Leap In The Dark

Since I started reviewing music that falls into the catch all category of World Music, I've heard some of the most amazing combinations of sound. Classical Indian musicians playing North American Jazz on their traditional instruments and a Gypsy brass band playing Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild" are only a couple of examples. But I don't think any of them could have prepared me for the music that I heard on the new release from the World Village Music label, Soul Science

Soul Science is the product of a collaboration between British guitarist Justin Adams and traditional Gambian "griot" (musical history keeper/story teller) Juldeh Camara. Justin is best known for being Robert Plant's sideman and his collaborations with the Tuareg band Tinariwen from the South Sahara. Camara is probably unknown outside of his native Gambia, yet has been steeped in his culture's music since he was a child when he served as his blind father's guide as he travelled around in his role as griot. According to legend Juldeh's father, Serif, went out to collect firewood one day and vanished. Six months latter he was found by his family playing a golden ritti (a traditional one string fiddle) sitting in a tree. While the family got their son back, he lost his eyesight forever in exchange for the tutelage of the forest spirits in the ways of music.

With that heritage its no wonder that Camara junior's playing is so extraordinary. While I've heard many other musicians who hail from the griot tradition in Africa, I've never heard one able to do what he does on this recording. There's no way a one stringed instrument should be able to create the diversity of sound that he seems to be able to draw out of his ritti, but somehow or other he makes it the equal of Justin's electric guitar in terms of originality of tone. Bo Diddley meets West African griot music might sound far fetched, but that's only one of the amazing roads these two men travel down.

What gives this recording even extra spice is the fact that they've elected to utilize the services of a multi-instrumentalist percussionist instead of the standard contemporary drummer. Salah Dawson Miller is a perfect fit for these two men, as he not only is a regular on the British Blues scene, but is deeply involved in Algerian music as well. So he was already predisposed to playing with one foot in Africa and one in Britain.

It's not just Blues and Africa that they are drawing upon for their inspiration either. The opening track on the CD, "Yerro Mama", the name of a great African hero, sounds like its roots are as much from a Friday night at the "local" in County Wicklow, as it does either Africa or London's Blues scene. From there it jumps into "Ya Ta Kaaya" ("I Want To Stay Fresh") with the familiar Bo Diddley riff chugging along like a steam engine. The combination of Justin's raw electric guitar and Juldeh's staccato scratches on the ritti makes for as exciting a Rock and Roll sound as I've heard in ages.

Yet aside from how exciting the music is, and how great it sounds, what's truly amazing is how seamless they have made the synthesis of the two traditions. In the past when I've heard these types of collaborations either one or the other tradition takes a back seat to the other. In this instance though they seem to meet at a half-way point where the music blends into one. In the liner notes for the CD Adams talks about how African musicians have been perfecting the science of music for hundreds of years.

Certain combinations of rhythms and melodies can elicit certain reactions in the listener. So when he and Juldeh would get together to create songs it was only a matter of Adams playing a tune once and they would both be on the same page musically almost immediately. Juldeh would recognize in Justin's playing patterns that were familiar to him from his own studies. Juldeh's father may have been gifted his musical abilities by a spirit of the forest, but he also passed along to his son the science that went into the making of a song. Hence the title of the disc - Soul Science.

Now don't be fooled into thinking that there's anything cold and clinical about this collaboration, or that it sounds like it was created in a laboratory. These guys won't have gone into the studio and thought about the music in the terms that I've described above. Just like the professional athlete who no longer has to think about the best way to throw a baseball because he can now do it instinctively, these guys don't think about their music in terms of formula anymore. This is music sung from the heart and played with a lot more soul than anything else you're liable to hear in the next little while.

Soul Science is one of the best meeting of musical minds that I've ever heard, and the result is a fusion unlike any you've heard before.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:26 PM | Permalink

While recent years have seen an explosion of fiction from Indian authors being published in the West, the same can't be said for the other country that was born out of Partition; Pakistan. Pakistan remains something of a mystery for most people in North America, occasionally gaining notoriety for acts of violence against women, political assassinations, and insinuations about its ties with the Taliban and the insurgency in Afghanistan.

Ironically it was its ties to the very same Taliban in the 1980s that gave it favoured nation status with Ronald Regan's administration in Washington. Pakistan was the conduit for American money and military aid to those resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In those days Pakistan was ruled by General Zia, who had led the military in the coup that had ousted the elected government of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, (father of recently assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto), and was responsible for his execution. Zia was America's "tame" Muslim, and they turned a blind eye to his introduction of laws that allowed for women to be stoned to death for adultery.

General Zia's career and life came to an abrupt end when his presidential plane crashed on take off killing all on board. There has never been an official explanation as to what caused the crash that ended Zia's eleven year reign, but now, some twenty odd years later, an unofficial explanation has been put forward. Mohammed Hanif's new novel, A Case Of Exploding Mangos, published by Random House Canada, plunks us down in Pakistan for the last month of President Zia's life, and takes us behind the scenes everywhere from the American Embassy in Islamabad, the First Lady of Pakistan's private chambers, to a military prison.

The war in Afghanistan is winding down, the Taliban are closing in on Kabul, and the Russians are pulling out. For their role in allowing the American's to use Pakistan as their staging ground for funding the insurrection President Zia and his chief of staff have gone to the top of the charts as the top ten bulwarks against Communist expansion in the free world. The fact that they run a despotic military dictatorship where the prisons are full of those who might not agree with them is conveniently ignored.

Junior Under Officer Ali Shigri is in trouble. He somehow managed to miss the fact that one of the men in his squadron at the Pakistan Airforce Academy was not present during roll call that morning, and had not only gone AWOL but stolen a small plane. His seniors aren't buying his story of the series of coincidences that prevented him from first of all noticing Cadet Obaid-ul-llah was missing and then not reporting the same. The fact that the two young men were known to be close friends probably has a lot to do with that, and they can't believe that Ali knew nothing about his buddy's plans in advance.

Ali knows he's in trouble when the ISI are called in and a Major in the intelligence service shows up in car without licence plates to take him for a drive into the mountains. He doesn't realize quite how much trouble though until he's locked up in the prison where they keep the rest of the political prisoners. Yet if he thinks he's having a bad time of it, it's nothing compared to what President Zia is going through.

The First Lady found a picture of him ogling a Western journalist's breasts and has declared him dead to her and for three days running he's opened his Koran to the story of Jonah trapped in the belly of the whale and is begging to think there's a message there he's missing. On top of that he's suffering from worms, his general staff are spying on each other, and he's so sure that someone wants to kill him that he's locked himself in his armed force's residence and refuses to move into the new Presidential Palace. Sometimes paranoia is justified, and in this case the president is right, there is a plot in motion to have him assassinated.

In point of fact there is more than one plot underway to bring Zia's life and rule to an end. When his personal head of security has an unfortunate accident - his parachute inexplicably fails to open during a ceremonial jump for the Nation Day parade and he splatters on the pavement in front of the President - Zia is obviously distraught. He would probably be even more distraught if he knew that during the parade the head of his intelligence service was standing behind the president rehearsing his spontaneous words of regret about the death of the aforementioned bodyguard. Although probably not nearly as distraught if he knew the same man was also rehearsing his first address to the nation after the bitter blow of losing our beloved President Zia.

A Case Of Exploding Mangoes takes no prisoners when it comes to selecting targets for its satire. From its depiction of Saudi Princes with private doctors dedicated to the care of their privates, the marriage of convenience between the US and Pakistan, how to adjudicate rape cases under supposed Muslim law (the woman must be a virgin, there has to be at least four men involved for it to be rape, the woman must be able to identify all four men involved, and she must supply four male witnesses attesting to her status as a virtuous woman), to the petty jealousies and infighting among the men surrounding Zia in the upper echelons of power, nobody and nothing escapes unscathed.

While Mohammed Hanif has written a novel that is mainly light in tone and is at times quite funny, the humour at times is more than a little dark and bitter. Through the character of Ali Shigri we learn how to survive in this political climate through his ability to play dumb when needed, kiss ass when appropriate, and how to avoid the knife in the back while twisting your own blade in deeper. While we don't see everything through his eyes, his narrative is the one that leads us into the dark heart beating beneath the surface of this seemingly light story.

Hanif is playing on dangerous ground with this novel, as there is much in here that could be interpreted by people without senses of humour as offensive. The real trouble is that people don't like having their hypocrisy displayed quite as publicly as A Case Of Exploding Mangoes makes a point of doing. Nobody is safe, not even OBL of Laden and co. Construction from Saudi Arabia, who just wants people to pay attention to him at the American Ambassador's Fourth of July party celebrating victory in Afghanistan in 1988.

While A Case Of Exploding Mangoes won't give you any real insights into what life in Pakistan is like, it does lift the veil on a period of history that neither the folks in Washington, Pakistan, or the Taliban would like anyone to remember. Its dark humour and merciless depiction of the politics of convenience make it a refreshing antidote to today's omnipresent "War On Terror" rhetoric.

A Case Of Exploding Mangoes can be purchased directly from Random House Canada or an on line retailer like Amazon.ca

Posted by Richard Marcus at 01:28 PM | Permalink

I'm an addict. I ran from my pain for twenty years - from thirteen to thirty-three I drank and ingested more substances than I care to think about. The only wonder is that I managed to stay alive long enough to stop. I was lucky. So I'm not about to tell you that drugs are romantic or that being a drunk or an addict anything special. There's nothing romantic about having to steal from those you love in order to fulfill an addiction; there's no excuse for a betrayal of trust of that magnitude.

Yet I don't think I was evil, or those who are addicted are criminals. Addictions can cause criminal behaviour because the need they create in the person has to be met, but the addiction itself is an illness that needs to be treated. That doesn't meant that an addict is not responsible for their criminal behaviour because they are, but there must be a distinction made between the illness and the criminal behaviour. I went to jail for my criminal behaviour which was right, but I was not punished for being sick which was also right.

Like I said before I was lucky. Of course it didn't hurt that by the time I was before the courts I had already begun to seek help on my own - but I was still fortunate that the judge who sentenced me was compassionate, and understood that I was already making an effort to get clear. He could have sentenced me to a year in jail, instead he sentenced me to seven weekends, four of which I served in a halfway house. That way I was able to continue going to therapy and receiving treatment for the root cause of my addictions.

In 2003 the city of Vancouver, in British Columbia, Canada, was given permission by the federal government to open Insite, a safe injection facility. Addicts are allowed to come there with their drugs and inject under the supervision of nurses, using clean needles, and without fear of arrest. It was originally given a three year exemption from the Federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, and has had two one year extensions granted while international research was reviewed and new research was conducted in order to gauge the facility's effectiveness.

The last extension expires June 30th, 2008 and the people who run the facility have been desperately trying to talk with either Prime Minister Steven Harper or his Health Minister Tony Clement, the men who will make the decision whether the site can continue to stay open. Unfortunately neither man seems to want to talk to anybody from the facility directly. Mark Townsend is the executive director of the organization that runs Insite, and has been trying for two and half years to arrange a meeting with either of the men to explain why it is a science and public health issue, and shouldn't be about ideology or politics.

Insite is about saving peoples lives; by getting intravenous drug users off the street and preventing the spread of disease through the use of shared needles, and through helping people get off drugs. They do not dispense any drugs, or offer treatment on site, but can and do refer people to detoxification programs when they ask about them. In an effort to save the facility, and convince the federal government that it should be considered part of the health care system in British Columbia, the staff of Insite have supplied extensive research that proves its success and that it enjoys widespread support across Canada for its efforts.

The problem is that it doesn't appear the government is listening to anything anybody says. Prime Minister Steven Harper's Conservative Party of Canada is notorious for its socially conservative positions. While the previous government was prepared to introduce legislation decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, the Conservatives are more in line with the "War On Drugs" policy advocated by the American administration. Although they have yet to make any formal announcement about Insite, their history, combined with recent actions and statements, don't bode well for its future.

When Steven Harper was campaigning in the last federal election he made a point of stopping in Vancouver to announce that his party would brook no leniency toward illicit drug users and that they were the only party willing to anything about "the drug crisis in Canada". When an international police organization, that includes former members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada's federal police force, that advocates treatment over punishment for street drugs issued a statement in support of Insite, it was the Health Minister's staff who gave reporters the name of a police organization who held an opposing view.

Perhaps most telling though was the government's reaction to research they had commissioned that ended up supporting Insite. They said that science alone would not be the deciding factor. An interesting statement to make when you consider that the purpose for delaying a final decision these last two years has been so that proper research could be conducted into the effectiveness of the facility. Now that science has proven that safe injections sites at the very least do not encourage drug use, and in fact are responsible for a decline in both drug use and the spread of disease, the government is downplaying the importance of these findings. It's not hard to guess what their reaction would have been if the findings had shown that the facility had increased drug usage and encouraged people to stay addicted.

However, they didn't. The findings substantiated what has been proven over and over again in countries around the world where needle exchanges and safe injection sites are the norm. Fewer people die of overdoses, fewer people catch and spread diseases, and more people are encouraged to stop using drugs and seek help for their addiction problems.Yet, in spite of all the evidence that supporting it, Canada's government is apparently getting ready to shut Insite's doors.

Isn't it time to stop saying no, and start saying yes to safe injection sites? There's no crime in showing a little compassion once in a while.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:03 PM | Permalink

Like most English speaking North Americans, South America, or more truthfully Spanish speaking America, is somewhat of a mystery to me. I'm sure for us up in Canada, where we sometimes forget that Mexico is even part of North America, that it's even more of a closed book than to Americans who have a sizeable Spanish speaking population. Like most of us my introduction to South American literature came through One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, deservedly one of the most celebrated books that came out that continent.

As good as Marquez is, he's not the only, or even the best voice, that's come out of Latin America, and while I've read the work of a few other authors, I can't pretend to be in any sort of position to be making generalities about writing in South America. Yet I think it would be remiss if we didn't keep in mind when reading the work of authors born from the 1950's onward the violent and volatile political situation of that continent.

Nearly every country south of Mexico has had one form of violence or another shape the political landscape of the country. From American backed insurrections and coups in Nicaragua and Chile, the military Juntas of Argentina, to the drug wars of Columbia you would have been hard pressed growing up in South America during that period to live a life that wasn't impacted on by violence in some form or another. When William Faulkner accepted his Nobel Prize for literature in the 1950s he talked about American writers having their prose affected by living under the shadow of the threat of nuclear war. In South America writers of the same generation have lived under the shadow of seeing writers, academics, school teachers, trade unionists, and artists be rounded up and shot by their governments.

The author of Last Evenings On Earth, a collection of short stories just released by Random House Canada, Roberto Bolano, was imprisoned in the early days of Pinochet's regime in Chile, freed after a year, and lived the rest of his life in exile. Prior to this collection of stories, only two of his novels have been translated into English, so don't feel bad if you've never heard of him, but I think once you have read him, you won't easily forget him.

It's not that he writes about spectacular subjects, or that his characters are what you'd call the shaker's and movers of the worlds they inhabit, yet there is something about their mundaneness that makes them fascinating. Some of them have aspirations to being poets in spite of their obvious lack of talent while others drift through their lives looking for somewhere or something they can call their own. Their struggle to find identity makes them easy for most of us to identify with, but there's an undertone of desperation or melancholy that marks their lives in such a way as to remove them from the ordinary.

The stories are deceptively simple; a young expatriate South American writer living in Spain corresponds with an older expatriate writer about entering into short story contests around the country; a young man on a trip with his father to Acapulco reads a book about French surrealist poets trying to obtain visas out of Vichy France to America in a bid to escape the Nazis; a Chilean poet recounts the strange life of an acquaintance who is a mediocre poet and gives up poetry to write about UFO sightings for a tabloid magazine; and a young woman from the American Mid-west born in the the early 1950's drifts aimlessly around the world from country to country and partner to partner.

What's amazing about Roberto Bolano's writing is what he accomplishes while writing about the seemingly inconsequential activities of people of little or no importance. Why should we care about the fortunes of a failed poet, or the wanderings of the aimless middle class? Somehow though, Bolano is able to draw us into their lives and make them important to us. It wasn't until I took a break from reading, after the third or fourth story, that I realized the impact they were having on me. I kept flashing back onto images from each of the stories; pictures that Bolano had drawn with words that made certain scenes so powerful that I could see them in my mind's eye as if they were stills captured from a movie.

In the title story, "Last Evenings On Earth", the young man and his father travelling from Mexico City to Acapulco, stop on the road there for a meal in a rundown restaurant where the attraction is they serve iguana that they slaughter on the premises. Bolano describes a scene where they are seated outside in the rain under a canvass tarpaulin, the only seating available, eating their meal, where just his description of them eating and their surroundings speaks volumes about the emotional divide between the two men. The scene is so powerfully written that the heaviness of the humid environment, and the claustrophobia it implies about the relationship between the two men, that even now writing this I have a clear image of them sitting under the canvass with rain dripping from the sides and the dampness rising around them in the form of moist humid air that clings to them like a second skin.

Last Evenings On Earth is as haunting a collection of short stories that you're liable to read today anywhere. Underneath their deceptively ordinary appearance lies a sensibility that has been shaped by years of exile and exposure to violence. Whether deliberate or not Roberto Bolano has drawn upon his own experiences as a political prisoner and exile and imbued each of his stories with the sense of longing and loss that can't help but ensue as a result. Yet in spite of this underlying melancholy, there is an inherent beauty to each of them that makes them a joy to read.

I don't know if Roberto Bolano is indicative of his generation of South American writers, but I do know that if this collection of stories is an indication of his talents, than he is a writer whose work deserves the spotlight as much as his illustrious predecessors. You can order a copy of Last Evenings On Earth directly from Random House Canada or an on line retailer like Amazon Canada

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:03 AM | Permalink

There are cities in Europe where if you dig down deep enough you find an older version of the city buried beneath the new. Some of them were built on top of the ruins of former Roman cities, while others have literally buried the past under the present. Some of the oldest cities, like London and Rome, are laced beneath the surface with tunnels and catacombs that are the remnants of old sewer systems and temples. Rivers, that once flowed through the centre of town, have over the course of a thousand years gradually wormed their way deep under the skin of the earth to create unseen arteries beneath the feet of today's inhabitants.

Look beneath the surface of any modern city with a subway system and you'll find a second set of tracks, and even some stations, beneath those in everyday use. Some have been designed to be used as training facilities, while others have fallen into disuse from age and safety issues. It's long been supposed that various people wishing to remove themselves from society have made these tunnels into their shelters from the rest of humanity, but they aren't the only ones sheltering beneath our feet.

In the London of Tim Lebbon and Christopher Golden's book, Mind The Gap, the living are joined by spirits from the city's past. They aren't ghosts of specific people, instead they are physical manifestations of history; shades and shadows that reflect all who have ever lived within the confines of London's boundaries.

Jasmine Towne, known to her few friends and her mom as Jazz, discovers the existence of both they physical and spectral beings beneath the city on the day she is forced to flee the over world in fear for her life. It turns out Jazz's mom hadn't just been paranoid when she had instilled in her daughter the idea she should never trust anybody, and that she should always listen to any inner voice that warned her of danger. It's listening to that voice that saves her life the day that her mom was murdered by the mysteries men whom Jazz has called her "Uncles" all her life.

Fleeing from them she dashes into a London subway station - The Underground - and in a desperate attempt to lose her pursuers she jumps on the tracks and dashes into a tunnel. It's here that she stumbles upon the hidden world beneath the city's streets. Among the physical beings she is sheltered by the Fagan like Harry Fowler who provides a home for a flock of teenaged petty thieves and pick-pockets. After telling them her story, she is accepted among them and is delighted to discover that she has an affinity for the "work" they do to survive. She's quickly accepted into the "family", who call themselves the United Kingdom.

But even underground she can't escape the men who killed her mother, and they track her to the United Kingdom's lair, where one of her new friends is killed and Harry is brutally beaten. Jazz only escapes because it seems like the city itself comes to her rescue. Early on Jazz had discovered that she had a certain affinity for the spirits that allowed her not only to see, but to hear them as well. Every so often the built up emotions of all the spirits living underground gather together to form a wind that screams with sound of their anguish. Although horrible because of her friend's murder, it's because of the attack on her and her friends that Jazz finds out the secret about her Uncles, and what was behind the murder of her mother.

Harry, and everybody else in the "United Kingdom, including Jazz, want to exact revenge on those who killed their friend. When they discover that the mayor of London has made promises in the press to clean up "those nest of rats that live beneath the streets of our fair city", Harry concocts a plan to rob people he knows to be friends of the mayor. It's on the second of these jobs that Jazz interrupts Terence as he's robbing the same house. She also discovers a photo of all her Uncles in this house; a photo that was taken by Harry Fowler; a photo in which she recognizes the face of her father staring back at her.

What's the mysterious connection that ties her father, Terence, The Uncles, and Harry all together? If Jazz wants to live she is going to have to find out. The answer, when she finds out, is as amazing as it fantastical, and results in Jazz's whole world being changed. Yet like everything else about this story it makes perfect sense for the world that the authors have created for Jazz's story to take place in. The majority of the people in Mind The Gap, and the majority of the locations for that matter, are the same as they are in our version of the world, yet running like a small stream through it all is a sliver of magic.

Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon have created a world in Mind The Gap where magic is alive and well, but so are cellular phones. It's this mixture that makes the story so effective, for it is far easier for us as readers to suspend our disbelief when there are so many things we can identify with in a story. They act like anchors that help us to hold on when the magic in the story starts to blossom.

Yet what really makes this story work is the wonderful job they have done in creating the characters. We see the world through the eyes of Jazz, and from the moment we enter into her head until we leave her at the end of the story everything she does is perfectly normal within the context that the authors have created for her. From the first moment we meet her Jazz is a completely believable character, and because we believe in her - its easy for us to accept the rest of the characters as well.

Mind The Gap is part fantasy, part mystery, and part suspense story, and the authors have done a great job in balancing the three elements and braiding them together into one exciting read. You can buy a copy of Mind The Gap directly from Random House Canada or through an on line retailer like Amazon Canada.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:34 PM | Permalink

When I was a kid...that's bound to turn everyone off I know but bear with me... cartoons were The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Hour. Like the title said it was an hour long show featuring the entire stable of Warner Brothers cartoon characters from the day. There were the two title characters, Bugs and that horrible bird (who wasn't secretly cheering for the coyote?); Foghorn Leghorn, Daffy Duck, Pepe Le Pew, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, Tweety & Sylvester, and the rest of the menagerie.

The animation was definitely low tech, with each frame being hand drawn by a human artist. The same went for all cartoons in those days, from the Walt Disney Studio creations through to Loony Tunes. Every move that you saw a character take on the screen had to be drawn out step by step by an animator. It was probably the most mind numbing, tedious work that an artist could do. The introduction of computers into animation is probably the best thing that could have happened in terms of making people's lives easier when it came to doing the nuts and bolts of making cartoons.

The trouble is it seems that when they automated the drawing part of cartooning, they seemed to do the same thing with the scripts and the characterizations. Now I know that nostalgia is dangerous, and can create a skewed vision of the past, but it doesn't mean that somethings weren't better then they are now. I still get pleasure from watching Bugs Bunny outwitting Elmer Fudd, so I know it's not just my memories playing me false when I say cartoons ain't what they used to be.

Take the DVD box set Stargate Infinity: The Complete Series, distributed by Shout Factory, for example. Originally Stargate was a movie that starred Kurt Russell and James Spader released back in 1994. The premise was aliens had disguised themselves as a race gods in the time of the Pharaohs and had left behind the means they had used to travel between the worlds, something called a Stargate. You can see the potential in this for a major amount of spin off and so it's no surprise that following the movie were two television series, and from them was spawned Stargate Infinity, an animated version for a younger audience.

The premise for the series is that humanity has cracked the code of the "Stargate" and is now able to travel to distant galaxies in the blink of the eye simply by going through the gate. The gate is controlled by an arm of the military called Stargate Command, and they have their own elite force. In Stargate Infinity our heroes are four cadets and the officer in charge of their training. In the first episode the officer, Major Bonner, is set up as a traitor by an alien shape-shifting life form, and this sets in motions the events that will have him and his plucky cadets going world hopping for the rest of the series as they attempt to clear his name.

The creators of the series have also thrown into the mix an ancient sarcophagus that just so happens to contain an embryonic version of what might be one of race of ancients who created the Stargate in the first place. Naturally the bad guys, a race of lizard-like aliens, what to get their hands on this being, and when Bonner and his crew take the embryo through the Stargate with them, they give chase. So, the series is spent trying to clear the major's good name, finding out about the ancient one, and exploring the new worlds.

Unfortunately it sounds more interesting than it ends up being. Even making allowances for the fact that the series is geared towards a younger audience, both the story lines and the characterizations are awfully simplistic. While there are attempts to include little morality lessons in some of the episodes, it usually comes down to the black and white world of good versus evil. The bad guys want to kill the good guys and steal the ancient one so they can rule the universe, while the good guys just want everyone to get along. It's never explained why the bad guys so desperately want to rule the universe, it's just one of those bad guys things no matter if they're from earth or from another planet.

The team of four cadets is made up of the cocksure guy whose full of himself, the tom boy, the sensitive ethnic female (I think she was supposed to be a native American because she's dark skinned and named Seattle), and the alien who spouts ancient wisdom. Unfortunately their characterization isn't helped any by the lack of expression on their faces and in their body language due to the poor quality of the animation. The old hand drawn, frame by frame animation was able to provide Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck with an amazing range of facial expressions and body movements that made their characters much more effective and real to the audiences watching.

The characters in Stargate Infinity, on the other hand, only seem to be able to show, happy, sad, angry, and blank while their bodies move like robotic sticks. Even when the actors supplying the voices for the animations are doing their best to try and convey some emotions the contrast between what you hear and what you see on the screen is so wide that it just doesn't work. You'd think that with the technological advances that have been made, and the quality of animation that's possible, the creators of this series could have at least made an effort so it wouldn't have looked so cheap.

Stargate Infinity has the look and feel of something that was done as quickly and cheaply as possible. The animation is poor, the stories simplistic, and the characters are types. The four DVD set Stargate Infinity: The Complete Series comes with a few special features, but since they are just test drawings for the characters, and an effects test, it's nothing you don't see in the show itself. I'd recommend finding your child some old Bugs Bunny cartoons instead; you won't feel ashamed buying those.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:24 PM | Permalink

Reviewing a movie that was released nearly ten years ago might seem a tad redundant, but sometimes a movie grabs your attention and holds onto you for years on end. It might not be the greatest of movies, or have won any awards, but something about the combination of plot, characters, and actors makes it special for you. For me one such movie was the 1999 release, The Thirteenth Warrior.

Now I've always had a soft spot for sword and sorcery type adventure stories, (the absolutely horrible Conanmovies prove there's an exception to every rule), so this movie would seem like a good fit for me right from the start. The irony is that I had been so turned off by the previews and the television spots that I had seen for it that I never would have even picked up the DVD to rent a few years back if it wasn't it for one thing; Antonio Banderas

I had always dismissed Banderas as just another action figure actor - you know made of plastic and looks good in a kids meal - until I saw him in the first modern re-make of Zorro with Anthony Hopkins. His wit and charm, and the fact that he could act, were revelations, so I started to pick up other movies that featured him that I had previously avoided. The romantic comedy Miami Rhapsody where he co-starred with Mia Farrow and Sarah Jessica-Parker, and the two Robert Rodriguez films Desperado and Once Upon A Time In Mexico where he played the guitar player turned vigilante.

In each of those movies not only was that first impression of a witty and charming man re-enforced, he also showed a capacity for playing against "type" that I found refreshing. Of all things it was probably Miami Rhapsody that made me decide to pick up The Thirteenth Warrior for the first time, as Banderas was so "not" an action hero in that role. Playing a male nurse fending off the affections of the wife (Mia Farrow) of the man he's caring for while falling in love with his daughter (Jessica-Parker) he was anything but the macho Latin Lover stereotype that he had been painted with.

In The Thirteenth Warrior Banderas plays an Arab poet, Ahmed, who has been exiled for looking at the wrong women, and is sent off to be an ambassador to some unknown European court. En route the caravan he is travelling with is set upon by Tartars who chase them into a Viking encampment on the edge of civilization. His character is there only for a day when he is roped into a war party headed back to the where the Vikings come from - the soothsayer has said that thirteen warriors must go on the mission and the thirteenth can not be a Viking. He just so happens to be the only non-Viking in camp at the time and finds that he really has no choice in the matter.

Okay so it does strain at the edges of credulity a bit, that an Arab would stumble across a group of Vikings in the first place, and then be called upon to join their raiding party, but while watching the movie it doesn't seem hard to suspend disbelief. In fact the script that was adapted from a Michael Crichton novel, by Crichton and two others, works so smoothly that you don't really have a chance until afterwards to ask questions. (This is the guy that sold the world on the idea that a tiny speck of dinosaur DNA in a mosquito preserved in a piece of amber would be enough to bring the big beasts back to life remember - suspension of disbelief is his middle name)

One of the nicest parts of the script was that it allowed time for a relationship to develop between the Banderas character and the Viking party. Initially it's obvious that each don't have the highest opinion of the other. Ahmed thinks they are loud, crude, and obnoxious barbarians who haven't a brain between them, while they just think he's beneath their notice. Each night of the long trek across Russia to the sea, we see the party gather around the camp fire, and each night we see Ahmed gradually piecing together their language. From what is at first incomprehensible grunts, words start to gradually appear, and eventually he is able to jump into the conversation.

The leader of the Vikings, Buliwyf, played wonderfully by Russian Vladimir Kulich and Herger, Norwegian actor Dennis Storhoi, the man who becomes Ahmed's closest friend among the Vikings, are the ones who are most responsible for building the bridge between the men. Buliwyf impresses Ahmed not only with his leadership abilities, but his intelligence, while it is impossible not to like Herger - whose name translates literally as Joyous. (All the men in the Viking party have names which describe either a main characteristic or something about them - Tony Curran's character for instance is named Weath, meaning Musician)

It turns out that Buliwyf and his band have been called home to help a friend fight off an invading force. At first they believe that they are a mysterious group of creatures called the Wendol - man eating demons of myth - but in the end they just turn out to be fanatical warriors seeking to kill all who stand in their way. They make good use of myth and people's superstitions to create an aura of invincibility and fear around them, but it soon turns out they die as easily as the next person when a sword passes through their stomach.

That doesn't make it any easier to defeat them, as they are fearsome fighters, and outnumber Buliwyf's little party by a huge margin. Our heroes are forced to seek out their enemy's home in an effort to slay their head priestess which supposedly will sap their strength and take away their will to fight. Even that doesn't end it though, and it all comes down to a climatic battle between Buliwyf and the Wendol's war leader.

Crichton had obviously adapted the old Beowulf saga when he wrote his novel, and the movie captures enough of that atmosphere that when I recently watched The Thirteenth Warrior again I was constantly being reminded of the movie Beowulf & Grendel without initially knowing why. Of course once you thing about it, it's obvious - it has all the same basic elements of the saga. A stalwart hero leads a small group of men to fight an unspeakable evil that is threatening a friendly kingdom.

While the DVD version I own is widescreen and includes a 5.1 surround sound audio track, it didn't come with any special features save for including the theatrical trailer for the film. (That's a practice I've never understood - why watch the trailer for the movie that you own and have already watched?) However, don't let that dissuade you from buying this movie as it is a wonderfully acted, well directed, and excellently scripted adventure story. The Thirteenth Warrior is a cut above the usual action adventure movie that gets put out by Hollywood, and probably more than a match for any of the recent releases in the genre. I don't think there are many movies out there that can match it for pure action, and escapist fun.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:48 PM | Permalink

I once postulated that Western society was stuck in a cycle of post traumatic stress syndrome induced abuse dating back to at least World War One. Nearly a whole generation of European men were either killed or injured in that four year period. My father's father was a medic in the British army and in 1917 was caught in a mustard gas attack. As a medic he would have had to retrieve the dead and dying from the battle field and seen horrors enough to freeze a soul. After the war he drifted around the world for ten years before settling in Brazil where he met my grandmother and my father was born. They immigrated to Canada in 1931, and my grandfather never worked another day from then until his death in 1978.

He physically and emotionally abused my father, and in turn my father physically and sexually abused me. I was a drug addict and alcoholic by the time I was thirteen and didn't stop until I was thirty-three. It was then that I started to recover the memories of being abused as a young child and began the long process of recovery. I'm still in therapy, digging out the deep planted seeds abuse planted that governed my behaviour for most of my life. One way or another though, the cycle of abuse in my family has stopped with me.

On June 11th 2008, the Prime Minister of Canada, Steven Harper, is going to stand up in the House of Commons to officially apologize to Native Canadians for the residential school system. For close to a hundred years the government of Canada sponsored church run schools that stole Native children away from their parents. Aside from the shock of being stolen from their parents, they were also forbidden to speak their own languages, and taught that all they believed in was evil. If that wasn't bad enough, at a minimum, 50% of all children who attended these schools were either sexually or physically abused, if not both, by the staff.

What I'm most interested in knowing is who exactly the Prime Minister is going to be apologizing to and what he is going to be apologizing for? With the first residential school opening in the 1870's and the last one closing in the 1970's we can be sure that not everybody who went to one is still alive. Is he going to stand up in the House of Commons and say on behalf of the Canadian government we're sorry that previous governments oversaw attempted cultural genocide, allowed hundreds of thousands of children to be sexually and physically abused, and successfully tore the heart out of Native communities across Canada for subsequent generations?

There is also the question of the apology he owes to today's generation of Native Canadians. You see, for those of you who might have missed this bit of information, suicide and substance abuse among young Native Canadians is at an astronomical rate - the suicide rate alone is four times higher than for non-Natives. What this has to do with residential schools is that in a recent study done of slightly over 500 Native injection drug users in British Columbia between the ages of sixteen and thirty, nearly 50% of them had been sexually abused by a family member, and half of that number reported having at least one parent who was a survivor of the residential school system.

For those of you who can't do the math, that's twenty-five per-cent of this one study group are still suffering the effects of the residential school system. The study didn't ask, or if it did the figures weren't reported, what percentage of the participants had grandparents who were part of the residential school system, but I'd be willing to bet that the further back you go in each person's family tree the more survivors of the system you'll find. For most of these young people, like myself, the cycle of abuse probably started in their grandparent's generation, if not their great-grandparents.

In an earlier article about Canada's residential schools I mentioned the government was establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Committee that would travel across the country hearing people's stories, and digging into the schools' records. Headed by Native Canadian Judge, Justice Harry LaForme, it is patterned after a similar committee that the South African government established under the first Black majority rule government to try and find a way to peacefully bring the White and Black populations together after the horrors of apartheid.

For this committee to have any serious impact on the lives of Native Canadians, and to take a true measure of the impact the residential school system had on the population, it must examine statistics like those recorded above from across Canada. A study group focusing only on intravenous drug users leaves out large numbers of at risk populations. We already know the suicide rate is four times as high, but how many of those children who committed suicide had a parent or grandparent survive the residential school system and pass their damage on down to their child and grandchild?

For the first three hundred years of Canadian history governments, first the French and then the British, tried to deal with the "Indian problem" militarily. But when it became obvious they weren't going to be able to kill them all, the government decided to switch from genocide to cultural genocide via the residential school system. For Native Canadians the cycle of abuse started when the first child was stolen from his or her parents and placed within the four walls of a residential school. Every young person who commits suicide or chooses to escape the world through substance abuse today is an indication that the cycle continues.

If Steven Harper stands up in the House of Commons on June 11th and doesn't recognize the damage that is still being done to people today because of the residential schools, if he doesn't acknowledge that his government is continuing to fail our country's native population just like all previous government's have by allowing this cycle to continue, his apology won't be anything more than a meaningless gesture. The sins of our great-grandparents are still being visited upon Canada's native population today and there aren't enough words to apologize for that.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:57 AM | Permalink

There's an old saying about health care that follows along the lines of something like an ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure. That's probably not it exactly but you get the general idea; preventing an illness is a heck of a lot more effective a means of health care than curing it. It only make sense, once somebody gets sick there's no telling what could develop and how serious it could get, so it's best if they never get sick in the first place.

It seems to me that it would make even more sense when it's a disease as fatal as HIV/AIDS. There's no cure for HIV/AIDS, but there are many ways which to prevent the spread of the disease, even among those at the highest risk. Condoms for people who have sex with multiple partners and clean needles for people who inject intravenous drugs isn't a hundred percent guarantee that HIV/AIDS won't be passed from one person to another, but it's a heck of a lot safer than any of the alternatives out there.

What about abstinence you ask? Well sure, if everybody, everywhere in the world, stopped having sex before they were married and only ever screwed one person in their whole life, it would go a long way to preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. However, I don't know what world you're living, but for the one I live in that's not what I'd call a realistic proposition for even the heterosexual population. In fact according to statistics reported in Elizabeth Pisani's wonderful book on HIV/AIDS The Wisdom Of Whores in North America alone 70% of people who sign abstinence oaths end up having pre-marital sex. As an interesting aside the majority of those people also have unprotected sex, as nobody seems to have bothered educating them about condoms.

So with evidence like that you'd think that it would be a no-brainer for there to be a concentrated effort the world over to ensure that we focus on getting condoms to people in the sex trade or in other high risk groups, and ensure that intravenous drug users are given every opportunity possible to get clean needles. Unfortunately there are people who think that people dying of a horrible disease is less important than forcing everybody live by their moral code. So the Catholic Church, conservative Christians, and fundamentalist Muslims the world over have formed an unholy alliance to ensure that people don't commit the horrible sin of practising something that could be construed as birth control or that we even give the appearance of condoning drug use..

According to these good folk the only reason to have sex is for procreation, and if you're having sex for procreation than you don't need to use a condom. Which is all very well and good, but when was the last time you knew of a prostitute having sex for reason of procreation? Or how about gay men; do you think they have procreation in mind when they have sex? Of course homosexuality is probably an even bigger no-no than birth control in the eyes of the previously mentioned trinity, so you can't expect too much in the way of compassion from them on that front.

In fact for supposedly compassionate religious people, and both Christianity and Islam have great swathes about being compassionate in their holy books, these folk seem pretty vindictive. It's amazing how many of them seem to be of the opinion that intravenous drug users and other deviants are only getting what they deserve. What's unfortunate is how many people think like this and control the purse strings when it comes to the fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Everybody knows by now how not a single penny of the money that George Bush has allocated for HIV/AIDS is allowed to be given to any group that hands out or recommends condoms as a means of fighting the spread of the disease. Now it seems like his fellow traveller, Prime Minister of Canada Steven Harper, is going down the same path. His government is planning on cutting HIV/AIDS funding to community organizations that do front line prevention work to the tune of 26 million dollars and redirecting it towards the development of a vaccine.

This comes on top of the cuts which last year saw Quebec's funding reduced by 30%, Ontario's by 24%, and Alberta only being funded for six months. What worries people most is that the cuts are going to be to the programmes which focus on prevention to those people considered to be most at risk; intravenous drug users, prisoners and gay men. While nobody is arguing that funding research to develop a vaccine to prevent HIV/AIDS is a bad thing, taking money away from programming aimed at preventing the immediate spread of the disease to do so is dangerous and irresponsible.

So why is Steven Harper's government doing this? Well in the last election he ran on a platform that included a promise to try and repeal Canada's same sex marriage law, and once elected cancelled the previous government's plans at decriminalizing marijuana. If that doesn't give you some idea of this government's mindset, how about this quote from our honourable Prime Minister when it came to the question of harm reduction among addicts: "If you remain an addict, I don't care how much harm you reduce, you're going to have a short and miserable life."

This is the same government that is doing it's best to manipulate figures to show that a trial safe injection site in Vancouver British Columbia has led to more people using intravenous drugs and has caused more harm than good. The actual truth of the matter is that every time a person shoots up on their own in a controlled environment they will not be sharing a needle and not risking the spread of disease to anyone else. There is also statistical evidence that intravenous drug users who come to safe injection sites or needle exchanges are far more likely to enter into treatment programmes than people who don't, as they are in constant contact with people who will help and encourage them to rehabilitate.

Logic, reason, and statistical evidence all point towards spending money on programmes geared towards preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS is currently the most efficient and effective means we have of controlling the disease. All the statistical evidence points to the fact that needle exchanges, safe injection sites, and the use of condoms are the most effective preventative measures going, therefore it only makes sense that those are means we should be using to prevent the spread of the disease.

Unfortunately it seems that logic, reason, and statistical evidence mean nothing to people like the Prime Minister of Canada and his fellow travellers. It's obviously much more important for them to impose their morality on the rest of us, no matter how many people they kill in the process.

References to statistical evidence in this article are supported by the work of epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani's work as sited in her book The Wisdom Of Whores. You can find a listing of all her references at the reference page of her Wisdom Of Whores web site.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:02 PM | Permalink

People have a lot of misconceptions about detective work. You hear private investigator and you normally think of tough talking guys, beautiful dames etc. Well the first might be true in my case – I tend to talk tough – some would say to make up for the deep-seated insecurities I have about myself, but since I don't tend to hang out with people who talk like that it doesn't matter what they say.

Besides if you can't have the pleasure of talking out the side of your mouth now and then what's the point of doing this type of work? Nine times out of ten you're doing just what that asshole flatfoot said: gathering evidence of infidelity for one or other parties in a marriage. People say we cause divorces, but what a client chooses to do with pictures of her husband playing spank the monkey with a young woman in maid's outfit is up to her not me: P.I.'s don't cause divorces, people do.

On occasion we do run across some genuinely beautiful women but in most cases I only get to see them through the telephoto lens on my camera or in the developing tray in my darkroom. I don't even keep copies of the prints. Once you start and word gets around, and don't kid yourself it will, you'll find yourself one day with more trouble then you can handle as certain parties might be tempted to try to get rid of incriminating evidence.

Oh I've been tempted on occasion, but a few seconds contemplating my body with extra holes in it, or foreign objects sticking out of it laid out on a slab cures me of the thought. I don't like contemplating mortality at the best of times, and my own just isn't something I'm prepared to mess around with no matter how tempting. Dying for an 8"X10" photograph just seems like such a waste.

The one that really gets me, and I blame the Goddamn Brits for this with their drawing room murder investigations is the great public revelation of the killer. It's really that crazy old bigoted bat Hagatha whose to blame for it you know. Even her pansy Belgium hero is treated like dirt and made out to be an object of ridicule in spite of being the one to always put "the cads" in jail.

Anyway all her books end with the whole cast of characters gathered together in the drawing room where the detective reveals who did, where, and with what motive. I've had people come to me for divorce case investigation and they look almost devastated when I hand them the envelope with the photos, videotape, and nicely written report. They want some of that drama that they see in the b- movies, like I'm going to pull aside a curtain revealing their soon to be ex busy humping away with their paramour or something.

If only, my life would be a lot more fun if I had opportunities for a little bit of that action – I mean the drawing room mystery revelation action not the soon to be ex humping her paramour in my office. Although I'm not saying a live sex show wouldn't liven the place up now and then – I've never been really one for taking my work home with me.

But as I was thinking about all that had gone in the previous weeks with Dr. Magneson being killed, right behind my eyes so to speak, my conversations with various interested and interesting parties, and knowing that I had solved both the problem of who murdered the good Doctor and the disappearance of the Kyoto Accord, I saw this could be the perfect opportunity for me to act out my own drawing room revelation. I had the requisite parties: a mysterious femme fatale, a couple of rough customers, and a pretty ingénue. With the four of them and my two buddies from the cop shop it would be a tight fit in here, I wasn't even sure I had enough chairs or coffee cups to go around, but it could still work.

It would also be a good way of ensuring the murderous one didn't get the opportunity to have me alone and perform open-heart surgery through my spine like what had happened to the good Doc. The two cops were my security against being folded, mutilated and spindled after I'd confronted the killer. I've never understood the idiots in the B movies who go alone to the killer's house and expect him to surrender meekly when confronted with the truth of his perfidy. They always seem so surprised when he or she pulls a gun on them or puts the knife through their heart. What did they expect anyway, that confronted with the truth a cold-blooded murderer would give themselves up out of remorse? Sheesh, what idiots.

Nope I was going to make damn sure that I had heavily armed and dangerous people in the same room who were on my side. If things started to get ugly I wanted to make sure that the ugliest people in the room were with me, and I couldn't think of two uglier guys then McIntosh and Gates. Anyway they seem to enjoy their work and I'm sure the opportunity to arrest someone in such public circumstances would tickle their fancies – if a cop has a fancy to be tickled.

They were my first call and although I can't say that they were happy to hear from me, at least they didn't ask me to come over and play with their rubber hoses and phone books. Taking that as a sign that our relationship was improving I ran my idea by them and in spite of a lot of grumbling and swearing on their part they said they'd be there.

I think part of it was that under those gruff exteriors beat the heart of sadists who got their jollies out of arresting people in as public and humiliating a manner as possible. Since this had the potential of it being me, at least in their eyes, being the one publicly humiliated and arrested – if I fell on my face they guaranteed I'd get something in return for wasting their time – that was enough incentive for them to assure me of their cooperation on the day.

Then it was a matter of me persuading four out of five of the other interested parties to show up. I knew the fifth, being Dr. Magneson, had a previous engagement with a six foot hole if he wasn't still spending time in a one size fits all bag slotted away in the oversized filing cabinets they stowed the bodies in down at the city morgue. That left my three friends from the Health Food emporium and Dr. Magneson jr.

It was my pretty friend who answered the phone on three rings and I have to say her voice brightened considerably when she heard my dulcet tones on the other end of the line. When I mentioned that I also wanted her too bring along the two others her voice registered disappointment, but I convinced her of the necessity of their presence by saying I needed to go over out conversations together again because I think that I'd managed to figure out who our culprit was.

She sounded a bit cheerier after that, and I felt even cheerier when she suggested she and I could maybe have a more private discussion afterwards. She said something about making it up to me for having been the cause of my headache that day. Maybe, she said she could work the kinks out of my shoulders. I could almost hear her blush down the phone line when I said I had several kinks that I bet she didn't even know existed, but I'd love for her to help me work them out.

That's the type of conversation that always warms the cockles of my heart, not to mention certain unmentionable, in polite conversation, body parts. Anyway I'd have to quell thoughts like those if I wanted to prevent the blood rushing from my head leaving me incapable of thinking along any lines but one. I was dealing with a cold-blooded murderer and needed to have whatever limited resources I possessed at my disposal.

The final call I had to make was going to be the toughest – it wasn't that I didn't think la Morgenstern wanted to find out who killed her papa, but I just wasn't too sure how well she'd react when I told her the threesome from her dad's clandestine meetings would be showing up. Surprisingly enough that didn't turn out to be much of a problem, what did was her trying to convince me to tell her in advance who the killer was.

After all, she pointed out very reasonably, it was her dad someone had tried to open with a single bladed can-opener. The only way I could forestall her was to ask if she thought she'd be able to sit in the same room as the person she knew to be her father's murderer without giving the game away. She had the good grace to realize the sense in that and promised she would see me at the appointed time: High Noon on that coming Monday.

That had been McIntosh's idea, and I could hear Gates cackling in the room behind him. I didn't mind the image, me facing down the lone murderer, but I was kinda of hoping to avoid the fireworks of the original. I'm not really cut out for the Gary Cooper type rolls – Groucho Marx maybe – by not Gary Cooper. Still the fate was acomplis as the French liked to say, and in just two days the clock would strike and somebody would be going home in a pumpkin for murder.

When the day of the great revelation dawned, it seemed only fitting that the weather in Ottawa was positively apocalyptical, with intermittent showers being relieved by sleet and hail. As I stood at the window staring, and trying to figure out if any of the bizarreness in weather had to do with climate changes, someone tried the handle to the office door.

When whoever it was realized they weren't going to get any satisfaction that way, a gentle knock on the door followed.

"Were not open! If you're having troubles with reading the sign it says office hours 11:00 am until 5:00 pm. Go away until a clock reads somewhere between those two numbers."

"It's me" said a very familiar and sultry voice of the Nordic persuasion.

"You"? I replied

"Me"! She said.

Sure enough when I opened the door it was her; The beautiful, ash blonde, Scandinavian who started me on this search when she showed up in the office all those months ago; Morgenstern. Although she was just as stunningly beautiful now as she had been the first time she crossed my threshold, something was going on inside that perfectly shaped head that was causing her enough distraction that she was marring the smoothness of her temples with unsightly creases.

She brushed by in a waft of fancy shower gels and other exotic feminine scents guaranteed to beguile and bewitch the male olfactory glands, and proceeded into the office. She didn't stop until she was perched on the edge of my desk looking back at me still standing there with the door waiting to be closed behind her. She held my gaze for a second before letting her eyes break the contact to look down at the floor. From another person I would have taken that as an apology, but in her case...Let's just say I'd never figured her for the humble type.

I'd never be able to prove it, but I'd swear during the moment of breaking contact she was able to do a quick scan of the room, ascertaining if she was truly the first arrival. She visibly relaxed when she released that nobody else was here – whatever it was she wanted to say obviously was meant for my ears only.

I'd say it didn't take me longer then a second to close the door, which meant my head must have been turned away from her for a little less then that, so I can only figure her purse had been open and she had this all planed out in advance - the only other explanation for the gun appearing in her hand as quickly as it did implied magic that I don't believe in - so I'll settle for the pre-planned approach.

I guess I'd find out soon enough what she was gonna settle for.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:05 AM | Permalink

It's now pretty much common knowledge that the people most of the world refers to as Gypsies originated in the northern part of India. When they began their western migration isn't exactly known, but it is known that from India they set out on a road that took them first to Egypt, then Turkey, and from there on into Europe. Even though they have spread throughout continental Europe as far west as the Iberian peninsula it is the East that most of us seem to identify as being where Gypsies live.

Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Balkan states that stretch from what was once Yugoslavia down to Greece are the primary countries associated with Gypsies, or Roma, as they call themselves, to the extent that they have become part of their cultural fabric. This is especially true in Hungary and Romania where the folk music of these countries is now irrevocably linked to Gypsy music. This hasn't stopped them from being treated like second class, or even third class citizens in the years since World War Two.

Despised by a great deal of the general population, and denigrated as thieves, only Jews have a longer history in Eastern Europe of being ostracized and persecuted and both have suffered horribly for it, and yet somehow managed to survive. From the persecutions of the Inquisition to the Death Camps of the Nazis, and the intolerance of repressive Communist regimes, the Gypsies have been marginalized almost since they set foot in Eastern Europe. Living within their own communities and following their own traditions, the only bridge that has been built between them and the rest of the world has been their music.

Garth Cartwright is from New Zealand but like so many other people fell in love with the romantic side of Gypsy life. It was that infatuation that brought him to the Balkans in 1991 to begin the travelling that would end up becoming the basis for his book Princes Amongst Men - Journeys With Gypsy Musicians. The book recounted his meetings with the men and women who performed Gypsy music in the Balkans, specifically Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Macedonia. He chose those four countries for their "deep reservoirs of Gypsy music" and because their proximity allowed him to travel back and forth between the four countries with ease.

The book has been translated into a number of European languages, and is distributed by the Asphalt Tango record label in Germany who specialize in the production and distribution of Gypsy music from Eastern Europe and Russia. So it's not surprising that they have just released a companion CD for the book. Princes Amongst Men features the music of some of the best known performers from the four countries that Cartwright travelled through, performers that he spent time with and came to know personally.

While bands like Taraf de Haidouks and Fanfare Ciocarlia have achieved some name recognition in Western Europe and North America through touring and appearances in movies, (Taraf de Haidouks appeared alongside Johnny Depp in The Man Who Cried and he has become one of their biggest champions in the West), others on the disc won't be as well known to audiences outside of their own countries. Individuals like Fetus Mustafov and bands like the Docani Orkestar from Macedonia; Boban Markovic and Ekrem from Serbia; Sofi Marinova and Boril Illiev from Bulgaria; and Romica Fuceanu and Fulgerica from Romania are names that probably won't be familiar to many people west of the Balkans, but whose music is every bit as redolent with the fire and passion that has made their more well known brethren so beloved by those who know them.

While I'm probably somewhat more familiar with Gypsy music than the majority of people, although I would by no means call myself more then an appreciative fan, more then half the names on this disc were unknown to me. In the past I've really only ever had the opportunity to hear Romanian music, and only the occasional performer from the other countries, so this disc was full of pleasant surprises for me. I'd not had the opportunity of hearing the four country's different styles juxtaposed before, so was interested to note the subtle differences that showed up in the music.

While there was the obvious differences in languages between the four, I began to notice traits that, judging by this disc, could be considered characteristics of the four countries, While I've grown used to hell bent for leather apporach that both Taruf and Fanfare take to their music, (if you've seen the movie Borat you'll have heard Fanfare's version of "Born To Be Wild" which makes Steppenwolf's original look like it was recorded in slow motion) and the Romanian appreciation for speed and agility in their music in general. While the other countries retained some of that feeling of abandon, there were also elements that changed the tempos and gave them a different feel.

For instance on the CD's opening track, "Cocek Shutka" by Sudahan from Macedonia it was hard not to miss the the Middle Eastern influences that gave it a very distinct Arabic sound. It was followed on the disc by the almost Mexican sounding trumpet that marked the song Molitva by Serbia's Ekrem. That this plaintive trumpet was driven along by something that sounded slightly akin to a polka beat made the tune all the more distinct. Bulgaria's Joey Illiev, on the other hand, combines some elements from the other traditions and adds some distinct flavours of his own. The clarinet that accompanies him matches his Arabic sounding vocals, yet there are Flamenco undertones to his music that can't be ignored.

It's quite amazing when you think about how close the four countries are geographically, and yet how they each seemed to have developed different flavours to what some people might consider one type of music. If there's one lesson to be learned from the CD Princes Amongst Men - Journeys With Gypsy Musicians it's that there is no such thing as one type of Gypsy music. It is as distinct as the individuals who play it and the countries where it is played. For those who've not had the joy and the privilege of hearing the diversity of sound that is Gypsy music, and specifically Gypsy music from the Balkans, they won't find a better introduction to this exciting world than this CD.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:36 PM | Permalink

It's always deep in the heart of the forest where the evil lurks. Hansel and Gretel come across the evil witch and her gingerbread house, Little Red Ridding Hood meets the wolf, and countless other fell and dangerous creatures are known to lurk there. Our relationship to trees and forests has a history of being adversarial; in order to establish outposts of civilization homesteaders would clear away trees to grow the meagre crops that keep them alive.

As hard as it for us to imagine most of the world's temperate climate land masses, North America, Europe and parts of Asia, were at one time covered with mixed growth forests. Evergreens and deciduous stood cheek to jowl and were home to wildlife that has long since vanished. While North America, Canada in particular, is still home to swaths of pristine forest land, Europe's great stands have been greatly reduced. Where once wolves and woodland bison roamed, small pockets of trees remain that are but ghosts of their past glory.

The majority of us will now probably go our entire lives without setting foot in anything resembling a forest, or at best visit one of the domesticated versions where neat roadways and paths lead you through ordered rows of new growth and the occasional old veteran bearing the scars of the axe that failed to fell them, Yet for those of us willing to make the effort to strike off on our own and enter into the forest world, the experience can be close to mystical. The noise of civilization has ebbed into silence and we stand there alone with only floating pieces of light and dust, occasional bird song, and small animal life for company.

The first book of Viggo Mortensen's poems and photographs that I acquired, Coincidence of Memory, had on its cover an image of trees rendered in slightly out of focus shades of grey. Since then I have had the good fortune to be able to view the majority of his books and in each of them there has been at least one image that has paid homage to the splendour and mystery of trees. So it wasn't much of a surprise that Skovbo, (a Danish word that roughly translates into English as "home in the forest") his latest book of photographs and poems published by Perceval Press, gathers together images of trees that he has photographed from around the world. Meant to be a companion for an upcoming exhibit of Mr. Mortensen's photography at the Reykjavik Museum of Photography Skovbo works just as well as a stand alone collection of work replete with the mystery and beauty of trees.

Last year Mr. Mortensen released a CD of improvised piano tunes entitled Time Waits For Everyone featuring pieces that were named for locales throughout Eastern Europe and Russia. In Skovbo we are taken back over that same geographic territory.This time though we are seeing through the lens of his camera, and occasionally his words on paper, as he drives through the country side and occasionally ventures into cities. With the exception of one or two shots trees play a role in the composition of these photographs. From a solitary tree standing sentinel on the edge of a farmer's field caught by Mr. Mortensen's camera through the car window to panoramic views of forests, I've never seen trees captured on film in the way they are in Skovbo

No matter what his subject matter, what first catches your eye about these works is the role that light plays in the composition and Mr. Mortensen's ability for capturing and utilizing ambient light. Shooting up through a hole in the canopy of a stand of trees at night brings the star filled sky crashing down on our heads, as the camera lens pulls and is pulled by the one source of illumination available to it. The light years that separate us from the stars has been eliminated as the night sky plugs the hole in the top of the forest; if our bed were the forest floor the sky would be our ceiling lying just beyond the reach of our fingertips.

In another composition he shoots across sun's glare refracting the light in such a way that a stand of trees awaiting illumination are washed with a prism's red flecks and bedecked with transitory fire flowers. While this photograph gives some indication that sunlight might not be the gentlest of light sources by showing us the harshness that lies at its heart in terms of colour and intensity, it barely prepares us for the merciless quality that appears in the picture of a dead fawn in a farmer's field. Off in the distance, at the edge of the frame, we see a line of trees that could indicate the beginnings of a forest that might have been the animal's home and shelter.

What compelled it to leave the cool dark place under the boughs of the trees to venture out here into the open where it met its end? The harshness of the light beating relentlessly down on the small corpse gives notice that there is no sentimentality in nature. While Mr. Mortensen's camera is able to capture the beauty of the cool dark places under the trees in such a way as to make you want to seat yourself beneath them and breath in the peacefulness, he does not shy away from the truth that sudden death is just as much part of this world's reality.

Still there is no escaping the majesty and beauty of the forest or the strength and mystery of the solitary tree as image after image of them are presented for our contemplation. Even a tree laid out to rest with its roots ripped from the earth and splayed like a multi-fingered hand adds to the impression of dignity that has been created. In spite of being fallen, its strength and power remain undiminished in the eye of Mr. Mortensen's camera.

On some occasions the camera looks at the forest from a distance, on others its looking out from amidst the trees at the world beyond, and others we are brought to rest inside the forest with the trees. The photographs in Skovbo show us that no matter where we sit there is still enough power remaining in the scattered woods of the world to stir our souls and fire our imaginations. Peering into one grey and misty vista of trees I can't help but look for shapes flitting back and forth; the ghosts of the wolves or wood bison that once roamed the woods of Europe, or the spirits of the people that used to live in them in North America. Viggo Mortensen's Skovbo brings the forest alive in a way that I've never seen photographs do before. You might never look at a tree in the same way again.

Copies of Skovbo can be purchased directly from Perceval Press, as can other works by Viggo Mortensen and other fine artists and writers.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:53 PM | Permalink

Across North America there are probably thousands of men and women who every night strap on an instrument and go about the business of making music. None of them are famous, none of them make huge amounts of money, and very few of them have roadies to carry, set-up, and take down their equipment. Most of them have no illusions about becoming "stars", or any of the other brass ring type dreams that television shows like American Idol encourage people to believe is what matters when it comes to pursuing a life in music. They're just intent upon making a living at doing what they do best; at doing what they love.

Austin, Texas is best known as being the home of the South By Southwest (SXSW) music conference, where thousands of musicians show up every year to showcase their wares for the industry and the press in the hopes of attracting the attention of booking agents and distributors to further their careers. Austin is also home to its own thriving music scene, which, like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, or any other large metropolitan centre, has its own fixtures; musicians who are talented and passionate about what they do, but don't seem destined to ever to break out of the bar scene.

Producer/ director Mark Finkelpearl of Treadmill Productions, in collaboration with Freedom Records, is set to release the documentary film Swept Away on DVD that tells the story of one of Austin's favourite sons, Jon Dee Graham. Jon Dee has been part of the Austin music scene since the seventies, and has progressed from band member, to sideman, to band leader over the course of his career. He was a founding member of the True Believers who were in the forefront of the alt-country movement and when they disbanded, moved on to playing with Texas luminaries like Michelle Shocked. In 1997 he released his first solo album and was subsequently signed to New West Records for whom he released three recordings. His 2006 release, Full, received critical acclaim, and the same year saw him being named musician of the year at the SXSW conference.

Yet in spite of what seems to be a career path that appears like it had the potential for at least national recognition, if not stardom, the story that's told in Swept Away is of a man, who while earning the respect of nearly everyone who's heard him play, has never managed to do much more than make a living with his music. While that may not sound so bad on the surface, the reality is that it means a life that's spent on the road in cheap motels, playing bars and small venues around the country, while trying to raise a family back in Austin.

Swept Away is part documentary and part concert film, as the camera follows Jon Dee around both on and off stage. There's footage of him in concert with the two versions of his band, one a trio, the other a quartet, at a couple of venues around Austin, and in the studio - Top Hat Studios - where he recorded his last CD. The initial impression of an intense, somewhat brooding, man, is lightened as the movie progresses and we get to see him with his children, but that initial undercurrent of introspection is never quite dispelled. At one point he admits to struggling with depression for most of his life, and takes a certain rueful pride in the fact that people think his music isn't what you'd call uplifting.

Yet, you get the feeling after spending some time with him and watching him perform his music that this is not a world weariness brought on by cynicism or being jaded because of his chosen profession. Instead it is the natural extension of a soul that struggles to express aspects of the human condition. In one telling piece of conversation he refers to the Eastern spiritual figure Kwan-Yin, and points to a small statue of her that shows her standing upon a dragon and holding a small vial whose contents she is pouring onto the dragon. The dragon, says Jon, represent the life force upon which we all stand, and in the vial are tears, because it is human sadness that feeds the life force.

This isn't just some causal bar band player, or session musician. He's an introspective, intense, and aware person who takes the time to consider what it's like to be human and attempts to communicate that through the medium of his choice, music. One of the people interviewed in the documentary, I believe it was Katherine Cole from an Austin radio station, summed up his music by saying it was for adults. While contextually that makes sense, thematically his music deals with subject matter far removed from the usual trivial fodder of most popular music, it ends up trivializing the breadth of feeling and life experience that goes into each of his creations.

One of Jon Dee's band mates describes him as being like a tiger or a panther on stage; his pacing back and forth only hints at the depths of energy and power lying underneath that could be unleashed at any moment. Others describe the incredible energy of his performances and how once you've seen him live you'll be hooked forever. If you think back to what Jon Dee said about Kwan-Yin, and think of it in terms of how an artist would translate that into creative energy and how that might appear to an audience watching him perform, you begin to see that there is more to this man than just another guy performing high energy, intelligent, Rock and Roll.

Although there is no way that anything captured on tape, be it video or audio, can fully recreate the experience of seeing a performer in person, the concert footage of Jon Dee Graham included in Swept Away gives a good indication of the level of intensity that he must reach during a performance. There's an indescribable quality permeating his music that generates a level of intensity that is not dependant on speed or volume. Musicians are at times described as having "soul" by those wishing to define this intangible, as it implies a level of commitment to the music that goes beyond the ordinary, but even that seems to be inadequate when it comes to Jon Dee Graham.

He's tapped into something that allows him to create music that defines experiences in such a way that not only do they ring true, but an audience can identify with them. Yet it's not just the content, it's the spirit behind the song that people recognize; they can see themselves and how they have felt in the situations he describes, like they are looking through the eyes of the song into their own lives.

Swept Away is more than just a documentary about a middle aged Rock and Roll musician, it's the portrait of an artist. Not only has director Mark Finkelpearl given us the opportunity to see some great music being performed through his filming of Jon Dee Graham in concert, but he offers a reminder of the cost paid by someone who has dedicated himself to the pursuit of creativity. There is nothing glamourous or pretentious about Jon Dee Graham's life. Like a great many of us he lives in a quiet residential neighbourhood with his wife, two children and his dog and probably worries about how he's going to stretch his money to cover the rising cost of everything.

Yet there is also something incredibly special about Jon Dee Graham, and the way he looks at the world and is able to communicate that view point to us through his music. Swept Away gives us the opportunity to meet a very special individual, and realize once again what it means to be an artist.

Swept Away goes on sale May 20th 2008 and can be purchased through Freedom Records. You can also purchase the soundtrack to the movie on CD from Freedom Records that features recordings of the tracks performed in the movie at the Continental Club, Mercury Hall, and Top Hat Studios. Either one would be a great addition to anyone's library, but I'd buy both of them if I were you. There aren't many people like Jon Dee Graham out there, and I don't see anybody ever being getting enough of him or his music.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:48 AM | Permalink

With all the attention being paid in the press to the American presidential election campaign in recent months, occasionally my thoughts turn to the possibility of a federal election in Canada. However, with neither of the two major political parties able to capture the public's imagination sufficiently to attract enough support to be sure of winning a majority government if an election were held today, the chances of one before fall 2008 are slim to non- existent. The latest poll results show the ruling Conservative Party and the opposition Liberal Party virtually neck and neck in terms of popular vote (they are separated in the polls by exactly the three per cent margin of error) so its doubtful either one of them would be willing to risk putting their popularity to the test.

I suppose that before going any further as brief an explanation as possible is required about Canada's parliamentary style of government. Unlike the American system where you elect your president independent of your representatives, our prime minister is the leader of the political party that elects the most representatives during an election. The country has been divided into electoral districts according to population known as ridings. Each riding is contested by a representative from each of the major parties and the winner is awarded a seat in the House of Commons - the Canadian parliament. The party winning the most seats forms the government and its leader becomes prime minister.

Canada currently has four political parties with seats in the House of Commons, and while the Conservatives won the most in the last election they did not succeed in obtaining a majority and formed what is known as a minority government. Most of the time when a party doesn't have sufficient seats, which translate into votes, to pass legislation without the assistance of another party they are forced to make compromises in policy if they want to accomplish anything. For if an important piece of legislation, like a budget, is defeated in the House of Commons when it comes to a vote, the government is forced to call an election.

The current Conservative Party government of Prime Minister Steven Harper has been an exception to that rule because for almost the first two years of their reign the largest opposition party, The Liberal Party, was without a permanent leader, and were not in a position to contest an election. Even now, almost a year after their new leader, Stephane Dion, was elected, they have failed to capture the public's imagination sufficiently for them to have confidence in their ability to win an election. So in spite of their status as a minority government, the Conservative Party has been able to impose their will on the Canadian public, even when their policies have run contrary to the wishes of the majority of Canadians.

While the majority of Canadians have opposed an increased military presence in Afghanistan, the government has not only extended the mission length, it has ensured that Canadian troops are used in combat situations. Furthering the public's disquiet with Canada's role in Afghanistan has been the government's attempts to play down fatalities by ending the practice of public ceremonies for the fallen upon their return to Canada. Public opinion was so against this, especially among military families, they were forced to modify that stance, but it left a bitter taste in a lot of people's mouths.

Canada was one of the first signatories to the Kyoto Accord on climate control and the previous government had passed legislation that would have seen them at least attempting to meet the minimum targets set by that agreement for controlling the emission of carbon dioxide into the environment. One of the first acts the Conservative government did upon taking power was to scrap that legislation, ensuring that Canada would renege upon its agreement. This, in spite of the fact that the majority of Canadians were and are in favour of the Kyoto Accord, if not even stronger emission controls.

One of the oddities of Canadian politics that has been the cause of confusion for any American who has cared to pay attention, is the names of our two major political parties. In the past both the Liberals and the Conservatives have had pretty much identical policies when it comes to social and economic issues. The Liberals have never been as liberal as their name suggests economically and the Conservatives have never been as conservative socially as you would think. Steven Harper's Conservative Party of Canada is a break with that tradition as they were originally the socially conservative, Reform Party of Canada who advocated a party line similar to that espoused by the Bush administration.

While they have been thwarted by the Supreme Court of Canada in their attempt to repeal same sex marriages, they have prevented the decriminalization of marijuana, and are doing their best to discredit a safe injection facility for intravenous drug users in Vancouver, British Columbia. Although the only one of its kind in North America, safe injection facilities and needle exchanges in Europe have proven to be effective means of preventing the spread of disease, specifically HIV/AIDS. among this high risk population. But compassion for drug users does not jibe with the conservative "War on Drugs" policy that is part of their tough on crime agenda.

Now with Canada's economy starting to follow the American's down the toilet, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police executing a search warrant on Conservative Party headquarters to investigate alleged overspending in the last election to the tune of $1.1 million, and Bill C-10 which would give the government the ability to effectively censor any movie whose content they didn't like, Canadians are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their ruling party. As recently as February 2008 polls were showing them with a large enough share of the popular vote that they could have potentially formed a majority government if an election had been called. However, with the above combined with the price of fuel at the pump continuing to rise, the dollar falling below par with the American again, food prices rising substantially, and the government seemingly content with letting the largest province in Canada, Ontario, fall into a recession, people are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with them.

In spite of this the chances of an election anytime soon are slim. Stephane Dion has done nothing to instil confidence in his own party that he can lead them to victory in an election. While there is no denying the man's intelligence, he is the type of person who most people seem to have difficulty warming to. Nobody is sure how his personality would play in an election and whether he can overcome the charges of aloofness that are being laid at his feet by critics and friends alike.

Unless the Liberals believe they have a very real chance of forming a government, they won't take any steps to force an election. This means the Conservative party can act with impunity; passing any legislation they feel like passing. Under normal circumstances, when one party wins the largest number of seats in the House of Commons without having a numerical majority, the country benefits because they need the support of other parties to stay in power resulting in legislation that reflects more than one ideology. Unfortunately that's not the case this time.

Knowing full well the Liberal party has been to frightened to call an election, the Conservative haven't had to compromise on any of their policies. Canadians can only hope that the supposed leaders of the opposition start to take their jobs seriously, or any chance we might have had of reaping the benefits of this minority government will soon be wasted. I don't think a minority government has ever served out a full four year term in office at the federal level before, but unless something happens soon it looks like that just might happen.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:39 PM | Permalink

You can probably get tried for heresy by some people for what I'm about to say, but I never really could understand why anybody would call Elvis Presley "The King Of Rock And Roll". Perhaps there were a few years in the late 1950s when his music was something special - you get a glimpse of it in the old black and white footage they sometimes show of him from that era - but for the most part he seemed to be the one who led the charge in making rock and roll palatable and safe for those who would be scared of everything real Rock And Roll stands for.

Instead of the raw energy that spoke of freedom and questioned authority, he took the music to Hollywood and Las Vegas and smoothed all it's rough edges away. What he was performing after his return from his tour of duty in Germany wasn't going to inspire anyone to change let alone change the world around them. While other North American and British performers were making music that challenged the status quo, Elvis was being neutered by a desire for fame and fortune. While his apologists can blame his management all they want for the direction his career went in, it couldn't have happened without his acquiescence.

The one thing you can't deny about Elvis is the iconic status he managed to achieve and the industry he spawned. Elvis imitators, or tributes as they prefer to be called, have become as ubiquitous as fast food franchises. The majority of these tributes have all the originality and zest of fast food as their primary goal of how to snag some of Elvis' fame for themselves is more important than any attempt at originality. There have been exceptions to this rule, Dread Zeppelin who did reggae covers of Led Zeppelin material while being fronted by an Elvis impersonator for example, but most others have just worshipped the Elvis icon.

All of which makes the forthcoming release on Mental Records of the CD/DVD combo Back From The Dead by G. G. Elvis & The T.C.P. Band that much more welcome. Billed as a Punk Elvis tribute band G.G.Elvis & The T.C.P. Band (Taking Care Of Punk) have taken the Elvis icon. stood it on its head, and given it the drop kick it desperately needs. Totally irreverent, more than a little rude, and quite a bit crude Back From The Dead features a CD of thirteen thrash/punk versions of Elvis covers, and a DVD mockumentary about the new King himself G.G. Elvis.

It's hard to know where to start when talking about Back From The Dead. Do you start with the inclusion of an intimate scratch and sniff photo, or introduce the band to it's breathless public? On the other hand the music is important too, but than there's also the up close and personal interview with G. G. himself on the DVD, which includes the epic tale of how he pulled the band back together. Of course there's also the music video on the DVD which gives adoring fans a chance to see the band in action.

I think in order to fully appreciate the impact of Back From The Dead you'll need to be introduced to the members of the band before we go any further. On guitars we have Elvis of Nazareth and Elvis Vicious, Elvis '56 is handling the bass, "Has-Been" Elvis is on drums, Little Sister sings harmonies, and of course the man himself, G.G. Elvis, sings lead vocals. Now I know what you're thinking - thrash/punk versions of tunes that Elvis Presley made famous; how can even a band blessed with names like those above carry that off.

Well I'm here to tell you, true believers, that they do it fine style. First of all they've brought their own unique touches to the tunes by blending some of them with classic punk tunes. So on the opening track they have melded "Blitzkrieg Bop" by the Ramones with "That's All Right Mama" by Big Bill Crudup (what you thought Elvis wrote that tune?) to make a great, hard driving, punk song. Through out the disc they do things like that to surprisingly good effect. Who would have known that "Holiday's In The Sun" by the Sex Pistols would work so well with "Suspicious Minds"?

In all seriousness though what I found most impressive about this disc musically was how well they performed everything. Sure they play fast and furious and G. G. growls/howls the lyrics, but at the same time the vocal harmonies are right in key. Any discordance you hear is deliberate, not because these folk can't play their instruments or can't sing. Just because it's thrash/punk doesn't mean that the arrangements aren't tight and they can't play note perfect music. I think what's most impressive is how all of the adaptations sound perfectly natural. They haven't just grafted the lyrics of old songs onto a punk sound, but have taken the original tunes and reworked them into something new.

On one hand these discs are of course a send up of the whole Elvis thing, but on the other hand they obviously have an appreciation for the music or they wouldn't have taken the time and the energy to make such skilful adaptations. Of course the fact that they have made that effort also makes the send up and the joke that much more effective. They really are G. G. Elvis And The Taking Care Of Punk Band, and don't you forget it.

The DVD is a little bit of a let down as they can't sustain what was started with the music and it's somewhat sophomoric with a little too much dependance on toilet humour. The funniest part of the DVD is the music video without audio. They've staged a mock interview show with G.G. and cut away to the band's new music video. We're treated to shot of the band playing away and singing without any audio. After about thirty seconds of this subtitles come on the screen assuring the viewer that there's nothing wrong with their audio system, only they weren't able to afford to pay the Elvis estate synchronization rights to include audio tracks on their video.

The subtitles continue and say they thought about going ahead anyway without getting the rights -"Hey were Punks after all"- but their lawyers told them how much they could end up being sued for and they decided they weren't that punk. I think that sums up what's best about the whole two disc set, is the ability of the people behind the project to poke fun at themselves at the same time as they are poking holes in the Elvis myth.

Back From The Dead, a Punk Elvis tribute, by G.G. Elvis and the T.C.P. Band is an affectionate, and mostly intelligent, parody of Elvis Presely's iconic status in American popular culture. It features thirteen great adaptations of tunes that Elvis recorded, with assists from some classic punk tunes, a silly DVD, and some great musicianship. You can pre-order your copy from Mental Records preparatory to its June release date and pick it up at most of the usual on line suspects once it goes on sale officially.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:33 PM | Permalink

When I was a kid the cop shows that were on television featured, more often than not, the cop on the beat. Adam-12 was atypical of the type of show that you'd see - handsome uniformed officers who in the space of a half hour would respond to a number of radio calls and have to deal with situations that required little or no investigation. Over time the genre evolved and expanded its horizons until today where we now have everything from shows that deal with specific units within police forces like the forensic units of the CSI franchise as well as the more standard investigating police procedurals.

Of course no matter what, the modus operandi still remains the same as it did back in the days of the uniformed officer driving his black and white; solving the crime and maintaining law and order. Shows still start with a crime having been committed and the police force doing their best to solve who done it. The biggest change that's occurred in the years of police dramas is how much time is spent with the police officers outside of their life on the job site. Instead of the characters being one dimensional figures representing the forces of good, they now lead as complicated, if not more complicated lives than the rest of us.

Television writers caught on to the fact that being a police officer and around criminal activity for a large percentage of your day could potentially have an effect upon your existence away from the office. Whether a cop wants to or not he will bring his work home with him from the office as you can't just shut off what you've seen during a day of dealing with anything from murder to traffic offences. This has led to the creation of police dramas with scripts that take into account more than just the character's work life, and that include characters from the character's home life.

One of this new breed of police procedure shows was the British cop show, starring Scottish actor Tom Conti, DNA, that dealt with the high tech world of modern forensic science. Forensic scientists search a crime scene for microscopic physical evidence that can be used as proof of a person's involvement in a crime. In DNA Tom Conti plays Joseph Donavan, a driven Forensic Science cop with his own history of medical problems, and a dedication to the job that causes strife on the home front.

While it did air on Canadian television, there probably weren't many opportunities for North American audiences to see this show. Acorn Media has gathered together the first two seasons of the show into a two DVD package, D.N.A.: Complete Series One & Two. Disc one contains the two parts of what must have been the pilot movie from season one, and disc two contains the three episodes from season two.

Now I'm not familiar with the North American versions of these types of shows so I have no basis for comparison, but what struck me most about this series was the balance that was struck between science, character, and plot in the scripts. The science is important of course, because that's what the characters use to solve the mysteries in the end, and the evidence upon which the plots turn. Yet it's not the be all and end all of the shows, and its also shown to be as fallible as the people who use it, as easy to manipulate as any other type of evidence, and not the great miracle for crime solving that it sometimes is made out to be.

Science is important to the plots because that's what the lead character does for a living. Yet instead of only having it used as the means by which the mysteries are solved, the plots deal with the various problems that face forensic scientists when actually trying to solve a crime. Evidence that appears black and white in a laboratory, ends up not being any use in court. A fingerprint proving somebody's presence at the scene of a crime doesn't necessarily make them the culprit because there is no way of dating when the fingerprint was left. Was the blood that spattered the coffee cup with the finger print sprayed there at the same time the finger print was left, or did it happen some time later?

Of course what's most important in all of these dramas are the characters and DNA is no exception. When we meet Jo Donavon he has been retired from the force for a number of years, and we find out that he hadn't left under the best of circumstances. He had made an error on his last case that resulted in both someone's acquittal and his own nervous breakdown. He's now a successful writer, but still not fully recovered from his breakdown. When faced with stressful circumstances he dissociates to such an extent that he doesn't remember where he was or what he did for great stretches of time.

Donavon is called out of retirement because a murder occurs and not only does the crime scene look exactly like the one which caused his mental breakdown, his name is written in blood on the wall of the victim's apartment. As Donavon is slowly drawn back into the world of police work, we are introduced to his wife and son, and see how both his job and his health issues have impacted upon their lives and the relationship he has with each of them. He is still suffering from dissociative episodes so severe that when a second body shows up in the exact same circumstances he can't be sure that he's not the culprit. That both men turn out to have been his wife's lovers only makes him more of a suspect.

What I've always preferred about British television over North American, is its willingness to take time to develop the relationship between the characters. Kate, Donavon's wife, is shown to have every reason to feel alone and neglected. On the other hand she also truly loves her husband and is incredibly frustrated by his seeming unwillingness to talk with her. She didn't go to the other men for love, but for companionship. Samantha Bond as Kate does a remarkable job of communicating the confusion, frustration, and anger of her character, while still being very convincing expressing her character's love for her husband.

Tom Conti is a wonderful actor and his work as Joseph Donavon is a testimony to his craft. While we sympathize with Jo as he tries to come to grips with his health issues and hope that he solves the crime, he is not the most likeable of people. His tendency to be egocentric and to be a workaholic are a combination that ensures he ignores those around them unless they do something drastic to catch his attention. Conti is able to communicate all of this to his audience simply by having his character go about his business. He is the type of actor who is so comfortable in the skin of the character he is portraying that he can communicate information about that character with a twitch of an eyebrow or the lifting of a shoulder.

DNA, like so many other British television shows, is a well acted and smartly scripted show that relies on intelligence more than shock to hold an audience's attention. The box set of DNA: The Complete Series One & Two available from Acorn Media as of May 13th/2008 gives viewers in North America an opportunity to enjoy all five episodes of this well executed police drama. An opportunity that fans of good television won't want to miss out on.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:36 PM | Permalink

The bump on the top of my head was starting to make me wish for bed and a cold compress, and the last thing I wanted to be doing right now was sitting in a dank cellar chatting with the two folks, no matter how good their intentions had been, who'd made me feel like this. Still there was something compelling about the way her lower lip trembled when she was emotionally distraught that made me want to investigate how she reacted to other stimuli.

But those were idle thoughts suited to other occasions, and even contemplating them made me wince with pain. Anyway, they looked like a couple of nice earnest, concerned types who wanted to save the world, and from previous experience I knew that was one road better left un travelled. They weren’t casual about anything, and politicized sex was always on the low end of the enjoyment scale for me, especially when working on a migraine.

I suggested that we keep in touch and if they thought of anything more, or if anything happened, that might lead me to an answer about who croaked the professor and what happened to the Kyoto accord. I told them if I ever did get any answers that I would make sure they were filled in, if for no other reason so they could stop bashing people over the head that came into the store asking about the Kyoto accord.

Couldn't be good for business if you kept hauling concerned environmentalists down into a cellar and giving them the third degree. Unless they had a sideline in headache remedies: "Hey does that store of yours have anything for a wicked headache, induced by a minor head trauma?" I asked her pointing at the point on the noggin he had tried to stave in.

He had the good grace to look embarrassed and mumble another apology, while the smile she bestowed made me start reconsidering my earlier resolution and thinking a little tender loving care administered by her capable mouth might not be such a bad thing after all. But when my eyes made contact with daylight, it was still only mid afternoon, when we reached the street all thoughts of anything but lying alone in bed with the blinds drawn and me out cold quickly vanished.

Even her bashful, eye's down looking up at me through her eyelashes, "Is there anything else that I can do for you…" only elicited a request for a cab. Her suggestion as she shepherded me into the cab that she'd call tomorrow to see how I was doing, was laden with meanings, but all I could do was smile weakly and mumble my address to the cabbie.

His initial reluctance on driving me was quickly overcome by my suggestion that the quicker he got me home the less chance there was of me puking on the back of his head. Mentioning the names of a couple of gentlemen I knew in the people cartage business who were known for their efficiency in dealing with those who upset their friends helped to overcome the last of his doubts.

It also ensured I was spared the usual commentary on the state of the world that cabbies seem to believe is their prerogative to deliver. By the time we pulled up to the office whatever placebo she had given me was slowing me down sufficiently that I tipped the cabbie a twenty, which led to the unprecedented site in Ottawa of a passenger having his door opened for him by the driver of his hack. He also did me the favour of pointing me in the right direction of my buildings door, so I didn't wander dazed into traffic.

Harry the day doorman had seen me in quite a number of states before this, but even his eyes showed some concern as he clocked the state of my pupils and the discreet swelling on the back of my head.

"You want me to check on you every couple of hours or so Mr. Steve, to make sure you haven't slipped into a coma?"

"Actually", I told Harry, "a coma sounds pretty attractive right about now. Just get me on the elevator and hit the button for the right floor and I should be able to take it from there." The last thing I needed right now was to be mother-henned by six foot–seven-inch, 300lb, ex linebacker with one eyebrow, a shaved head, and a gold loop earring the size of a hoola-hoop. Nope I just needed my bed and a lot of pitch dark.

Which I almost didn't get until I remembered how a key and lock mechanism worked, after surviving that challenge, navigating through the clutter of the office to the private room in behind was nothing. The only distraction was the flashing red of the answering machine light, which caused a momentary fixation, quickly overwhelmed by the intense pain its pulsation produced in my skull.

I let the back of my knees hit the side of my bed that allowed it to welcome me into the comfortable bosom of its embrace. I wish I could say I slept like a log and didn't feel anything until I woke the next morning, but I was disturbed all night by wild dreams that featured Ms. Magnesen and the environmentalist cutie literally tearing me in half; Professor Magnesen lecturing both of my parts on separate occasions on how to control emissions; and in amongst it all was the sound of people pounding at my door and yelling for me to wake up as they were the police and it was long past time that decent people were awake and at work.

Unfortunately that last part turned out to be true, (I don't want to think about the implications of the other parts thank you very much) and I eventually had to stagger to the door so as to prevent the noise from continuing. It was only as I turned to lead my old buddies from the crime scene back into the apartment that I realized the ten o'clock I had read on the dial of my bedside clock meant the next morning, not later that same evening.

"I didn't even know you drank tea, let alone took sugar in it" was followed by harsh laughter from behind as the assholes chortled at my misfortune. "Was that one lump or two?" That ain't the kind of shit you deal with before coffee on the morning after the day I had had yesterday. I couldn't even muster the energy to give them a baleful stare, let along a snappy retort.

I didn't know what I had done to deserve the honour of a home visit, but I figured I'd better be slightly somnambulant before trying to cope with the excitement of it all. I pointed in the general direction of where I remembered my bathroom as being, and received a leering grin and a sweeping, be my guest, arm gesture in return.

It was only after I had held my head under the cold tap for five minutes that I began to realize the potential for trouble that a visit from two cops, who were being overtly genial, could forebode. For two guys like McIntosh and Gates to show up at my door without kicking it down first meant they had either come to gloat or…I couldn't think of any other reason.

If they were going to arrest me they would have kicked the door down and hauled me away, that would seem more their modus apprehenda- so to speak- over this polite routine. Of course this all could just be an elaborate game of good cop bad cop, as I noticed Gates hadn't done anything except show his teeth at McIntosh's jokes. Like with any mad dog that could mean he's laughing or readying himself to go for your throat.

When I could look in the mirror and only see one of me looking back I figured I could just about cope with the boys in bad suits and headed back out to the office area. Still studiously avoiding any sort of contact with them I headed to where the coffee pot that was my morning cup awaited. From the damage inflicted upon my kitchen and the depreciation in the level of the pot, I could see my guests hadn't hesitated in making themselves at home.

"You must have finished the lumps off last night" Gates called through " We couldn't find anything but these packets of "nude" sugar. Oh and your out of cream." It's a good thing I like black coffee cause 25 years with no chance of parole is a long time to spend behind bars, and guards inside don't like cop killers.

After gulping a first cup, burning the roof of my mouth and finishing the process of returning to consciousness simultaneously, I poured a second cup and headed out to meet my early birds, hoping I wasn't the worm awaiting eating. From the way Gates was looking at me like a side of beef I couldn't help feeling that prospect was pretty good.

"Who gave you the love tap?" McIntosh asked pointing his chin at the lump on my head.

"Someone who wasn't as genteel in looking for information as the police officers of our nations capital. Now what can I do for you boys, I wouldn't want to think I'm holding you up from serving and protecting the good people of Ottawa" I tried to look at them with as much innocence as I could muster with my eyes still slightly crossed and the knowledge that the last time I had seen them a dead body with a machete in its back was laid out like a – well like a corpse since that what he was – at my feet.

"It's what we can do for you chum" Gates was licking his lips, hopefully licking off lingering drops of coffee but it was hard to tell what was going on behind those beady little eyes. "We thought you might like to know the identity of the stiff who fell at your feet the other night. We thought hearing his name might jar your memory, although I see others have tried less subtle means. Which reminds me do you need to report a crime, we're police officers you know and we're here to protect the public." He laughed a horrible little laugh that sounded like a cross between a growl and the wind blowing over a grave on a cold November night.

"That was just a misunderstanding, and why should hearing the dead guy's name jar my memory?" I was trying to think if I had given beautiful anything like my card which she could have given her dad which would take some explaining if it were found on his corpse.

"The crime scene boys found this", he reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic baggie of the type you use for sandwiches, pot, and evidence. This one held a piece of yellow paper torn on two edges so it had obviously ripped from the bottom corner of a larger page. "Your ad in the yellow pages was found in Mr., I should say Dr./Professor Magnesen's jacket pocket with the name of the bar scrawled on it, and the words "last brass pole on the barkeep's side" written in the same hand."

He paused and looked at me, and just in case I hadn't caught the implications of what he was suggesting, spelt it out for me." We think you were arranging to meet him there, and you've holding out on us for some reason and we want to know why?"

I took a sip of my coffee and looked up at him. "Well that's better then your usual average, batting .500 could almost make a person think you know what you're doing. Yes I was supposed to be meeting him at the bar, but I wasn't holding out on you because until you just told me I had no idea that the corpse at my feet was Dr. Morgensen.

We had only talked on the phone up till that point, which is probably why he had the directions on where to find my scrawled on my ad in the yellow pages. I just figured he had shown up after the murder and found the bar locked up and him not able to get into seeing me. I've been hoping to hear from him again since, but now it looks like that hope is a pretty vain one…"

It's always good to leave a thought or sentence hanging when talking to cops, they don't like to think you know everything, and it gives them the illusion that they have some room to manoeuvre with you even though you've built a pretty thick brick wall up for them to run into. And if they do have something in reserve, you can always hold on to I hadn't finished as an excuse.

I wasn't going to have to worry about that this time, because although it was obvious they didn't like it, they didn't seem to have anything more than that piece of paper connecting me to the dead doc. If they thought otherwise, obstructing a murder investigation would be the least of my worries. I'd have to start worrying about my name finding its way to the attention of individuals I don't want knowing it.

They had finished their coffees by then and knew their chances of refills were non-existent, so they'd have to head over to Tim Horton's and have an official coffee break if they wanted any more. Gates was out the door and McIntosh was close behind him, when he turned and looked back.

"This is more than just a divorce case gone bad, peeper, it's even more than just a homicide. There's a lot of pressure on us to get results, but results that end it without it going far. There's talk of not letting it go further than this room, unless something else shows up soon.

Everybody's called the chief today from the horsemen, to the spy guys, and somebody from Parliament Hill to ask that we keep them posted. Everybody's walking around the station house right now so uptight that they're scared to fart. Whoever worked you over last night was an amateur compared to these boys from up high. I've heard that they can make it so you get to the point that you want to tell them what they want to hear just so the pain will stop."

He nodded at me then and closed the door behind him. Have a nice fucking day. It looked like my time on this case was running out fast no matter what I wanted, so the option of another day in bed, however tempting was a no go. The problem was that unless something fell in my lap pretty soon this case was no go as well.

I had to hope that someone was having more success than me or I could be looking forward to a long time away from home.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:14 PM | Permalink

Werewolves always seem to get the short end of the stick. When it comes to the undead it's always Vampires who get all the attention. Everybody considers them so sexy and cool with their pasty white complexions and unusually good fashion sense. Vampires always seem to be portrayed as having money, living in fancy castles in exotic locals, and, of course, getting their choice of buxom mortals to snack on.

More often than not when you meet a werewolf for the first time in a story or movie you're not left with a favourable impression as they're usually ripping someone's throat out. They never get to wear fancy clothes in the movies, partly due I suppose to the tendency for clothing to suffer during their transformation from human to wolf. (There is some debate as to what happens to a werewolf's clothes after they change from human to wolf, and more specifically what they do about their clothing situation when they convert back to being a human). Then there' the whole bestial thing - there's just no talking to them when they change into their wolf selves.

So it can't be an easy life being a werewolf in the first place, but can you image what it must be like if you were a teenaged werewolf, filled with all the usual adolescent angst, and being outlawed by your family? Well that's the situation that seventeen year old Kalix MacRinnalck finds herself in as the heroine of Martin Millar's The Lonely Werewolf Girl, published by Soft Skull Press, and distributed in Canada by Publishers Group Canada

In a fit of anger young Kalix attacked and almost killed her father, the Thane of the MacRinnalck clan, and for that crime had to flee the families ancestral home in Scotland and seek shelter in the mean streets of London. In spite of her tender years, and being skinny to the point of emaciation as a human, Kalix is a fearsomely powerful werewolf when the battle rage takes her. She was born during a full moon when werewolves are unable to resist the change so she and her mother were both in their werewolf forms. The majority of werewolves are born as humans, so when Kalix changes into her werewolf form she becomes twice as fierce and powerful as kinsman double her size.

All things considered this is a good thing, because not only has she been outlawed by the family, but the clan's ruling council has demanded she be brought back to stand trial for nearly killing her father. Some of them aren't too fussy about what shape she shows up in for the trial; in fact some, like her eldest brother Sarapen, would be happy if only her heart were to show up for the trial. All of which means is that Kalix finds herself having to be continually on her guard against being captured or killed by minions of the family's various factions. Her circumstances are complicated even further by the fact that she is so filled with self-loathing that she's not only anorexic as a human but has developed a taste, well more an addiction, for laudanum.

Not eating for days on end, and taking a very powerful opium derivative on a frequent basis can leave one's resources rather drained. Which is how Kalix ends up being sheltered by two human teenagers, Daniel and Moonglow. Daniel accidentally saves Kalix from one of her brother's more reprehensible minions, and she is so weakened by lack of food and drugs she is unable to resist when Moonglow decides that Kalix only needs some understanding and compassion to feel good about herself again.

Of course Daniel and Moonglow might live to regret, if they live, getting involved with the scion of the MacRinnalch clan as all of sudden they are drawn into a world inhabited by more than just depressed teenage werewolves. First of all there's the rest of Kalix's immediate family, which aside from her previously mentioned eldest brother includes her mother, The Mistress of the Werewolves and matriarch of the clan; her sister Thrix who wants as little to do with the family as possible so she can concentrate on her career as a fashion designer; her other brother Markus who has a thing for women's clothing; and the cousins Beauty and Delicious who fancy themselves as rock and roll stars but haven't been sober enough in a couple of years to play a note.

On top of that are the various minions of all the parties involved, werewolf hunters armed with guns that fire silver bullets, and Thrix's main client, Mallveria, Queen of the Hiyasta, a race of fire elementals from another dimension, who has become addicted to human fashions. It's bad enough when they all start showing up at, or in the vicinity of Daniel and Moonglow's small flat in Kensington, but things get really chaotic when the Thane dies as a result of the injuries he sustained from Kalix's attack on him, and the MacRinnalch clan descends into civil war as both Markus and Sarapen claim the throne.

It is safe to say that there probably hasn't been as funny, or weird, a werewolf story written as Lonely Werewolf Girl. One moment there's a ferocious battle raging with werewolves ripping each other's throats out, and the next we're in the midst of a fashion crises. Mallveria has discovered that her deadly rival in the fire elemental realm has been stealing all of Thrix's designs and showing up wearing the same outfits. It's a toss up as to who is the more deadly - Sarapen in his quest to become the new Thane of the clan or Mallveria in her desire to be the belle of the ball and see her rival burn, quite literally, with jealousy at the glory of her outfits.

Along the way Martin Millar also manages to tell the story of how Kalix goes from being a lonely werewolf girl so filled with self loathing that she cuts herself and suffers anxiety attacks if she's treated well, to a werewolf girl with friends who make her realize that she's not such a bad sort after all. By turn hysterically funny, terrifying, and even a little heartbreaking, Lonely Werewolf Girl is a brilliantly designed and elegantly written book. What makes it even more remarkable is that in spite of the inanity of some situations and its fantastical elements, it also happens to be a very real book in its treatment of Kalix's problems.

She doesn't magically become a well adjusted werewolf teenager filled with joie de vivre. Instead she has to face up to her internal demons in the same way any other person dealing with her problems would, through hard work and lots of soul searching. In fact all of the characters in the book are drawn with a equal amount of depth. It would have been easy for Millar to make someone like Mallveria for instance nothing more than a caricature of a fashion slave. Yet he takes the time to make her a multi dimensional character who becomes more interesting as we get to know her.

Lonely Werewolf Girl has a lightness of tone that makes it a delight to read, but that never diminishes its characters or trivializes issues of importance. It's one of those rare books that make you laugh and think all at the same time, and feel better for having read it.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:16 AM | Permalink

There's a difference between using the sound of another's culture's instrument in your music because you think its cool, and those same instruments being used as equal partners in the creative process that brings a piece of music to life. In the first instance you usually end up ignoring the structure of the music that the instrument was designed to play and using it like you would any other instrument at your disposal. In the second instance it is played as its meant to be played - drawing upon the traditions that govern the instruments usage.

In the case of Western popular music and its relationship with the instruments of Indian Classical music, the sitar and tablas predominately, it was more often than not the first instance, with the sitar being used more like a "neat" sounding guitar than anything else. The time signatures and structure of Indian Classical music precluded pop musicians from doing more as the differences between the two were seemingly insurmountable. It wasn't until musicians like Harry Manx took the trouble to properly study Indian music - a minimum of a twelve year commitment - that the two have began to be blended successfully.

On the other hand, Western Jazz music has had more of a successful history when it comes to the incorporation of Indian instruments. With it's openness to experimentation in time signatures, and musician's improvisation skills, there have been successful attempts at integrating the two styles of music for some time now. Notable examples of this were John Mclaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra's first releaseThe Inner Mounting Flame in 1971. Subsequent McLaughlin releases, Shakti in 1975 and Remember Shakti in 1999 only confirmed his abilities when it came to fusing the two styles of music.

McLaughlin was the obvious choice therefore to create an original work for a unique collaborative project between American Jazz and Indian Classical musicians honouring the music of Miles Davis; Miles... From India, released on Times Square Records. Where else were the producers going to find someone who not only played with Miles at one time (1969 - 72) but also had his history of experience with Indian music? "Miles...From India", the title track of this new two disc set, is a perfect example of what the producers hoped to create with this release in that it brings together the two traditions to create a unique work inspired by the music of Miles Davis.

In 1972 Miles Davis incorporated tablas and sitar in his recording On The Corner, and its the music from that release that inspired this music. Co-producers Bob Belden and Yusef Gandhi came up with the idea of revisiting Miles' Indian influenced music, (his 1972 recording On The Corner included tablas and sitar), utilizing both musicians who had appeared in the original sessions and Indian Classical musicians. The began by having the musicians in India record their parts for each song, and then took these tracks back to the States where the American Jazz musicians were asked to improvise to them. None of the American musicians were allowed to listen to the music prior to the time they actually sat down in the studio to record, ensuring that they were only able to react to what they heard and not pre-plan anything.

As far as I can tell the purpose of this was to ensure that they wouldn't be influenced by any preconceived notions they might have had about the music based on their own experiences with the original compositions. The result of their only being able to react to what the Indian musicians created was not only the creation of almost completely new pieces of music, but an almost perfect fusion of the two styles of music.

While its difficult for me to pick out specifics to cite as examples, experiencing the music as a whole is overwhelming and it was far too easy to just let myself drift with the sounds and rhythms generated by the musicians, a couple of moments stand out in particular. Vocalist Shankar Mahadevan is one of India's most popular singers and his voice is used in numerous Bollywood productions. On Miles...From India he uses his voice like an instrument so that on "Blue In Green" and "Spanish Green" he "sings" the melody of the tunes.

Most of the time Jazz vocalizations, scat, are staccato exhalations of sound that accentuate the rhythm more than the melody. That's not the case with Shankar's work on these songs, instead he has taken the role of a horn or other lead instrument and recreated their parts with his voice. The result is that both songs have a warmth and emotional depth that can only be achieved via a human voice. Shankar Mahadevan's range and breath control are such that he is able to bring the same sort of expression to his "solos" as that of a horn player, which in turn allows American Wallace Roney's trumpet an opportunity to create beautiful counterpoints and harmonies.

It's only when you hear the Carnatic Violin played that you realize the differences between it and the violin those of us in the West are used to hearing. There's something about the quality of its sound that makes it seem somewhat unearthly. On "It's About That Time" Kala Ramnath's playing caught my ear right from the start and it was the main thread that I followed throughout the whole piece. Even when it was mixed into the background for another's solo, its flavour could still be heard in how it coloured what the other musicians were creating.

In the past I've never been fond of Jazz violin, it always seemed to lack a certain fullness of sound and felt scratchy and weak when compared to the horns or woodwinds. Perhaps it's the way its been recorded in the past, or the way other musicians have related to it, but whatever the reason I've always thought it sounded out of place. Kala Ramnath's Carnatic Violin on the other hand felt like it was perfect instrument for "It's About That Time". Not only did it sound wonderful on its own, but it worked beautifully in tandem with the other players.

Miles...From India is a remarkable collection of music featuring some of the best musicians of contemporary American Jazz, Indian Jazz, and Classical Indian music coming together to honour one of the most brilliant composers of our time. Miles Davis not only created remarkable music on his own, but he provided the inspiration for some of modern Jazz's best and most creative minds. Everybody from Wayne Shorter to Chick Corea and John McLaughlin played with and were influenced by Miles and his innovations. While some of them might have pushed the envelope of fusion much further then he did, he was the one who put their feet on that path.

It is only fitting, therefore, that a collection of music in his honour is such a bold attempt at fusing two such disparate types of music. The fact that it is so successful is surely a testimony to his genius as a composer. Miles...From India is not just an example of how to properly bring East and West together musically, it is as magnificent collection of Jazz music that you are liable to find anywhere these days.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:55 AM | Permalink

It's close to thirty years ago since British rocker Ian Drury had a hit with the song "Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll". Somehow or other nobody had strung the three together in quite the catchy way he had before, and his little ditty's title caught more then a few people's imaginations. In those innocent days prior to AIDS and the "War On Drugs", it became the catch phrase of choice for a great many people to sum up what they needed to make them happy. That Drury might have been satirizing the rock star image with his song was lost on ninety per cent of his audience, who had latched onto the title as a lifestyle definition.

The world spins around and ten years later, in the 1980s, I couldn't read the obituary pages of my local paper without reading that a man of my generation had died of unknown causes, leaving behind special friends, but very rarely, a wife or parents to mourn him. AIDS was very much a mystery in those early days in the mid to late eighties, but even then we knew it was caused by sharing bodily fluids and the quickest way of catching it was through unprotected sex and sharing a needle. It was only a matter of time before it spread beyond gay men. Sex and Drugs were "very good indeed" no longer.

When the Canadian Red Cross came clean about not testing their blood properly and giving hemophiliacs infected blood, (and oh by the way if you received a blood transfusion between these dates you really should get yourself checked), the "innocent victim" syndrome in AIDS reared its ugly head. Just what the world needed - another way to stigmatize people who were dying because they had sex or shared a needle. The Christian right in North America had already labelled HIV and AIDS as the wages of sin, and being able to say they only have themselves to blame, while others are blameless, only added fuel to the pyre they were building to burn the sinners.

In the preface to her book The Wisdom Of Whores, Elizabeth Pisani says that when people ask her what she does for a living she cheerfully replies "Sex and drugs" as it's easier than having to explain to people that an Epidemiologist studies how diseases spread in populations. For ten year of her life, starting in 1996, Ms Pisani worked on the front lines of HIV/AIDs research looking for patterns in how the disease was spread, developing ways of curbing the spread of the diseases, trying to figure out how many people were potentially at risk, and of course dealing with the political fallout that always seems to accompany sex and drugs.

In the course of her work she has run police roadblocks in Indonesia carrying blood samples and used syringes, sat on street corners with prostitutes in the border towns of China and Tibet discussing the economics of their trade, worked with the transgendered prostitutes of Indonesia, argued policy with officials from the UN, the World Health Organization (WHO), Muslim Clerics, and brothel owners in Thailand. The Wisdom Of Whores are the conclusions she has reached after these ten years of field work about what works in the fight against HIV/AIDS and what doesn't work. These conclusions are backed up by not only her years of personal observation, but by the data she has crunched charting the growth of the disease and the effectiveness of the various means used to prevent it's spread in different countries and among different social groups.

One of the most frightening things about this book is, at the time it was being written, the amount of influence being exerted on HIV/AIDS programming by people with political and religious agendas. From Muslim Clerics in Africa and South East Asia saying that not using condoms proves how faithful you are, the American government going so far as prohibiting their staff from having access to research that proves the effectiveness of condoms in preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STD), to American policy that tries to prevent any agency, whether they receive American money or not, from advocating the use of condoms as a preventative measure; it's more important to these people that their view of the world is adhered to than the disease be prevented from spreading.

In spite of the statistical evidence that Ms. Pisani cites, that over 70% of the people who sign pledges vowing to abstain from pre-marital sex end up having pre-marital sex, the American government still preaches abstinence as the answer for preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. The fact that the majority of these people also practice unprotected sex is even more damning. That those figures are from the US, and not a country with a flourishing sex trade, makes the whole abstinence argument even more spurious.

In spite of what any number of groups might want you to think, according to Ms. Pisani's research very few people are sold into the sex trade of South East Asia as slaves. It's more a matter of simple economics; a women can earn more in a half hour as a prostitute than she would for making 150 t-shirts in a sweat shop. If people are really so concerned about women in the sex trade maybe they should consider paying a little more money for their brand name t-shirts so these women have a viable alternative to make money to feed their families.

In all of these countries where condom programs have been implemented within the sex trade infection rates have been halved and continue to decline. The programs that work best are the ones like the one implemented by Thailand. The government allows the brothels to operate as long as the women working there use condoms, if they don't the government closes it down and the owner loses his source of income. By routinely randomly testing all the women working in the brothels for STDs the government is able to tell if condoms are being used. Not only has this helped prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS but it has also cut down on the spread of all STDs among clients, brothel workers, and all of their families.

The sharing of needles by intravenous drug users is of course the other big way that the virus is spread. In spite of this, resistance to needle exchanges as a means of prevention still runs high. Those who believe in the war on drugs are convinced that needle exchange programs encourage drug use and don't want anything to do with it. Yet statistics presented by Ms. Pisani shows that needle exchanges not only help prevent the spread of disease, they work to help people get off drugs. Two or three times a week they are in contact with social workers who can give them referrals to treatment programs and provide them support in quitting drugs and a good many of them take advantage of it.

The other big issue that Ms. Pisani raises is the need to balance treatment and prevention. While nobody wants to see anybody die when there are drugs available that could prolong their lives for as much as ten years, the problem is now that too much of the HIV/AIDS budget is being spent on treatment and prevention is falling by the wayside. As a result people are still being infected in spite of everything we know. Politicians are much happier when they can say they are giving money to treat pregnant women so they don't spread the disease to their unborn child, or to treat a child who was born with the virus, than they are in announcing money to help people who have sex and use drugs from catching it.

The Wisdom Of Whores is like a gale of fresh air being blown through the musty smelling bullshit that has surrounded the whole HIV/AIDS issue from day one. It's not just the holy cows of the right Ms. Pisani takes on either in her battle to save lives. Everything from peer counselling to confidential testing is put under her microscope for analysis; saving lives and preventing the spread of the disease is what concerns her not what people think is right. I'm sure this will get a lot of people's backs up, but it's hard to argue with her statistics about rates of infection.

It's hard to imagine a book about a subject as dry sounding as epidemiology being a page turner and entertaining, but Elizabeth Pisani has managed to do just that. She is irreverent, but never irrelevant; by turns angry, compassionate, and frustrated, she is a refreshingly human voice among so many speech makers. Sex and drugs might be taboo subjects for most people, but they are Elizabeth's bread and butter, and according to her they are at the root of HIV/AIDS. The Wisdom Of Whores paints as true a picture as possible of the fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS and where it stands today as you're liable to ever read. As well as the book you can also go the Wisdom Of Whores web site to receive even more up to date information and join in the ongoing discussion on how the world is doing in its fight to keep people alive.

The Wisdom Of Whores can be purchased directly from Penguin Canada or an online retailer like Amazon.ca

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:04 PM | Permalink

Personally I blame it on a literary tradition that dates back to some guy name Geoffrey Chaucer. They don't even attempt to deny it either you know. In an interview included on the special features disc of the special edition DVD of The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman, the guy who wrote the His Dark Materials trilogy, says he reads Shakespeare and Dostoevsky for pleasure. With attitudes like that is it any wonder that the British keep churning out wonderful books for children that have has as many adult readers as they do their intended audience?

From Lewis Carrol, C. S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien, to the latest generation of J.K. Rowling and Philip Pullman, they have inundated us with great books that have been and are being turned into remarkably good movies. The latest of these to be given its celluloid treatment are Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, as book one, The Golden Compass, was released in cinemas in December of 2007 and on DVD Arpil 29th 2008. Going upon the recommendation of the person who has always been my best guide in all things literary, my older brother, I picked up a copy of the two disc special edition release of the movie this past weekend. (I don't know about anywhere else, but in Canada it was only three dollars more then the regular edition at Jumbo Video in Kingston Ontario)

I have to confess that I went into this movie completely blind, knowing absolutely nothing about the story or the series. I didn't even know it was a trilogy for goodness sake; it wasn't until the movie was winding down that I turned to my wife and said "Do you get the feeling that this is a to be continued in the next movie point we're coming to?" Talk about being out of touch, although in my own defence the books were released between 1995 and 2000 and in those days I wasn't paying attention to much of anything. I didn't even notice Harry Potter until 2002 when I was given a copy of The Philosopher's Stone while recovering from surgery. (It's only known as The Sorcerer's Stone in the States - they changed the title and "translated" the text from British to American for American readers)

So my first exposure to the world of The Golden Compass came when I slid the DVD into the optical drive on my MiniMac this past Saturday, and I'm now good and hooked. (First thing Monday morning I sent a pleading e-mail to my contact at the Canadian distributor of the books to see if they could get me review copies; there was a new omnibus version released just over a year ago on which I'm placing my hopes) I can't remember when I've been so instantly captivated by anything as I was by this movie. From the opening sequence with the voice over supplying the introduction to the world the movies would be set in to the final frames in Scoresby's flying machine near the North Pole the movie had me glued to my monitor.

Now I've not read the books, so I won't be able to tell you how good an adaptation of the actual book this is, but what I saw was as brilliant a piece of story telling as any that I've ever seen on screen. As both director and screen writer Chris Weitz has done a masterful job of making sure that the movie works as a stand alone work, so those of us who haven't read the books never feel like we're missing information. While there are points in the movie where you may wonder, now why is so and so doing this, you're never left hanging and an explanation will eventually be given. In fact one of the things that impressed me most about Mr. Weitz's direction and storytelling was his timing. He doles out the information that the story needs to progress in ways that don't interrupt the flow of the action but that still gives us the opportunity to catch our breath and integrate what he's told us into our understanding of what's going on.

In this way he gives us a slight edge on his main character, Lyra Belacqua when it comes to knowing what's happening, but only in a general way. For instance we know that the people who run the world, The Magisterium, have nasty plans in store for people - especially children - but we don't find out the details until Lyra does. It's a standard technique for storytelling in movies, but he's done it so well here that it builds the suspense and develops the plot at a rate of speed that strikes the perfect balance between credibility and maintaining tension.

Of course this movie is going to live and die based on the performance delivered by whomever is cast in the central role of the lead character Lyra Belacqua. Once you see Dakota Blue Richards in the role, you won't be able to imagine another person playing her. Culled from a cattle call that saw them audition 10,000 young women across England, Dakota doesn't strike a wrong note ever in her performance. It's hard to believe that she had no professional acting experience prior to this movie considering the range of emotions she's called on to display, and how well she's coped with working with computer generated image (CGI) characters.

Two of the characters Dakota has to spend most of her time on screen with were CGI creations. Her personal Daemon, Pantalaimon (the voice of Freddie Highmore) and the armoured bear Iorek Byrnison (the voice of Ian McKellen). What look like perfectly natural conversations and interactions in the final product on screen, were anything but during the shooting process. At times the young actor would be acting out a scene with a green blob of a puppet, or talking to a blank wall. It doesn't seem to have made the slightest bit of difference to her though, whether she was working with a live person or a puppet as she carries off every scene she is in with equal aplomb.

As far as the rest of the performances go, they were all pretty much wonderful. From Christopher Lee's creepy cameo as high ranking official in the Magisterium, Sam Elliott as Lee Scoresby the airman from Texas, to Donald Craig as Lyra's Uncle Lord Asriel everybody not only gave lovely performances, but looked like they were having a great time doing so. Even Nicole Kidman, who I've only liked in a very few roles before, seems to be having fun as the very scary Mrs. Coulter. It says a lot for the director that everybody's performance had that extra spark that only happens when an actor remembers what it is to make believe again.

As this was the two disc special edition version of the DVD, the second disc was all special features. While the technical features about how they shot the CGI sequences will probably be of interest to some, I've reached the point of, seen one blue/green screen seen them all. The parts I did enjoy were the interviews with both the author Philip Pullman and the director Chris Weitz. I'm always fascinated to listen to somebody discuss their process when it comes to creating, and it was interesting to see the two men talking about the same material from their respective perspectives of creator and adapter.

The Golden Compass is a wonderful movie, full of magic and adventure that will appeal to anyone whose imaginations were ever fired by the great children's literature that has come out of England. I can't speak to how the movie worked as an adaptation of the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, but I can say that this is a great piece of cinematic magic, and I am looking forward to its sequels. Now if I can only get my hands on the books I'll really be happy.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:32 PM | Permalink

There have been many great construction projects through out the history of humanity. While the reasons behind their construction have ranged from vanity, the Pharaohs' construction of Pyramids to honour their own memory; devotion to God, the great Cathedrals raised during the middle ages; to defensive fortifications, The Great Wall of China; one thing they all have had in common is their cost in human lives. Millions of lives were spent in the building of these projects, and each life was somebody's son, brother, husband, or father.

It wasn't unusual for a ruler to conscript people from across his land to spend their lives on these projects without giving any thought as to the affect it would have on the people left behind. In China alone it is thought that as many as three million people have died over the course of constructing and restoring the The Great Wall. There has actually been more then one "Great Wall" as the first was constructed under the China's first Emperor Qin Shi Huang circa 200 BC. This first wall was built along the Northern border of China and very little of it remains today.

As is its wont history recounts the fates of Empires without any mention of the individuals who might be caught up in the events described. What cares history for the plight of a silk worm farmer's wife whose husband is conscripted as slave labour to construct the Great Wall Of China? It's up to the story tellers to try and bring home to us how the sweep of history takes its toll on those caught up in its ebb and flow.

In Binu And The Great Wall, published by Random House Canada, author Su Tong has adapted a story that's been passed down from generation to generation for over two thousand years that tells the story of Binu, whose husband was taken away to work on the Great Wall. In his preface to the book, he tells us that the wonderful thing about myths are they take harsh realities and make them larger then life. This helps to cushion the impact of the experience while still allowing the author to impart its full meaning. (Binu And The Great Wall is one of a series of books retelling the myths of various cultures that have been commissioned from authors around the world by Random House)

In Mr. Tong's version of the story he has created a world that is larger than life where many fanciful things occur. Yet at the same time it is also firmly rooted in the reality of the time period and the situation of his main character Binu. It's his ability to skilfully interweave the mythical and the real that allows the character of Binu to become larger then life for the modern reader without turning her into a melodramatic cliché.

In Peach Village, where Binu was born, it is forbidden to cry and young women are trained from an early age how to avoid having tears appear on their faces. Some learn how to cry in through their ears, with the ears themselves providing an impressive reservoir within which to store their tears. Others are considered lucky because they can cry from their lips resulting in them having beautiful gleaming lips. But Binu never learned any of these means, as her mother died when she was still young. Although she had started to learn how to cry with her hair, she had no control over her tears and wept copiously.

As a result she was alienated from the rest of the village and nobody but the orphan Qiliang would have her in marriage. Yet they are happy together, so when he is torn from her side and taken away to work on the Great Wall on the other side of the Great Swallow Mountain she is devestated. If the people of Peach Village thought that Binu had cried before, they hadn't seen anything yet. It's when she has a vision of her beloved working without a shirt that she makes the fateful decision to set off to find him. She can't bear the thought of him facing winter without a proper coat and resolves that she will travel across the country to make certain he is warm.

Of course everyone thinks she is crazy. She sells everything they own in order to buy a coat and travel. 'You don't even know if he's alive' the other women of the village tell her. 'All of us have lost husbands, sons, or brothers and you don't see us selling everything we own to go off and make sure they have winter coats, do you?' But Binu won't be dissuaded, for without Qiliang she has no life, so what is the point of a life without him?

The world is determined to make her quest as difficult as possible though. When she goes to buy a horse or a donkey to ride to her destination she discovers that all the animals have been commandeered by the army for the war being fought. The only companion, man or beast, she can find for the journey is a blind frog who is the reincarnation of a blind woman who drowned searching for her son. So she sets out to travel the great distance nearly alone and almost immediately is beset with troubles.

Her precious bundle containing the winter coat for Qiliang and her few coins is stolen almost at once, she is sold into bondage to act the role of a thief's widow, and as she nears her destination she is arrested because she is suspected of being an assassin's accomplice. But in the end she does it make it to the Wall. According to the myth of Binu when she arrived at the wall and discovered her husband was dead her grief was so great and her tears so plentiful that the Great Wall broke and the dead awoke in honour of her sorrow.

Su Tong has written a wonderfully, magical and human story. In spite of the fact that Binu And The Great Wall is a tale replete with sorrow, it is an uplifting affirmation of the strength of the human spirit. There are times along the road where she decides to give up and to lay down and die, giving in to despair. Yet life won't let her give up that easily, and there is always something that keeps her going, even if it's only the desire to die with her husband and not alone.

We live in a world where millions of people are torn from their families on a regular basis by war, famine, disease, and economic realities. Refugee camps around the world are filled with families that have been ravaged by grief and the anguish of not knowing whether loved ones still live. Binu And The Great Wall may have first been told over two thousand years ago, but the story is still relevant today. With his retelling Su Tong gives us the means to try and begin to understand that reality. It is a beautiful and magical story cut with the sharp taste of reality; a perfect myth.

Readers in Canada can pick up a copy of Binu And The Great Wall either by ordering it directly from Random House Canada or an on line retailer like Amazon.ca

Posted by Richard Marcus at 01:35 AM | Permalink

Without any doubt the act of beating out a rhythm is the most universal form of music making among humans. Heck even some of our primate relatives who haven't come as far up the evolutionary chart as us make use of rhythmic patterns during dominance and courtship displays, either by beating a tattoo our on their chest or pounding the earth with a stick or their fists. Whether the chimpanzees and gorillas are deliberately creating a rhythmic accompaniment, or song, to go with their actions will likely never be known, but there's no doubt that they recognize how much it increases the impressiveness of their display.

Drums, or some sort of percussion, is and has been part of every culture's musical language. When Native North Americans gather to play the large communal drum that is now associated with Pow Wow celebrations, they refer to the sound it generates as the heartbeat of the Mother - the sound of the source of all life. Perhaps, on some level or another, that explains all of our fascination with the sound of the drum, as it reminds us on an unconscious level of the first thing we ever hear - the sound of our mother's heartbeat while we are still in the womb.

From such humble beginnings people around the world have developed not only a variety of means to help them express their relationship to that rhythm, but an astounding number of patterns has evolved from that one basic beat. It sometimes seems that from that heartbeat each culture has developed a pattern that expresses something that is unique to them, while maintaining sufficient elements of universality that they are able to find common ground with other peoples.

In 1991, Mickey Hart, drummer from the Grateful Dead, fulfilled a dream by bringing together great drummers from around the world to create a record based entirely on percussion. The recording that resulted from this collaboration, Planet Drum, was so impressive that it was awarded the first ever Grammy in the World Music category. Seventeen years later, as part of their Mickey Hart collection, Shout Factory Records has re-issued Planet Drum so that a whole new generation of percussion enthusiasts can enjoy the fruits of their labour.

The recording was designed to be a companion for a book that Mr. Hart had written of the same name. The book, and the recording, were created with the intent of giving people an idea of the numerous ways that humans have devised to make rhythm, and the variety of sounds that are generated through those efforts. To that end he recruited musicians from a variety of cultures: Airto Moreira from Brazil brings the Latin beat of South America; Babatunde Olatunji and Sikiru Adepoju from Nigeria the distinctive sound of the West African drums; Zakir Hussain represented Northern India and T.H. 'Vikku' Vinayakram the sounds of Southern India.

These five, along with Mickey Hart and vocalist Flora Purim, went into the studio having no idea what they would come up with. After listening to the thirteen tracks that were the result of their sessions you'd never know that they had never played together before, and nobody had ever tried to bring together such a diverse mix of rhythmic backgrounds. Even more remarkable is the fact that instead of them first doing one song in one tradition, then the next in another, they drew upon a variety of inspirations to form the basis for each track.

The fourth song, "Dance Of The Hunter's Fire", is an example of building one culture on top of another, as its origins lie in Africa. While the two drummers from Africa play their interpretation of how that beat should sound, 'Vikku' from South India improvised around them in the style he would normally use for his music. The result was the creation of an interesting counterpoint for the central pattern, providing accents where there might not have been ones before, yet still sounding like they belong in exactly the places they are being played.

While they follow this pattern for some of the songs, starting with the sound of one culture and adding on to it, other songs are built around a means of creating sound. "Jewe" was created using the human body as the instrument. All five musicians created sounds by slapping on their own chest with cupped hands and singing at the same time. As each voice has a different pitch, and each person was "playing" themselves at a different speed, it was an interesting study in contrasts of sound, pitch, and rhythm.

On other songs the group took for their inspiration natural sounds to create the piece of music. The track "Mysterious Island" for instance had its origins in a recording of wave sounds that Mickey Hart made on the beaches of the island of Kona in Hawaii. On the other hand "Temple Caves" didn't use the actual sounds of caves, inspiration came from the knowledge that Paleolithic trance dancers used the naturally occurring sounds of the cave; the flapping of bat wings, dripping of water, and the echoes of their own foot steps, as the backdrop for their dances.

In both instances the musicians created a new "language" in order to try and recreate the sensations of the two different experiences. Instead of merely playing the rhythms and sounds of their own cultures they drew upon the ideas expressed by the other members of the ensemble and blended them with their own. As each musician did this, each of these songs became something unique in its own right.

Planet Drum is an amazing collaboration of cultures from around the world. Not only are there songs on the disc that feature distinct rhythmic traditions working in tandem to create wonderful mixtures of sounds and rhythms, there are songs where entirely new patterns are born. This disc is an amazing example of the wonders that can be created with sound and rhythm and is a joy to listen to.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:26 PM | Permalink

Pop music is usually fairly predictable when it comes to lyrical content. The majority of what you're going to hear on the radio will more than likely deal with the stages of a romantic relationships, from the first blush of love to the heartbreak of it falling apart. Occasionally a writer will seek his or her inspiration in world affairs, or perhaps an aspect of the human condition other than love, but even in those circumstances there is an accepted formula which most follow.

T Bone Burnett has never been one to follow the herd in anything that he has done. Whether he's producing a Robert Plant and Allison Krauss collaboration, acting as musical advisor to movies like O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Cold Mountain, or recording his own music, he's always marched to the beat of his own drum. Two years ago he released his first release in more then a decade, and The True False Identity was a collection of the exceptional lyrics and musical experimentation people had come to expect from the man who penned songs like "Hefner and Disney" back in the eighties.

Tooth Of Crime, on Nonesuch Records is not just an example of Burnett going places that other popular musicians would fear to tread, its also an indication of just how much he invests of himself into a project. Burnett first started work on the material included in this disc back in 1996 as part of a collaboration with noted American playwright - and sometime actor - Sam Shepard.

Shepard first wrote the play Tooth Of Crime back in 1972, and in 1996 he re-staged it with material that Burnett wrote for the actors to sing as part of the performance. The CD that's being released on May 13th 2008, isn't a cast album from the play though. Instead Burnett has taken the framework that the play offered and used it as the context for the songs included on this recording. Some of the songs are from that 1996 performance, while others are ones that Burnett started work on back then, but only now has had the time to complete to his satisfaction.

Although written back in the early seventies, the play's theme about the illusionary qualities of fame within the context of a culture where someone is designated a celebrity for who they are and not what they've done - think Paris Hilton - is still relevant today. However don't come to this CD looking for literal attacks on the cult of celebrity, Burnett is far more subtle than that. The music and the lyrics of each song combine to create almost abstract impressions expressing a mood or emotion that illustrates an aspect of the theme.

Musically the songs range everywhere from the twisted Rockabilly sound of the opening "Anything I Say Can And Will Be Used Against You" to a ballad like "Kill Zone". Each of the styles are deliberate choices on the part of Burnett as they generate the different moods and emotions that he wants us to realize accompany the rise and fall of today's instant celebrities. There's the greed and ambition of the person on the way to the top, the ruthlessness of those who are stars not wanting to surrender their position, and even the momentary doubts that they might have about the cost being paid to achieve their flickering fame.

Some of the songs defy definition in terms of popular music. "Telepresence" is a chilling combination of spoken word over a distant layer of muted, tortured, and distorted electric guitar sounds. Desolate and devoid of any human warmth it expresses the true emptiness that lies at the heart of trivial stardom. "It's the Jesus channel baby, make the metal scream, make the metal scream" Burnett intones, making sure we know that all those sacrifices that have been made for stardom haven't resulted in anything close to salvation.

As you can tell from those descriptions Tooth Of Crime is not an easy disc to listen to in terms of content. It presents a very bleak image of a society where people desire fame for the sake of fame. What's more it appears that those who achieve fame never get to enjoy it as they spend all of their time obsessing over how to hold on to it. Isolation seems to be the only reward for celebrity, as those around them are either potential usurpers of their position or only interested in them for what they are, not who they are as people.

Musically and lyrically it presents the listener with challenges that one doesn't normally associate with popular music. Even songs like "Sweet Lullaby", with it's gentle, country tinged, musical introduction, becomes unsettling with the addition of Burnett's vocal track. His voice has been treated so that it sounds like its being heard from a great distance and through an old radio speaker. The contrast between that and the warmth of the music adds an edge to an already emotionally ambivalent lyric, dashing the humanizing potential that the introduction implied.

While I am familiar with some of Sam Shepard's plays, Tooth Of Crime was not one that I knew anything about before listening to Burnett's CD. While a knowledge of the play would probably enhance the experience of listening to the recording - it would be interesting to know about the characters who sung the songs and the circumstances in the play that inspired them - the CD stands as a work of art in its own right.

There are not many composers of any genre who are as capable of creating music that rewards its listeners to the extent that T Bone Burnett does. Not only is he an innovative musician he is also an intelligent lyricist. On Tooth Of Crime he demonstrates just how gifted he is in both areas.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:06 PM | Permalink

In 1976 if you wanted to hear music from a country other than somewhere in North America or the British Isles you had to hope that your local record store had a Folk Music section. This wasn't to be confused with the popular notion of folk music as performed by Bob Dylan or even The Weavers. Rather it was music from different "folk" from around the world. Normally what you would find in these sections were albums whose covers always had pictures of happy smiling "natives" in traditional costume doing something that looked very traditional

I remember the section that they used to have at Sam The Record Man's central location in Toronto Canada fitting that description. The store itself was a marvel, three stories high filled to bursting with records of every genre and description and the walls covered with autographed pictures of everyone from Alice Cooper to Luciano Pavarati. The folk music section for this store was up on the second floor, across the hall from the Jazz/Blues and Singer/ Songwriter sections (which is where you'd find the popular folk singers). I actually used to spend quite a bit of time up there, looking at the covers of the people from all over the world as you could find everything from the massed pipes of the 48th Highlanders to traditional music of South Africa lurking in those bins.

You have to remember the only exposure that most of us had had to music beyond the borders of Europe was the sitar music that George Harrison had incorporated into various Beatles songs or his own solo projects. The really adventurous had perhaps purchased the occasional album of Ravi Shankar's after his appearance at the Monteroy Pop Festival introduced him to the pop music crowd. Aside from that there wasn't anything like what we've come to take for granted today where musicians from a variety of cultures band together to explore sound and rhythm.
It wasn't until 1975 when Mickey Hart joined Zakir Hussain's Tal Vadya Rhythm Band that musicians from a variety of national backgrounds joined forces to combine influences and see what they came up with for the specific purpose of creating a recording. The band was renamed, Diga Rhythm Band after Mickey joined, and in 1976 and recorded their first album; five songs using a variety of percussion instruments ranging from tablas of India, dumbeks of the Middle East, talking drums of Africa, vibraphones, and a full trap set from the West.

What with Mickey Hart and the late Gerry Garcia contributing guitar on two tracks, you could be forgiven thinking that the recording would end up being dominated by Western sounds. It only takes listening to the first track to dispel that notion, as it's soon obvious that both Hart and Garcia have allowed themselves to be swept up by the music and aren't exerting any undue influence on the proceedings. The self titled album that was the result of this first collaboration, Diga Rhythm Band was the first in a series of five recordings that Mickey Hart made with various percussionists from around the world. Now Shout Factory has re-issued all of these recordings under the title of The Mickey Hart Collection with each title for sale individually.

On Diga Rhythm Band we hear the most amazing combinations of rhythms, as on each song the various instruments' sounds are layered to create textures of music that go beyond what you would normally expect to hear from what are primarily percussion instruments. Take for example the fifth song on the disc, "Tal Mala" which translates as "Garland Of Rhythms". If you think about what a garland of flowers is like, a circle of flowers that, depending on the length, can either be worn like a crown or draped over ones shoulders like a necklace, that has neither a beginning or an end. Now imagine a series of rhythms laid out along those lines.

Now multiply that into garlands of differing lengths for different instruments and imagine them interwoven around one central point so that they are being played in relationship to each other and individually. It's like a complicated dance where each dancer has their own specific steps they have to follow that also interact with the steps being performed by the other dancers. If you were to imagine that each dance, or rhythmic pattern, were like the rings in a circle, with those in the centre being the smallest and having to repeat most often, than you'll have a good idea of what happens with the music on this piece.

If I can stretch the analogy just a little more, picture the dancers all wearing different colours, and moving in their patterns within and around each other. Now think of those colours in terms of sound and you'll start to get an idea of how the sound on this piece works to create the effect it does.

While "Tal Mala" is probably the most ambitious of the five creations on Diga Rhythm Band, each of the other pieces has their own distinctive flavour that makes them exciting. On "Happiness Is Drumming" for instance, Gerry Garcia's unique guitar sound is incorporated into a rhythmic pattern that both compliments and accentuates his playing. While the song is by far the most Western sounding of any of the tracks - gradually the percussion seems to work its influence on the guitar until it begins to sound more like another percussion instrument than anything else.

Listening to this disc, thrity-two years after it was recorded, what is most amazing is how it doesn't sound the least bit dated. There is nothing on this recording to suggest it couldn't just as easily been made last year as 1976. Long before the term "World Music" entered into our lexicon of terms for music, Mickey Hart, Zakir Hussain, and the others involved in The Diga Rhythm Band had already discovered there was a great big world of music out there just waiting to be listened to by those willing to open their ears wide enough.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:56 PM | Permalink

It's probably safe to say that you can't go a week these days without reading at least one article talking about the economies of either China or India. It always seems there is someone in some business section of some newspaper always willing to write another breathless instalment in the rise of the East as economic powers. The majority of the writers always seem torn between their amazement that countries like India and China can actually have an economy and citing them as examples of how great the Free Market is.

What most of these articles fail to mention is the cost that's being paid for these great economic miracles. In China the majority of the labour being supplied to fuel the motor of the economy is as close to salve labour as you can get and still be paid for your work. People work long hours for little pay. in conditions that would see plants in North America closed in a second. Of course these are merely technicalities, nothing for us to worry about; it's not like we live there.

India has become the call centre to the world it seems. Almost every time you phone a company for technical support these days, no matter what country you're calling from, you're more than likely to end up talking to someone in Mumbai or Bangalore. But call centres and a burgeoning IT class don't hide the inequities that still exist in Indian society or that huge numbers of people still live in poverty so abject that we wouldn't even begin to comprehend its depth.

The only place you're liable to read about the reality of life in India today is on the pages of one of the many books making their way out of India to the shelves of book stores in North America. Joining those ranks is The White Tiger by first time novelist Aravind Adiga published by Simon & Schuster and just recently released in North America. In his book Adiga not only peels back the gloss of the economic miracle to expose the rot beneath, he instructs us in the means by which a small minority of the population are able to subjugate the majority.

A white tiger is the rarest creature in the jungle, only coming along once in every generation. When Balram Halwai was still able to attend the excuse for a school in his village he was singled out by a school inspector as being the white tiger of his contemporaries for being able to read and write when nobody else could. The inspector promised that Balram would be given a scholarship to attend a proper school so that he could fulfill his potential. Unfortunately fate had other plans, and his family were forced to pull him out of school to help pay off their debt to their landlord.

We learn Balram's life story courtesy of letters he has taken upon himself to write the premier of China in order to educate him so that he won't be fooled by any of the false pictures the politicians he meets might paint about life in India when he comes for his official state visit. He decides that the best way for the premier to understand what life in India is like by telling him the story of his, Balram's, life.

The first lesson Balram has for us is the reality of rural life in India. In his small village everybody is beholden to one of four landlords. If you want to grow anything you have to pay money to one person, it you want to graze animals you have to pay money to another, if you want to use the roads to make money as a rickshaw driver you pay 10% of everything you earn to a third, and finally the fourth one owns the waters so if you wanted to fish or use the water to transport goods you pay him.

It's after Balram's family is forced to borrow money from one of the landlords to pay for a cousin's dowry that he has to leave school and start working in teahouses. But Balram is destined for greater things, and his grandmother comes up with 600 rupees so that he may learn to drive and get a job driving for a wealthy man. Through blind luck he happens to show up at his landlord's compound on the day the youngest son has returned from America and needs his own driver, and begins his long climb out of the darkness of poverty.

Of course he's not just a driver, it turns out he's expected to cook, clean, and do whatever else his new master needs him to do. When his master moves to New Delhi, Balram moves with him and drives him around the capital as he greases the palms of all the various political fixers and parliamentarians that need greasing in order to ensure the family business survives. A hundred thousand rupees here, two hundred thousand there, and Balram sits in the front seat seeing nothing, but witnessing it all.

At one point he asks the premier why he thinks and Balram and the rest of the servants are so loyal to their masters. Why don't they demand a cut or threaten them with the police, or at the very least stand up to the masters who they out number by at least a thousand to one? Balram calls it the Rooster Coop syndrome. In the markets in New Delhi hens and roosters are stuffed into wire cages where they spend their days pecking and shitting on each other fighting just to breathe. According to Balram it's the same for the poor of India, they are so busy fighting among each other for the chance to breathe that they will never be able to escape their cages.

Of course the threat of violence against their families if they misbehave is a factor as well. Balram recounts how a servant of one of the landlords in his home village did something wrong, and the landlord had his entire family killed in retaliation. Balram says it would take a unique individual, a White Tiger even, to be depraved enough to risk the lives of his entire family to steal the seven hundred thousand rupees his employer is carrying in a red leather bag to bribe a politician.

In The White Tiger we watch Balram suffer humiliation after humiliation and be expected to take it. His employer's wife gets drunk one night and forces Balram to let her drive and she kills a child. They make him sign a confession saying he was driving just in case the police decide to press charges against. It's just taken as matter of course that as their servant he would only be too glad to go to jail for them, after all you can't really expect them to go to jail now can you?

Balram's letter to the premier of China is like the confession of a Catholic penitent to his priest, save for one detail. He's not seeking absolution for any crimes that he has committed, he's just using himself as an example to let the premier know the facts of life in modern day India. Bribery and corruption are what grease the wheels of the great economic miracle of India, wheels that are still being turned by slave labour. Underneath the statues of Gandhi, behind the pictures of the beautiful temples, is corruption so ingrained that it's taken for granted as being the way things are and always will be.

The picture Aravind Adiga paints of India in The White Tiger is of a nearly feudal society in the guise of a democracy. If even a tenth of what Balram describes as normal operating business is actual, and there is no reason to believe otherwise, than India's economic miracle is as much a lie as China's. The country might have gained its independence from the British at the end of the 1940's but the majority of people in India are still trapped in servitude.

In the end what makes the events in the book so believable is the character of Balram. He is the perfect servant. He worries whether his master is eating enough, takes pride in him when he behaves honourably, and is disappointed with him when he is weak. For all his protestations about the system, he is still as much a part of it as anybody else and it takes an enormous amount of strength and luck for him to live up to his name of white tiger.

When he does he shows that he's learned his lessons well and knows how to grease the wheels with the best of them. He's not some reformer advocating change, although he dreams of opening a school where children get a real education so they too can be white tigers. There's no room for mercy in the jungle that is Balram's India, and the more tigers he has on his side the better.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga can be purchased either directly from Simon & Schuster or from an online retailer like Indigo Books

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:24 PM | Permalink

I suppose most of you are familiar with the term "hard boiled" detective? Its usually used to describe some tough as nails Private Investigator from the mean streets of a big American city. He can take a punch and a kiss with equal aplomb, and no matter how many injuries he sustains, from either the kiss or the punch, he never seems to show any wear or tear. Over the years Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, and legions of other tough guy actors have brought people like Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlow or Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade to life on the movie screen to give us all a clear image in our heads of what one of these characters should look like.

Ever since I read my first Howard Engel detective story featuring his character Benny Cooperman from the fictional small town of Grantham, Ontario, Canada, if I imagined him looking like anyone at all it was Saul Rubinek. It turns out I wasn't alone in that as Rubinek played Benny both times he was brought to life on celluloid by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in television adaptations of two of Engel's books. Small, sort of round, rumpled, and obviously Jewish, neither Rubinek or by extension Benny are what one would call hard boiled.

So what is the opposite of the hard boiled detective - soft boiled? It just doesn't have the same ring to it as hard boiled does it? Yet what do you call a guy whose mother keeps wondering why he can't be more like his older brother the successful surgeon who lives in Toronto, and whose father was in the ready to wear business for fifty years before retiring to become the gin rummy champ at the club? Instead of whisky for breakfast at some down at the heels bar in a grimy part of the city, Benny lives for egg salad sandwiches and a glass of milk.

The other thing about Benny is that if he gets hit, either in the head or the heart, it hurts, and in his newest adventure, East Of Suez, being published by Penguin Canada on May 8th/08, he's still recovering from a serious bang on the head that's left his memory scrambled and his reading ability reduced to spelling words out letter by letter. After months of rehabilitation Benny has finally returned to his office in Grantham in order to close down his Private Investigation business. He figures that there's not much good he can do for clients if he's no longer able to remember their names or the particulars of their case the second after they tell him.

(In 2001 Howard Engel suffered a stroke that left him with a rare condition called alexia without agraphia, which scrambled his memory and left him unable to read but still able to write. He had to learn how to read all over again and come up with methods compensating for not being able to remember a person's name the second after he heard it. Since the stroke not only has he written an account of his recovery, The Man Who Forgot How To Read, this is the second Cooperman novel he's written with his hero having to cope with a similar condition)

But the best laid plans of mice, men, and private investigators never seem to work out the way they're supposed to. When an old school friend shows up in the office one day while Benny is trying to spell his way word by word through old case files, she convinces him to pick up stakes and head off to South East Asia and investigate the disappearance of her husband in the small country of Murinam.

Vicky and her husband Jake had been running a successful diving business for the tourist trade, when the government decided they wanted more than just the taxes the couple were paying, and nationalized the company. When the local politico who took it over ran it into the ground, he hired Jake back to run it and set him up to take the fall for the place's mismanagement. Benny's job is to see if he can find out what happened to Jake, recover any of the family's fortunes, and of course come out the other side alive.

Murinam still holds onto more then a few mementoes of it's French past, and is also marked by the more recent disaster of the tsunami. Fading and crumbling French colonial architecture mix with wrecks of ships cast up on shore three hundred metres from the beach, and a community of European and North American ex-patriots that seem to have stepped from the pages of a Graham Greene or Somerset Maugham novel. Acclimatizing is complicated for Benny by his inability to remember the name of his hotel or the names of anyone he meets even with the use of his memory book. (a note book to write down everything he's come to know his memory will fail to retain)

Yet in spite of being slowed down by the quirks of his brain and his bout of the local version of "Tourista" stomach, Benny soon finds himself ankle deep in suspects and intrigue. When dead bodies start showing up, and the police and government start taking a little too bit much of an unhealthy interest in his nosing around, Benny knows he must be getting somewhere. Now if only he could remember what it was he said or who he saw that could have triggered those reactions

With East Of Suez Howard Engel has created another wonderful story featuring the self-deprecating and intelligent Benny Cooperman. We can't help but admire Benny as he muddles through his days, vainly trying to remember the name for the local three wheeled taxis, while gradually chipping away at the mystery that surrounds the disappearance of his client's husband. The sounds, sights, and smells of Murinam's capital city. Takot, come to life vividly on the page as he wanders its streets, sampling the food and chatting to any and everyone who might help him crack the case.

All of the characters Benny meets, from the pretty marine biologist, the Catholic priest running the orphanage, and the writer who specializes in travel books for the Kosher trade interested in exotic locales, are potential players in his little drama and wonderful colour for the reader. Of course any one of them could also be a cold blooded killer, and as the bodies start to pile up Benny has to hope that he can read his own writing quickly enough to prevent himself from joining the body count.

Don't come to the pages of a Benny Cooperman novel looking for a hard drinking, hard talking guy packing heat. The only heat Benny might carry would be pocket warmers for a stake out in the middle of a cold Ontario winter. Of course in East Of Suez he won't need to worry about his hands getting cold from the chill of winter - in fact he might just start finding it a little too hot for comfort.

East Of Suez by Howard Engel goes on sale May 8th 2008 and can be purchased either directly from Penguin Canada or other on line retailer like Indigo Books

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:33 PM | Permalink

At first glance there might not appear to be much that the Canadian Government's announcement of who will be heading the Truth and Reconciliation Committee looking into the history of the Residential School System in Canada has in common with the presidential aspirations of Barack Obama and the pastor of his church Jeremiah Wright. Yet both stories reflect deep divisions that exist in both Canadian and American Society. Even a cursory look at the history behind both stories reveals the similarities, while also making a telling statement about both countries and their approaches to similar problems.

In Canada, as in other areas of North America, after the government was unable to commit actual genocide against the Native population they decided to settle on the next best thing and try for cultural genocide. Towards that end they enlisted the aid of both the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches in establishing the Residential School system. A generations of Native Canadian children were taken from their families and placed in this school system in order to drive the "Indianness" out of them.

To that end they had their identities stripped from them through changing their names, forbidding them to speak their languages and practice their religions, and teaching them that the ways of their parents were evil. They were forced to speak in either only English or French, depending on what part of Canada the school was in, and given training in the most menial of professions. The girls were put to work in the school kitchens and laundries so they could learn how to scullery maids and the boys were put to work as janitorial staff and given basic training in how to be unskilled labour.

Aside from having to cope with the terror of being away from home and family, they were also subjected to physical and emotional abuse as punishment for attempting to use their own language or attempting to follow their traditions. On top of that large numbers of both the boys and the girls were sexually abused on a regular basis by the staff of the facilities. As a result of the residential schools - the last one was closed in the 1970s - generations of Native Canadiens found themselves unable to fit in either the White world or the world of their parents.

The colour of their skin named them as second class citizens within society at large, and they didn't have the skills sufficient to find steady employment. On the other hand they no longer had the traditions of their own people to turn to for solace, and they couldn't even talk to their parents anymore as they no longer spoke the same language. With their identities stripped away, suffering the effects of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, and having no means to earn a living, is it any wonder that they and subsequent generations should feel as if they have no future?

When the African National Congress became the first majority rule government in South Africa's history one of the first things they established was a Truth and Reconciliation Committee whose mandate was to travel around the country hearing from people about their experiences under apartheid. Headed by Bishop Desmond Tutu, their mission wasn't simply about apportioning blame, but to try and find a way out of the hate of the past by facing up to the the truth and accepting it. You can't undo the past, but you can come to terms with it so it no longer controls you. The Canadian government hopes that under the guidance of Native Canadian judge, Harry LaForme, Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Committee, will be able to begin that process in Canada.

Although slavery was outlawed in the United States with the defeat of the Southern states in their Civil War, segregation of Black and White exists to this day. Up until the 1960's it was common to see signs in restaurants, swimming pools, and public washrooms forbidding service to people of colour. In the 1970's white communities were still protesting the forced integration of their schools. Although circumstances have obviously improved, there is still a sizeable economic and social gap between the two races.

While Barack Obama claims to be running for President of the United States because he says he was convinced that people no longer wanted to be divided by race, religion or what region of the country they live in, he doesn't have to look any further than the pastor of his own church to see that sharp divisions still exist between black and white. Rev. Jeremiah Wright has given speeches damning the Untied States for it's history of racism and accusing the American government of using AIDS as a weapon against the Black community.

Memories of Hurricane Katrina and tens of thousands of poor Black people seemingly abandoned by their government as they were dying of starvation and dehydration in the Super Dome are still fresh in plenty of people's minds. When that's combined with the continual foot dragging by all levels of government when it's come to rebuilding the homes that these same people lost when the waters flooded the Ninth Ward, and the obscenely quick way in which residences were bulldozed after the waters retreated before there was chance to see if they could be salvaged, you can see why even people more moderate than Wright might be having trust issues.

America has a tendency to look at the past through rose coloured glasses and gloss over the negative. Why do White police officers still stop Black men driving expensive cars more often than they stop White men driving the same cars? Why is the American prison population predominately Black? Why do more Black people live in poverty and have less access to health insurance and education than White people? The answers to those questions can only be found if you are willing to look the past directly in the eye and accept it and its consequences.

Saying that people don't want to be separated by the divide of race any more is all very well and good, but they are empty words when the reality is that people are divided by race and nothing is being done to rectify it. There are very real fears on both sides of this divide that can't just be glossed over by cheery words and optimism. You can't just wish away history or whisk it under the rug as if it never happened.

For the next five years Justice Harry LaForme will be travelling across Canada and examining over a hundred years of Canadian history in the hopes of finding a way to resolve the anger and recriminations that exist on both sides of the issue when it comes to the history of the Residential Schools in Canada. It's not going to be an easy task for many reasons, and it will open a lot of old wounds that some people might have preferred left alone. But when there is still rot in a wound the only way to prevent it from festering is to air it out.

You might want to think about giving Justice LaForme a call one of these days Mr, Obama and find out what kind of work it takes to bridge these divides of yours. America might be ready for you as a President, but are you ready for America's history?

Posted by Richard Marcus at 12:50 AM | Permalink