original. It's definitely how the language sounds in the two translations I've read.

Rostam: Tales From The Shahnameh is a well illustrated and well written comic/graphic story that will serve as a good introduction to the The Shahnameh. The people at Hyperwerks have done a great job in making sure they have stayed as faithful as they possibly can both visually and in the narration of the stories. These are fine examples of the great things that can be done with he comic book genre.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 01:17 AM | Permalink

I remember a time many years ago when I was directing Samuel Becket's play Waiting For Godot and being surprised at how so many people still didn't understand what it was about. We had been booked to perform it at a private school where the senior class was studying it, and before the show I got up to introduce the play and asked the kids to tell me truthfully how many of them found the play boring. After a little hesitation nearly all of them raised their hands, and I told them, well you're right, it's really boring.

I then told them a little of the play's history, how the first time an English language audience understand the show, really related to it, was when a production of the play was mounted at San Quentin prison for guys serving long term or life sentences. They had immediately understood, and identified with, the way the characters were so desperate to find something, anything, to do that would pass the time waiting for a day to end so they could get onto the next day and do the same thing all over again.

It was Beckett's contention that the majority of us spent our time exactly as his character's did in vain search of something to fill the hours of the day with meaning. Our jobs, our religious beliefs, and everything else that we feel or do all derive from that impetus. In Waiting For Godot he has taken that to absurd lengths with his two characters as they contemplate everything from suicide to violence in an effort to fill that emptiness.

What, you must be wondering, does Waiting For Godot have to do with Kevin Smith's book, My Boring Ass Life: The Uncomfortably Candid Diary Of Kevin Smith? Isn't it just a collection of entries from the online diary that he keeps where he talks about the his day to day life and all the boring details there in?

Well, yeah, the book is made up of just over a year of entries that were previously published at Silent Bob Speaks.com, and there is day after day of I got up, let the dogs, out went to the can had a shit while doing this on the lap top, went down to the office and answered e-mail until it was time to take the kid to school; stopped and picked up breakfast for the wife at such and such and came home. The entry would continue on in that vain, until he would fall asleep watching episodes of television he'd bought through i-Tunes.

Of course since he is Kevin Smith the film director, he does occasionally lead a more exciting life than most people and periodically there are entries that deal with his life in film. The year or so in question that makes up this book includes an account of his first appearance in a film playing somebody aside from Silent Bob, when he made the movie Catch And Release, describes appearing opposite Bruce Willis for one scene in the latest instalment of the Die Hard franchise, and relates the making of his own movie, Clerks ll.

Oh and he does other stuff, like appearances at comic conventions, radio interviews about Star Wars: The Revenge Of The Sith, fundraisers he and his wife do for their daughter's school, signing shit-loads of merchandise to be sold at his comic stores or through his View Askew company's web site, and going to the Cannes film festival with Clerks ll and receiving an eight minute standing ovation at the conclusion of its showing. You know trivial, boring, day to day stuff that all of us experience.

Of course there has to be something about Jason Mewes in all this too. For those of you from another planet, Jason has played Jay, the long haired, loud mouthed, foul mouthed, moronic, stoner, whose a fixture in the world where Clerks 1 & ll, Mallrats, Dogma and of course Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back take place. Inseparable in real life as they are on screen, Kevin's description of Jason's descent into the hell of addiction, and the years he took to climb out again are probably the most devastatingly honest description of the helplessness one must feel when you feel like you're losing a loved one to drugs.

I think what blew me away the most about that part of the book is not once did I get the feeling that Kevin was making himself out to be anything special or any kind of hero because of what his friend went through. I doubt he would have ever even written anything about it if it weren't for the fact that he felt it important that the truth be told about what happened instead of second hand crap turning up in the tabloids. He doesn't make it out to be more or less than what it was, offering no excuses for Jason, (he does offer us the explanation though that Jason's mom was a junkie, he never knew his father, and his mother had him running drugs when he was nine years old, and later became his major supplier for prescription medicines) and taking none of the credit for Jason's recovery.

As a former drug abuser myself whose been clean for fourteen years and still has to say in one way or another, I'm not going to use today, I understood the significance of Jason being able to say "I don't need to do that today, and probably not tomorrow either". When Kevin recounts those moments, they aren't famous people from Hollywood, they are two guys from Jersey - close friends who cared deeply enough about each other that the one had the strength to say no when it was needed and the other to go clean.

That's the thing about Kevin Smith and his movies; he is one of us. I don't mean we're all medium height, husky, white guys who wear shorts and high-tops, but that feeling that has permeated all his films from Clerks through to Jersey Girl (Which I thought was a wonderful movie by the way and am proud to say that I own a copy of the DVD) that it could be you or me up on that screen.

Yes, even Dogma. Suspend your disbelief about angels, apostles, and devils walking the earth for a second, and think about the way Bethany feels about life. We've all been there haven't we? Wondering what the fuck, and if this is your idea of a big plan God, well I don't want to play anymore. I know there are plenty of film types out there that have said Smith's movies only appeal to a certain type of people, and Kevin says he understands if people don't share his skewed view of the world, but there's more to his movies than I think he even gives himself credit for.

I was about a third of the way through My Boring Ass Life, still wondering what the hell was so interesting about reading about some guy talking about spending his hours watching DVDs, going to the toilet, and making runs for fast food when it hit me that it was like watching one of his movies. While this book is about the details of his life, the things he does that fill his time, his movies are about what the people in them do fill their time, and that's something we all do.

Hanging out at the mall, playing video games, dealing drugs, dreaming of the opportunity to be something else, might not be what you do to fill the hours of your day, but you have the equivalent in your life. I know I do. You may not want to identify with Randal and Dante at the Quick Stop, or Jay and Silent Bob, but you can't deny that on some level there's a chord of recognition that's being struck as you watch them. You may not be any more like them than you are like Vladimir and Estragon, but that doesn't mean they don't mirror some part of your life.

The candid honesty in Kevin Smith's My Boring Ass Life that everyone refers to isn't the fact that he admits to masturbating or that he and his wife enjoy having sex together. What takes real guts, in this work ethic, always have to be doing something productive society that we live in is his willingness to admit that he's perfectly content to play on line poker for hours on end, curl up and watch movies with his wife and daughter, write a boring ass diary on the web, or sit and talk for hours with a friend.

To some people that might be a "boring ass life" or seen as wasting time, but I think anybody who makes time in his or her day to do puzzles with his child or let a friend know that he's important is making fine use of his time. Randal and Dante might be "losers", and even that's debatable, but Kevin Smith knows what's important in his life and take care of it. His life is anything but boring and nowhere near a waste.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 12:56 AM | Permalink

Well it looked like I had run into a dead end. I should have known better than to think any of the bar's phones or their accoutrements, which is a fancy way of saying the shit that goes with something, would have survived the types of drunks, junkies, and liars that habituate a strip bar. Probably the first drunk husband whose wife had told him not to come home from wherever he was had performed the Charles Atlas trick on the "Let My Fingers Do the Walking" tome at the first booth.

The second looked like it had been used to mop up something that I didn't want to have a better acquaintance with and the third, like someone had used it as practice before they perforated the late, lamented Doctor Magneson. Sighing a curse or two at the perfidy of my fellow men I headed for the office where I was certain I could find a phone book in somewhat better shape than any of these relics.

After two hours of questioning my sanity and a half bottle of whiskey later I came across the phone book for the National Capital Region (Ottawa, Hull, and anywhere else in the vicinity that uncivil servants might hang their coats and hats) propping up a window. It had sustained a little damage from water and the neighbouring pigeons, and the mice had absconded with the zeds (poor as synagogue mice as they were making they're way through the book backwards) for comfort, but at least the section where gorgeous Scandinavian blondes kept their phone numbers looked to be intact.

That is if they kept their phone number in phone books at all. Two hours of scouring the phone book only confirmed the fact that there was no Magnesons to be found with a listed phone number anywhere within the confines of this sorry excuse for a city. There are 600 Martins, and four different ways that people seem to spell MacDonald, Mcdonald, MaCdonald, and Macdonald, but no damn Magnesons.

Some items when they cause you frustration don't have the decency to give you any means of release. A phone book on the other hand has a nice bit of heft to it so when you decide to chuck it across the room it will make a resounding thud. Indeed if you throw it hard enough not only will it make a satisfying noise, it will rip through cheap drywall like an elephant's fart through tissue paper.

It took my a few seconds to realize that the ringing sound I was hearing in my ears was unrelated to the minor bit of renovation I had begun seconds ago, and had more to do with the phone sitting on my desk than anything else. I was using less then the usual requisite number of brain cells required to carry on a phone conversation when I picked up the receiver; half of them being awash in the best part of a fifth of Canadian Club, another chunk trying to visualize how the filing cabinet would look on the other side of the door, and the remainder trying to figure out how long it would take the mice to work there way backwards through the whole alphabet now that they had ready access to the source.

So it took me a second or two to remember what I was supposed to do with the piece of cheap plastic in my hand out of which a sultry voice was calling hello with increasing amounts of urgency. I tried to shake off thoughts of mice in knit yarmulkes and me wearing a truss, the way a dog shakes off water, and was rewarded with the office attempting to spin me into orbit. It was only by catching the desk with my chin that I was able to prevent myself from hitting the floor.

Pain has the remarkable ability to clear your brain and let you focus on the events at hand. After the sparks that had appeared out of nowhere in front of my eyes had vanished I noticed that I was holding on to the phone. I was just about to hang it up when I heard a vaguely familiar sounding voice saying, "Oh my God what's going on, is there anybody there? Hello, hello?"

"Lady could you keep your voice down I've got quite the headache all of a sudden and you're not helping any by yelling away like this" There was now a much appreciated silence at the other end of the line which allowed me to regain a little bit of my composure so that I could go about this the right way. After all she had just lost the man who I assumed to be her father in a rather grisly fashion and that called for a certain amount of delicacy. (Who else did you think it was going to be on the phone at this time of night in this kind of story – sheesh)

"Why did you do it? Why did you kill your father tonight Ms. Magnesen? I saw you running away from the bar just as he keeled over at my feet so don't deny you were there and that you fled. Any normal girl would have stayed, you see your father drop to the floor like a ton of bricks and you're heading for the proverbial hills – something ain't right with that picture Ms. Magnesen and your gonna have to help me bring it into focus."

There was a pause from the other end of the phone line, followed by the unmistakeable sounds of someone taking a large drag off a cigarette followed by a long slow exhale. Visualizing in my head just how those actions would affect her lips and the thoughts that sprang to mind with those images left me a little light headed again. I barely recovered in time to hear what she had to say next.

"I guess I'm not what you'd call a normal girl Mr?" her voicing trailing away in a suggestive question mark led me to quickly interject in a still somewhat shaky voice "just call me Steve, Ms. Magnesen" to which she replied "there's no need for you to be formal either, Steve; call me Gertrude" Immediately destroying any of the earlier mental images that I had envisioned. Gertrude is just one of those names where even knowing the person in question would look good in a potato sack makes me think of particularly hairy great aunts.

Another cigarette inhalation pause followed this exchange of names, this time bereft of any accompanying imagery, until she continued with, " But then again my dad and I hadn't been having what you would call a normal existence for the past while"

I made appreciative, and what I hoped were encouraging noises, and made myself comfortable on the floor, noticing with contentment that the remainder of the fifth was within easy reach having rolled onto the floor in the confusion. I hooked the bottle over to me with my foot and was carefully unscrewing the cap as she began her story.

"My dad and I had moved up to Ottawa a few years ago, my mother had died from cancer and neither of us could bear to be around places that reminded us of her. He felt especially guilty because his work had kept him from home during a great deal of her last months with us and he knew that he wished that he could have spent more time with her.

I had ended up being her primary care giver, having to bathe her, change her diapers when she could no longer get up to go to the bathroom on her own, and eventually feed her. While he was off at conferences on climate change and global warming I'd be at home making broth and rolling her over in bed to prevent bed sores. He told me later that he was sorry that he had left so much of the burden on my shoulders but he couldn't stand to see her like what she was becoming.

That broken collection of bones and skin with no intellect or brain wasn't the person he had married. No matter how hard he tried he couldn't feel anything but revulsion for her when he was around her, and that ate at him like termites in a clapboard house. He had worshiped the ground she had walked on until the moment she had gotten sick, treating her like she was royalty, and then all of a sudden he found he couldn't go near her."

I was fighting back tears by this time, although that could have been residual pain and medicinal whiskey, so I wasn't all that surprised that she made a slight choking sound as if overcome with emotion and had to pause for a second. As there was nothing really that could be said, I said nothing and let her take all the time she needed to compose herself before she continued.

"Anyway when the previous government was working out ways to try and ensure that Canada was going to meet its Kyoto accord commitments a position became available requiring someone of dad's expertise and skills. I decided to go back to school and finish the thesis work I had begun when Mom had gotten sick and we began the process of putting our live back together.

Those couple of years were great; everyone dad was working with were excited about coming up with solutions that would not only see Canada meet its obligations, but actually exceed them. It was so great to see dad taking an interest in life again. There had been a time just after mom died that I was worried for him, and that I thought he might be going off the deep end into depression, but this new project had revitalized him.

Of course it was too good to be true, and all those other damn clichés about good stuff coming to an end, and last fall when it began to look like the Conservative Party Of Canada had a good chance of forming the next government, dad started asking questions about the accord's future if the change were to happen and it didn't look good.

The word he got was that even if they were able to cut emissions by fifty per cent and improve the economy at the same time by an equal amount, the Conservatives were going to pull the plug on the deal no matter what. When words like 'setting a dangerous precedent for government regulatory powers and interference in the market place' start being bandied about, you could have discovered the cure for cancer and AIDS and you knew your funding would be killed and your program shut down.

Dad became like a figure obsessed; he began working all hours of the day and night in an effort to come up with a devise that could be used to convert carbon dioxide and other dangerous emissions into harmless substances when released into the atmosphere. He knew that even if the government had no intention of ever making use of this technology that there were others who would and could.

It was just before Christmas and after the election had been called that he let me in on a little of what he was planning, albeit it indirectly. He told me that I shouldn't be surprised if he started to receive visitors at home at all hours of the day and night, and that I shouldn't make a big deal out of it. He also said it would be a good idea if I didn't tell anybody about them either."

She stopped to light another cigarette and gather her thoughts for what I assumed was the crux of the matter. I had a good idea where this was going and beginning to see how it ended as badly as it did. I had long since abandoned the bottle of whiskey and was sitting propped up against the desk with my legs splayed out in front of me. Looking out the office window I could see the sky was beginning to change colour; the clouds of the previous night had dispersed and there was a faint blush appearing along the eastern horizon line. It looked like it was going to be a nice day for somebody, somebody who probably wasn't named Gertrude Magneson.

"Maybe I should have said something to him, asked him more about what he was doing, but he looked like he had hope for the first time since the beginning of the fall when we started to hear the rumours of our demise. After all we'd been through there was no way I was going to be the one to pull the rug out from under him.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, up to Christmas and then twice more before New Years, the visits took place. They would usually happen between midnight and four in the morning and the person would arrive on bicycle or foot. Most of the time they'd only come one at a time, but on the last couple of occasions all three of them came together and these visits were also in daytime. It was as if they either believed they were completely safe or they no longer cared whether they were being observed.

The two men and a woman all dressed and looked pretty much the same. Long hair, bulky sweaters, fancy sandals with thick socks on no matter what the weather, and the same zealous fire in their eyes at all times. They were all sort of pale, like they didn't eat enough and never had anything to drink except water and herbal tea. The woman looked at me like I was some sort of evil monster and the two men would sneak looks at me when they didn't think I could see and they knew she wasn't looking.

Obviously they weren’t supposed to approve of me, the way I dressed or looked or something, but that didn't stop them from drooling just like any other straight male does the first time he sees me. I thought they were judgemental little hypocrites for judging me by my appearance, they were probably the types who protested against just that sort of thing, but I didn't say anything because my dad assured me their visits were temporary and they were helping him out in some way or another. Sure enough after those last couple of meetings before New Year's Eve we never saw them again.

After Christmas vacation my dad went back to work and waited for the inevitable to happen. After the elections rumours were flying fast and furious, but dad remained calm and when I asked him about it he just smiled and shrugged. But everything changed again a week after the oily bastards announced they were reneging on the Kyoto accord in order to 'seek a Canadian solution'.

I was at home working on my thesis and two men came to the door. They should have been wearing badges that said undercover R.C.M.P. officer or at least kept their stupid hats on they were so obvious. They said they were colleagues of dad's from work and that he had sent them by the house for some files he needed that he kept at home, and would I mind letting them come in to get them. I told them I would have to check with him first, and pretended to walk back into the house to use the phone, but in reality just slipped around the corner and observed them in the reflection from the hall mirror.

Not much of a surprise that they didn't wait for me to come back from making my 'phone call'. They left the door open when they left, so I did a full production for them of coming out on the step and looking puzzled as to what had just happened. I also used the time to spot where they had parked their Crown Victoria and watched as they pretended to be gay lovers necking in the front seat.

When I told dad about it he asked if I were okay and when I assured him I was, he laughed a little. But it wasn't as if it were at anything funny. He said they had searched the lab as well but they weren't going to find anything because, and he pointed to his head, it's all up here.

It was a week ago that he started to get worried about things again, but he didn't want to say anything to me about it. I had been seeing the same two cops who had come to the door around town, just happening to be where I was every so often. They made no effort to hide themselves, like they wanted to let me know they were keeping an eye on me for whatever reason.

I think it was the fact that they were bothering me that finally convinced him that we needed to find somebody to help us. Somebody we could trust in a situation that looked like it was getting further out of hand then he had expected. I think he had hoped that when they didn't find any files they could use they would leave him alone, but that didn't look like it was happening.

I was to follow him to the bar where the two of you were meeting last night to try and see if anybody had followed him, but it was so crowded that I couldn't even see either of you for a while. The next thing I knew was that he was dead. I was so scared that his killer was standing somewhere near me that all I could think of was getting out of there as quickly as possible. My father's dead Steve, and all I know is that it has something to do with the Kyoto accord and the Canadian government. Can you help me?"

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:40 PM | Permalink

It's been almost twenty years since the Iron Curtain that separated the West from the East came tumbling down. Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and what was then Czechoslovakia had all been satellite countries under the thumb of whoever was in control of the Kremlin in Moscow. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, (USSR) stretched from what are now the independent Baltic countries of Latvia and Estonia, to the borders of Mongolia in the East and the Himalayas in the South, and included within its borders Georgia and The Ukraine.

The Cold War, so called because neither side ever faced each other directly and only fought each other through puppet states all over the world, had raged since the day Germany surrendered in Europe after World War Two. When Stalin refused to withdraw his forces of "liberation", the West led by the United States and Britain began to wage a war against Communism that would shape foreign policy for the next fifty-five years. Both sides became ridiculously intransigent against anything that was remotely reminiscent of the other. While America black listed intellectuals and artists who were even suspected of having "un-American behaviour" by having been members of the Communist party at some point in their lives, Russia was equally vigilant in protecting its citizens against the corrupting influences of the morally decadent West.

Chief amongst those influences considered was popular music. While some Jazz was tolerated Rock and Roll was considered far too subversive, and even innocuous music like " I Wanna Hold Your Hand" by the Beatles was considered too immoral for the innocent ears of the Russian citizenry. Even in the satellite countries Rock and Roll was considered an act of subversion. The Plastic People Of The Universe in Czechoslovakia could only give concerts by letting people know the locations and times at the last moment, and even than they ended up doing jail time for sedition.

So the idea of a Rock and Roll band, or any sort of popular music band for that matter, from Russia is still enough of a novelty for me that I jump at any opportunity to listen to one. Quite a few of the earlier ones ended up merely being clones of power trios, or heavy metal/hard rock bands, so once the novelty wore off of hearing them sing in Russian they quickly became boring. Yet that still doesn't prevent me from checking out each new band that I come across.

I'm glad I do, because otherwise I might never have bothered to listen to Auktyon, a twelve piece band from Russia that has created a sound that blends elements of both Eastern and Western Europe that results in something that I doubt you've ever heard before. When I listened to the first song of their new album Girls Sing, "Profukal" the first thing that it reminded me of was the former Canadian band Lighthouse, The same very large sound that you only get with a multi piece band including brass and wood winds. But as the song progressed I changed my evaluation, realizing that although there were similarities, Lighthouse never played music that sounded like psychedelic, punk, polkas.

There's something about the sound of a tuba playing in a rock band I've always thought that brings a certain level of absurdity to the proceedings. Not that it makes the music sound ridiculous, rather it makes the band sound like they don't take themselves too seriously and lets you know that you are allowed to have fun listening to the tracks. Of course with the lyric in Russian it's hard to know what they are singing about, but the impression I got was here's a band that does a lot of their music with their tongues planted very firmly in their cheeks.

Having brass and wood winds of course gives them far more flexibility as a band in regards to the styles of music they play, than would a band made up of your standard Rock and Roll instruments. It seemed to me that aside from the polka type sound they were chugging out on the first track, they also were incorporating elements of various Eastern European folk melodies and what sounded like gypsy music. Its on slower tunes that you really notice the European influences and the difference that it has on the way the music impacts you emotionally over regular Rock and Roll.

Don't get me wrong, I love great Rock and Roll, but there is only so much that you can do with it musically - it is limited. So when your music incorporates other instruments and is not confined to the basic chord progressions of Rock and Roll, the potential for what you can do with your music increases. Of course you still have to have the talent and the skill to take advantage of that, and know how to create music that's rich and inventive enough that it sounds natural and not contrived.

On Girls Sing Auktyon show that they can take the various styles they use and create amazing music that is emotionally honest. There weren't any moments while listening to the CD that I was given the impression that a moment was being manufactured with the intent of manipulating the listener. There was nothing at all contrived about their sound.

In the old days of the Cold War I'm certain that Auktyon would have been accused of succumbing to decadent Western influences and would have found themselves running afoul of the cultural police or some other organ of the state. Instead what we have is a wonderful gift of music that combines great Rock and Roll with the wonderful energy and emotional depth of Eastern European music. Auktyon is proof positive and that East and West can meet in harmony and make beautiful music together.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:26 PM | Permalink

I've started wearing a bracelet on my right wrist. It's not the most comfortable of things, being made from strands of plastic and what looks like wire, and I have to keep adjusting it because it tugs on my skin periodically. It's not even particularly attractive, what with the band being made up of six strands or so of black wire and held together by two pieces of red wire wrapped around it that also serve as slides to adjust the size. I'm constantly aware of it sitting there on my right wrist because of both those things, and while that may not be a desirable characteristic in most jewellery, I think it's an essential component in this case.

Every time the bracelet makes me aware of it's presence, I'm reminded about the story that goes with it; where it comes from, who made it, and why it exists. The bracelet symbolizes an effort being made to help deal with what has been referred to as the most ignored humanitarian crises facing the world today. The mass abduction of children in Northern Uganda by the Lords Resistance Army to serve as conscripts in their twenty year war against the government.

Up until a short while ago cities in Northern Uganda were used to the sight of hundreds of thousands of children "commuting" from the surrounding country side every night to sleep in protected areas like hospitals or bus stations because they were so afraid of being abducted during the night. Sometimes their parents would come with them, some of them were among the nearly million and half children orphaned in Uganda by the AIDS epidemic, and some had escaped from the rebels and had no idea where their parents even lived.

The government of Uganda has finally got around to setting up displacement centres for these children and their families so they can have permanent protected shelter. These camps don't offer much better conditions than sleeping on the streets as they have become quickly overcrowded and lack proper sanitation facilities. Families have been forced to leave their jobs, schools, and homes behind, and there are no facilities in the camps for them to either receive an education or earn money.

Over the last few years a grass roots campaign has been underway in the United States to try and raise money and awareness in an effort to alleviate the situation. The bitter irony of the Invisible Children campaign is that might have happened if it weren't for the severe problems in Uganda's neighbouring Sudan.

In the spring of 2003 three young film makers left for the Sudan in an attempt to document the ongoing horror story that was the civil war in that country. Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey, and Laren Poole never shot a movie in the Sudan, instead they made the documentary Invisible Children about the plight of the children in Northern Uganda who were being conscripted into the rebel forces and those trying to avoid being kidnapped.

One of the things I found refreshing about this movie was the fact that they have made no attempts to edit out the parts that make them look less than professional. The whole idea of going over to the Sudan to make a documentary comes across as impulsive and you may not question their sincerity, but you sure do question their judgement. Initially they are the subject matter of the movie as they show us their fruitless efforts to "find a story" in the Sudan.

After days spent traipsing through deserted villages and not finding anyone to talk to, they are advised to head over to Uganda where they can at least interview some of the thousands of Sudanese living there in refugee camps. It's on the trip back from one of these camps that they find their story. They are driving home when they are forced to stop because a truck travelling along the same road they are driving on had been attacked by members of the Lords Resistance Army. They are told by their guide that the army has closed the road and everybody will have to stay put because of the worry about rebel activity in the area.

It's another sign of the honesty of their film making that they show their naivety on screen; they had gone into an area without knowing that a civil war had been raging for the last fifteen years. Since they have to stay put for a while they begin to ask questions about the war and who the rebels are. They supply some good solid history at this point in the documentary that explains how the rebellion started and it quickly becomes clear that the person behind it is very dangerous. Although Joseph Kony, leader of the Lords Resistance Army, claims to be trying to fight for rights of the local tribes it is their children his troops abduct and kill, and their food and supplies they steal.

Kony uses a mixture of spiritualism and violence to keep his followers in line, claiming to want to take over the country and run it according to the laws of the ten commandments - although as he's able to ignore the "thou shalt not kill" doctrine and young girls abducted are turned into sex slaves his sincerity about that is debatable. Recent news - as of this month - shows that progress is finally being made in peace talks, but the real sticking point is what to do about the former rebel soldiers who want to live in Uganda. Even more horrifying is the thought of what's to be done about the children who have been brainwashed and turned into killers once a peace plan goes into effect. Who will take responsibility for "deprogramming" children who can field strip an AK47 but can't read or write?

I'm getting ahead of the movie here, it's hard not to get caught up in this story once you start writing about it; it's just so damned heart rending. Anyway, back to the movie where our three young film makers are now witnessing the phenomenon that was a fact of life in Ugandan cities at the time. The nightly commute of hundreds of thousands of children from outlying areas into the city core seeking shelter from the rebel forces that sneak into their villages at night to pressgang them into the army.

They show us footage of children lying stacked together like chords of wood on the verandas of buildings through out the town. They discover that six boys have created a shelter for themselves in a concrete cellar underneath the hospital and they follow them down into it and watch them make preparations for the night. That first involves having to mop up all the water that's leaked in during the day if it has rained and then laying out thin mats on top of the damp concrete. A couple of the boys had managed to escape from the rebels after being abducted, and they talk about how they were forced to watch other children killed as a warning as to what would happen if you tried to escape.

The movie continues along in the same rough, semi-professional style that it started with, but that makes it even more effective. These three young men find the right people to talk to who can explain the situation properly; an American aid worker, a Ugandan member of parliament who has been one of the few political voices in the country talking about the plight of the children, and Ugandan journalists who have been reporting on the story of the war and the children since the beginning.

What makes the movie the most effective is their passion for telling the story, and the fact that nobody is the subject of a documentary, everybody is treated like a person. They make no secret about how they feel and how much they are moved by the people's willingness to keep on trying to have a life as normal as possible. The six young boys in their concrete bunker doing homework by the light of a single paraffin light, and rousing themselves at first light so they can get to their school.

Their are moments in this movie that will rip your heart out, and if you don't cry while watching it than I'll question whether or not you have a heart at all. If listening to a fourteen year old boy say he'd rather be dead right now instead of living the life he is living, and then bursting into tears at the thought of his dead brother, killed by the rebels, doesn't make you want to know what you can do to help than probably nothing will. It certainly inspired these the three young film makers.

The special features of the DVD Invisible Children tell you about the grassroots organization Invisible Children that grew out of the movie and lets you know how you can help. In fact they make it easy, they've even included a second copy of the DVD in the package so you can give it to a friend so they can find out about the story. The enclosed pamphlet lets you know about various ways you can either spread the word; hold a screening of the movie for friends or the public - they'll even send you promotional material so you can let people know about the screening.

There are programs for schools to get involved in to help raise money for schools in Uganda. Money raised through the sale of the DVD goes into funding mentoring programs where adults in Uganda are matched up with children to help them deal with everything from life issues to tutoring them in their school work. Than there's the bracelet I'm wearing around my wrist. The Bracelet Campaign is a cottage industry where individuals in the resettlement camps are given the raw materials to make these bracelets that are then sold in North America.

Not only are the bracelets used for fund-raising purposes, but they provide a small income to those who make them. The business of making the bracelets is also being used as a teaching model for business and financial planning practices for everyone involved. The bracelets are packaged with an accompanying DVD that tells the story of an individual child and each colour represents a different child's story. My red bracelets came with a DVD about Emmy. a fourteen year old boy who is the fourth of five children, each from a different father. One father was killed in combat, one died a political prisoner, and Emmy's father died of AIDS.

For so many years the existence of the child soldiers has been denied by everyone except those who live in the villages affected by the abductions during the war. The rebels have denied using them and the government forces have denied fighting against them. The first step in helping these children is letting the world know of their plight. With the movie Invisible Children Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey, and Laren Poole began the process, and they continue to do so with the Invisible Children Campaign.

At the end of the movie they ask if you can spare any one of three things that will enable you to help out. Your time to tell others the story, your talent to come up with a way of spreading the word to lots of people, or your money to help with programming. With the chance at peace on the horizon, it means there is a horrendous amount of work to be done. Over a million people will have to be repatriated back to their homes from the displacement camps, and who knows how many child soldiers will have to be integrated back into society. The story is ongoing, and the best way to help shape future chapters is to ensure that people know about it... that there are no more Invisible Children.

You can find out how to help by going to the Invisible Children web site at Invisible Children.com.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:29 PM | Permalink

Turn on the television on any given night in North America or go to a movie theatre, and if you were to believe what you saw was a fair sampling of the our population, you'd think that around 80% of our population was between the ages of twenty and forty-five and vapidly attractive. That figure rises even higher if you only concentrate on the female actors (the word actress is a diminutive that means lessor actor) as you rarely catch sight of a woman over the age of fifty doing anything other than cleaning up after one of today's beautiful losers.

In moments of idle speculation I wonder sometimes if there's not only really ten or twenty actors of each gender that are just given a variety of wigs to wear playing all the rolls; they all look so interchangeable. I know that's a gross exaggeration, but with the way casting directors and producers cast shows and movies by type instead of by acting ability there is an awful tendency for the "look" of an actor - especially in the case of a woman - to matter far more than anything as mundane as artistry.

Male actors seem to have a little more leeway, as nobody seems to find the idea of a sixty something guy with a twenty something girl all that unusual; it's the reverse you'll see as often as hen's teeth. It's not as if there haven't been roles written for women over the more than two millennia that the performance arts have existed, they just never seem to be performed on this side of the ocean.

What makes this trend so terribly disappointing is the enormous amount of talent that is being ignored. Thankfully for those of us who want to see talented woman perform the miracle of modern technology rides to our rescue by giving us access to great performances from other countries, specifically England, where the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has been going about the business of producing some of the best classical and contemporary theatre as television for nearly its entire existence.

Warner Brothers Hove Video has taken advantage of that fact, and in tandem with the BBC has been presenting some wonderful packages of various productions, and even more excitingly packages featuring highlights from a single performers work with the BBC. Helen Mirren has risen to stardom in North American in recent years through her performances in movies like The Queen and Calendar Girls and re-broadcasts of her long running television show Prime Suspect.

While her performances in those productions gives us an idea of her scope as an actor, watching the nine different productions included in the box set Helen Mirren At The BBC make you realize the true depth of her abilities as an actor. These productions were filmed over an eight year period from 1974 to 1982 and gives us an amazing opportunity to not only see her performing everything from the classics - Thomas Middleton's bloody Jacobean tragedy The Changeling, William Wycherley's bawdy Restoration sex comedy The Country Wife and Bernard Shaw's The Apple Cart to the challenges offered by contemporary scripts like Dennis Potter's Blue Remembered Hills and Soft Targets by Stephen Poliakoff.

While I was unfamiliar with a few of the titles, some of them having been written specifically for the BBC, or like J.M. Barrie's The Little Minister a less well known work by a famous author, the ones I did recognize made me wonder at the range that was being demanded of her as an actor. You couldn't find two more different worlds than the ones presented in The Changeling and The Country Wife yet here she was at an early stage in her career, 1974 and 1977 respectively, appearing in both and giving riveting performances.

But somehow the difficulties faced by her as an actor in those two productions paled to what she was called upon to do in her performance in Blue Remembered Hills, where she and her fellow cast members are dressed as, and play the rolls of children. It is a satirical look at how people idealize the past, especially childhood, that wouldn't work if the adult actors weren't able to give convincing performances as children. There is something almost frightening about watching a child's mannerisms and behaviours being performed with the sincerity and realism that Mirren brought to her role

Playing an unsympathetic character from history is probably one of the most difficult tasks an actor ever faces, especially if they want to be true to their character. You can't let your personal feelings about who or what this person is or did come through, but must show them and their situation as honestly and clearly as possible. In Mirren's 1975 performance in Caesar and Claretta of Claretta, Mussolini's mistress on the last days of their lives we see her do a marvellous job that. She had been his mistress for ten years by the time they were captured by the Italian underground while trying to escape, and although she was offered her freedom Claretta chose to die with her lover.

That Mirren is able to make us see the depth of her character's love for a person history considers one of the villains of the twentieth century is remarkable as she is able to overcome our abhorrence for the object of her affection to the extent that we believe her feelings. We may not see what she finds so attractive in Mussolini, but there can be no doubting the depth of her character's devotion to him.

Also included along with the nine performances are two interviews conducted with Helen, one is from 1975 when she was a new rising star, while the other is newly recorded for this box set, and features her talking about these performances and her early career in general. Obviously the material in this set was not shot with modern DVD equipment in mind, but the sound is perfectly adequate and the pictures are clear. It's interesting to see the difference in quality though when they make the switch from shooting in studio on video, to on location shooting with film. Film seems to have a substantially greater depth of field than video, and the image quality of both Blue Remembered Hills and Soft Targets is far superior to those shot on Video.

Whether it was shot in video or film though is irrelevant to the quality of the performances on display in this collection. (Not just by Helen Mirren either - look for a spectacular performance from Ian Holm in Soft Targets and Prunella Scales', of Fawlty Towers fame, appearance in The Apple Cart) From the dark depths of depravity in the Jacobean tragedy The Changeling, the farce of The Country Wife, to the melancholy of her character Celia in Soft Targets each performance Helen Mirren gives is as memorable as anything she's done in recent years.

In Helen Mirren At The BBC we are able to watch an actor perform in a wide variety of challenging and interesting roles, with spectacular results. It is not only a pleasure to watch her performances because they are brilliant, it's also nice to see a woman being given the same opportunities that are normally only given to men on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. If you liked Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth, l & ll, you will love this set.

Helen Mirren At The BBC is available either directly from Warner Brothers Home Video's BBC America Shop or other on line retailers.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:32 PM | Permalink

At the beginning of February I reviewed a DVD, Dispatch Zimbabwe: Live At Madison Square Garden, and it was my introduction to the three young men who had been involved with the band Dispatch. As those folk who were loyal followers of the group know the individuals had gone their separate ways back in 2006, and this was the first time they had played together since then.

There was something we needed to clarify before we really got underway. In the Dispatch information I had received with the DVD listed Chad last name as Urnston, but with all the PR stuff I received with the State Radio Disc his last name was given as Stokes. So the first question I asked was simply what's your name

Chad: "My mIddle name is Stokes and I use that now because it's easier for people to say and handle then Urmston - but I still consider my name to be Chad Urmston.

Can you give me some biographical detail - I don't know much about you - Your background where you grew up. There was something about growing up in a progressive hockey playing family

Chad: (laughs) I grew up on a farm in Sherborn Massachusetts. - chicken, pigs, sheep, and grew up hearing Hendrix and Hair - 60 - 70s music. But the biggest influence was this place called the Peace Abbey, run by a man named Lewis Randa, dedicated to teaching people about peace and those people who advocated peace - Mohammed Ali,John Lennon, Mother Teresa have all visited it at one time or another.. In 1999 I took part in this march where people from the Peace Abby hauled a one ton grave stone - on a caisson, (a cart specially designed for the grave stone) - for the unknown civilian killed in war, all the way to Arlington Viginia.

I didn't do the whole thing, but it was really wonderful experience. We'd sleep in fields along the way, or sometimes people would see what we were doing and appreciate it and invite us to spend the night with them. When we got there, the night before we camped out near the Lincoln Memorial - a buddy and me went for a swim in the reflecting pool that night (laughs). We thought we might get arrested and handcuffed trying to take the caisson into Arlington cematary, so my friend and I greased our wrists. We never did get handcuffed - the cop stopped the procession on the bridge and took the caisson away.

What's really cool is that its been all over the world now. I think it went to the French embassy after the cops took it, and I know its been to Viet Nam and Britain. (There are two stones, one is permanently set up in Sherborne Mass. and the other tours the world to help honour the memory of civilians killed in wars all over the world.)

I also did a year of school at N.Y.U. in New York City, and it was an eye-opening experience as there was always some sort of action taking place. I took part in some of them and it was exciting, a feeling of doing something that was not just about you.

I think I read something about you playing trombone when you were in high school or middle school, was that your first instrument - where did the idea of doing music as a means of expressing yourself come from...?

Chad: I've always loved music, but I don't know if I ever thought of it as a career or anything like that right away, or when I first started playing. My sister got a guitar when I was twelve or thirteen and I would steal it from her and start playing. You know classic rock songs, that sort of thing. The first time I wrote a song was I set music to a poem my mother had written when she was in her twenties, and that was the first time I had the idea that it was something I was interested in doing. I never really planned it, it was something that just happened, and I kept doing it.

When I got to University I actually first joined Pete's (Pete- Bass and guitar player for Dispatch) band as a trombone player. Obviously that changed, Brad joined us (Me: And the rest is history) (laughs) But I played trombone all the way through high-school, and it was fun. I was part of a group who were seen as pretty odd - you know the low brass section - and we had a great time.

Obviously your stay in Zimbabwe had a huge impact on you...How did you end up in Zimbabwe? Do you think it changed you, or did it more help provide you with a focus for what you wanted to do?

Chad: I had a friend who lived in the town next door whose father was a Pastor, and they had spent some time in Zimbabwe when he was younger, and his family knew people over there. At the end of high school I didn't want to go off to University right away. It was pretty much an impulsive decision to go - we could stay with friends of his family over there and it sounded like a good idea

When was that?

Chad: That was in 1994

Were you doing anything specific - like you weren't with any organization or group or anything?

Chuck: No we just went over by ourselves and were staying with the people my friend's family already knew. For about the first month we would just walk around - go into the townships and meet people. Sometimes I would take my guitar along - you know things like that. But after that I started looking around for things that I could do that was more constructive. It became the choice between just hanging out or actually making a contribution, asking yourself what I can do? It was still informal, but I got involved and taught some school, played soccer, and got to know the people.

Being there took me out of myself. I saw all that these people had to deal with; AIDS, poverty, and it wasn't nearly so bad then as it is now either. I was really impressed by the fact that in spite of their world being filled with problems all the people I met had a generosity of spirit that really stood out, a refusal to be brought down by circumstances.

It made me want to do something with myself that was respectful of people like that, worthwhile or that could make a difference.

Have you been back since

Chad: "No, but I really want to. I made a really good friend over there, Ellias and I found out that his son was really badly hurt - stabbed in the side of the head over a bag of sugar - that's how desperate things are right now I guess - and he's getting better, but still having trouble with one side of his body. I'd really like to see them and see how their doing

Let's get back to music again. You wrote songs for both Dispatch and now State Radio - What do you see as the differences between the two experiences - both in the actual process and any changes in direction your focus might have undergone.

Chad "Some bits of music can't be controlled, you just write what comes. When I was with Dispatch I would write songs, and than pick the ones that I thought would work for the band. I pretty much do the same thing now, select the stuff that I think will work best for Chuck and Mad Dog. I probably keep in mind what they bring to the band when I'm writing now, knowing that I'm playing with them.

I also think there's less of a filtering process now then there was in the later days of Dispatch, and less censoring of political content. With Dispatch there were three of writing songs and it was pretty free flowing that way, but it also started to make things difficult towards the end. You have three very creative people working, each of us writing material that we want to play - it can't help but create tension. We were together for eight years...

That's a long time, and with three creative people there's bound to be lots of growth, and a desire to do things ... explore your own ideas. It seems like you guys had the brains to know that and were right to let it end

Chad: "It was still hard..."

Where do you find yourself looking for inspiration for material - or do things just sort of jump out at you from the headlines and you say I've got to write a song about that.

Chad: "From everywhere really, the Internet, other Artists. Sometimes you go out and you've had a conversation in a bar or something and a topic comes up, and you go home and start looking it up on the Internet and you find out all this information on a subject, an it will inspire you to want to write about it. Mainly though it's what going on around me, or things that I"m thinking about. Like I said earlier you can't really control the music and it's an ongoing process of absorbing and creating based on all of what's around you."

How do you see the interrelationship between your music and your lyrics - do you try and create a sound that will reflect the feelings being expressed in the lyric?

Chad: "What I'm usually trying to do is marry the melodies to the words, so that they work well that way. I'm trying to keep the diction as natural as possible in the songs, obviously you have to play with it sometimes so that everything works, but I really want them to compliment each other. The music is really a natural extension of the lyric."

Are there any people in particular that have inspired you, shaped the way you think, or influenced your outlook on the world?

Chad: Well John Lennon, and Thoreau - Walden was really important to me, and the existentialists. I really like what Rage Against The Machine talk about with their idea of living what you what you sing.

Not just talking but doing?

Chad: "Yeah, taking part in the world not just commenting on it"

What do you hope to accomplish - stupid question in some ways I know, but a number of songs on Year Of The Crow refers to specific issues.

Chad: "Well I hope people like the music obviously, but I'd like it to encourage thoughtfulness, and hope that they don't just accept things at face value. A lot of our material decries against what we see as the corruption of authority. How those in power are abusing it and the problems that's causing. So I'd like people to think about that."

I wanted to ask about the title of the CD Year Of The Crow Does the crow have any special meaning for you

Chad: "Well part of it is the associations with Native Americans. I've always been fascinated with Indians since I was a kid. You know the usual stuff, building a teepee and sleeping out in it, but I've also done lots of reading about what's been done to them over the years, and their current situation. I know the Crow is an important figure in some American Indian stories, and so that's one reason, to make that reference.

The Crow is the harsh voice of truth in some stories

Chad: "Yeah and that's part of it too. Also it's the idea of the underdogs, those who aren't in authority coming into their own."

The ravens coming home to roost?

Chad: "Yeah, definitely"

The song "Fight No More" on Year Of The Crow is about the former Nez Pearce Chief, Chief Joseph (Thunder In The Mountain) What was is about his story in particular that attracted you to it?

Chad: "When I started reading about American Indians, at first all I read about were the Sioux. People like Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, and it was all about warriors and fighting. Chief Joseph was the first American Indian I read about who talked about peace, and even though he was resisting, he tried to preserve his people by getting them away from war and not fighting.

State Radio is about to start a tour of Europe later this month, is this the first time over there for you

Chad: "No we've been over a few times, we recorded Year Of The Crow in England (Me: "Yeah right, I'd forgotten that - I guess you have to go over to Europe to record there) Yeah, and we have played in Germany before this, at some big festivals with bands like Pearl Jam."

How do you get gigs like that without a label

Chad: "Well our distributor, Network, are really good about that, and get us into the line ups for the big festivals in Europe, and our management company does a lot of that as well."

Do you like playing over in Europe

Chad: "It's great, we get a lot of press and people are really up for the shows and always having a great time. It's funny you know I bet you we're on the radio more in Germany than we are over here. We're going to France for the first time on this tour, so we're looking forward to that."

Well, I should let you go, I know you've got a gig tonight. Thanks for this and good luck

Chad: "It was good talking to you".

In the end what was supposed to have been a ten or fifteen minute conversation lasted about forty-five minutes. Part of that was our problems with the phone, but also part of it was I had to keep stopping myself from just yaking with him like he was a friend, and exchanging stories about similar experiences. I'm usually able to keep the Interviewer - Interviewee barrier in place no matter what, but I found that almost impossible to maintain while talking with Chad.