Leap In The Dark

Sometimes the most disturbing, and most intriguing, stories in the speculative genres are those that take place in seemingly natural circumstances, The streets the characters walk down are nearly identical to the streets you and I walk along on our daily routine. Even most of the things that happen to them are unremarkable as they live out their mundane existence. When something just slightly out of the ordinary is introduced into this environment, it naturally stands out in stark relief to its surroundings.

For audiences raised on the non-stop action of adventure based fantasy and science fiction, the intellectual and psychological intricacies of works by people like Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges or Britain's J. G. Ballard might seem boring and have little or nothing in common with what they are used to reading. Yet if a reader is willing to persevere, and acclimatize themselves to the slower pace, they will find the rewards from this type of work far outweigh the perceived action. For the action doesn't happen where we are used to seeing it, as the majority of it happens inside the heads of the protagonists instead of in a battlefield or the deck of a space cruiser.

One of the past masters of this style of writing is Zoran Zivkovic, and his recently published novella Seven Touches Of Music, available in the United States through AIO Publishers, offers further proof of just how good he is. In it he introduces elements of the bizarre into the mundane with eerie and thought provoking results.

Music has been thought to be able to work various forms of magic on listeners with its power to inspire powerful emotions, or comfort a troubled heart. Expectant mothers play music to their unborn children in the hopes of influencing their development, and hospitals will play music to coma patients in the hopes that it will provide them comfort on some level, and perhaps even trigger a reaction in the deeper levels of the unconscious mind. In Seven Touches Of Music Zivkovic takes this premise and examines the reactions that of seven people touched by music.

An autistic child hearing a piece of music during an art class mysteriously breaks the pattern of drawing circles that he has been following for months by writing out a sequence of numbers. When the doctor working with him asks a mathematician friend if there is any significance to them, he is told that they are "...one of the fundamental values of nature, the fine-structure constant..." Some how or other a six year old autistic child has written out the decimal that defines life while listening to Chopin. Even more odd, is that no matter how many times the doctor repeats the experiment, the child never deviates from his set pattern again.

Five more seemingly unconnected instances of music impacting on normally staid citizens follow after this opening chapter. A librarian's desk top computer catches fire after it starts playing the music from a dream she had, and mysteriously bringing the dream to life as a video. In the dream a library filled with ancient scrolls containing the wisdom of the world is destroyed. A widower inherits his wife's tom cat and penchant for haunting second hand stores. One day he brings home a music box that he very carefully winds in the hopes that it still plays. Meanwhile the cat has climbs into the box in which the music box was packed. Mysteriously when he comes out he is a she and time has shifted. For when the widower follow his "new cat" into the living room, he sees a younger version of himself, his wife, and children sitting around the dinner table; a scene which persists until the music box runs down.

A staid, middle class matron finds herself having to make an unwanted train trip in the middle of the winter to visit her sick sister. When the train is delayed by the weather the music of a hurdy-gurdy played by an old gypsy gives her visions of the future which show disasters happening to her fellow passengers. A painter paints a series of paintings while listening to a band playing in the park, and when he hangs them on his wall at home they appear to form a pattern, a puzzle that no matter how long he stares at he just can't quite solve.

What is there about the music that is causing these seemingly different people to all connect with something beyond reality and to have visions outside their own time, or glimpses of the pattern that makes up life. Yet if we look closely at these people they do have something in common; in one way or another they are all imprisoned by a routine or a lifestyle that seemingly has cut them off from the outside world. The autistic child lives in his head, the librarian is trapped by the routine of a marriage gone stale, the widower has refused to engage the world for years, the old lady in the waiting room has cut herself off from everyone, and the painter has lived according to a rigid, self-imposed, schedule since his retirement.

In each case the music seeps through their defences and elicits responses that in most instances throw their carefully ordered world into disarray. With the exception of the autistic child, because we can not know how he reacts, each of the other individuals has their view of the world radically altered. Lids that have been jammed onto emotions for years begin to pop their rivets, much to the individual's consternation.

For a novel like Seven Touches Of Music to work we have to believe in the characters and their circumstances sufficiently that the impact the music has on their lives becomes as significant to us as it does to them. Zivkovic has not only made his characters utterly convincing, but his depiction of their lives, and the environment they live in, are detailed in such a manner that we can feel the shock to their systems when they are given their brief glimpses into the unknown.

As he builds the story to it's conclusion, it's in the final two scenarios that Zivkovic starts to tie together the separate threads of his story, each character adds another layer to the mystery of the music and its relationship to the events in the story. In the first story the music is a known quality, a piece that one of the protagonists is familiar with, but from there on in it becomes an unknown agent that is being released on unsuspecting victims. At least, they seem to think of themselves as being victimized, but are they?

Seven Touches Of Music is beautifully written story where on the surface nothing much seems to happen, yet each character in the book travels further than most heroes do on epic quests. The action takes place inside the characters as they come to grips with the new awareness of the world that the music has gifted to them. It's the questions that this book asks not the answers it provides that makes it interesting, and as long as you're willing to take that trip with the characters, it will be one of the most rewarding reads you've had in a long time.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 11:03 PM | Permalink

Since 2005 Ruf Records of Germany has been putting together a travelling revue featuring musicians signed to their label and touring them through Europe and North America. This year's version of what they call The Blues Caravan, Blues Caravan 2008, features three women; two established performers, Candye Kane and Deborah Coleman, accompanied by one of their new discoveries, British guitarist Dani Wilde

On January 27th 2008, the three women were recorded live in Bonn Germany and that concert has now been released as a live concert CD Blues Caravan 2008: Guitars & Feathers. The guitars in the title are a reference to Dani Wilde's and Deborah Coleman's guitar playing ability, while the feathers are...well... that's Candye Kane. Aside from being a reference to Candye's last release on Ruf Records, Guitar'd and Feathered, it also refers to Candye's larger than life personality and the fact that she does have a thing for feather boas.

(As of this writing Candye Kane is in recovery from Pancreatic Cancer - the kind that can be dealt with through surgery - and is actually well enough to be talking about a return to performing this July. She had been diagnosed sometime shortly after this concert, and in all probability this could have been one of the last shows she gave before her surgery. As a musician she of course had no insurance that would cover the majority of her medical bills, but thankfully the Blues community rallied around her and were able to raise sufficient funds through concerts and individual donations that it appears she won't have debt to deal with as well as recovering from surgery. For those who'd like to keep up to date on how she's doing, she posts on a regular basis to a special page on her web site)

Unlike previous Blues Caravan recordings where the three performers have worked together, this one was set up as three mini concerts, with the three women coming together to cover Ray Charles' "Won't Leave", to open and again at the end for a finale. First up is Dani Wilde who performs four original tunes. The Brits seem to have a factory that produces high quality, high energy, electric Blues guitarists, and Dani is the latest model. Britain has never been known for mass production like the States, instead of millions of family cars coming off the line, they are better known for luxury sedans like the Rolls Royce. The same thing seems to apply to their guitar players.

Like her predecessors Dani plays with both elegance and power and an understanding that while speed is important, it's also important to hear every note. While its hard to make a definitive judgement on someone's playing after only hearing them for four songs, Dani is definitely more than just another guitar hero(ine). She plays with a passion and commitment that belies her years, and the fact that she felt assured enough to play her own compositions on this night says a lot for her self-confidence. This assurance also comes across in her vocals, for although her range is limited, she sings with a clarity and expression that many vocalists with more experience lack.

As far a vocals go, there are few around these days who can compare to Candye Kane when it comes to power and expression. While there are a lot of big voiced women out there, and women who have a larger range than Candye, there are very few who can do as much with their voices as she can. Not since Mae West has there been a woman who can put so much innuendo into her voice. Unlike many people with large voices though, Candye doesn't just attack her songs and try to bluster her way through them. At the same time she doesn't try and milk them for emotion that isn't there like far too many of today's pop divas. Instead she gives as a true a reading of a lyric's meaning as possible, while always remembering that her purpose on stage is to entertain those listening.

While Candye Kane is a hard act to follow, Deborah Coleman doesn't have any trouble grabbing an audience's ear. While Dani Wilde is a talented player, Deborah Coleman's playing shows what experience adds to someone's guitar work. There's an intangible quality to her playing that says, "this is a Blues woman" that can only be achieved from a combination of life experience and years of playing. I talked earlier about the history of British Blues guitarists, but that pales in comparison to the history that's evoked by Deborah's singing and playing.

That's a point driven home firmly by her version of Willie Dixon's "Whole Lotta Love". While Led Zeppelin might have made a name for themselves covering it as a hard rock number, Deborah's version reminds us where it came from. Instead of pummelling the listener into submission with volume, she digs deep into the emotions of the song and makes it real. There's an authenticity to Deborah's playing that makes her performance live long after she's done on stage; she brings the Blues to life in a way that few other performers, male or female, can.

Ruf records' Blues Caravan recordings have provided showcases for their talent in the past, and has proven to be a great vehicle for exposing an audience to a variety of Blues styles in one package. Blues Caravan: Guitars & Feathers is no exception as its an opportunity to hear three very unique women performing their music on one great disc.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:19 AM | Permalink

On December 20th, 1803 the government of Thomas Jefferson agreed to pay Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte $15 million dollars for the Louisiana territory. The Louisiana Purchase, as this transaction came to be called, gave the U.S. control over access to the mouth of the Mississippi River and all the benefits that came with control of and use of that waterway. The transaction was also one of the earliest examples of a real-estate flip in North America, as the French had only just taken over the territory from the Spanish twenty days prior to selling it off to the new American Republic.

Ten years earlier Louisiana had been part of an agreement reached with the Spanish, as Napoleon dreamed of a Western French Empire with Louisiana as its lynchpin. But when the slave revolt in the French colony of Saint-Dominque succeeded in expelling French troops from the Caribbean, he found himself with a swath of territory in the middle of nowhere and no means of defending it. Making the best of a bad deal he unloaded it for cash that he needed for his attempted conquest of Europe.

Thirty or so years earlier, a few thousand miles north and east of Louisiana, repercussions from the American war of independence were being felt in what are now Canada's Maritime provinces. The British government needed to re-settle troops and civilians who had remained loyal to the Crown in what remained of British North America. Thousands of French speaking Maritime residents were thrown off their land in order to make room for these new arrivals. With no place else to go, a large number of these Acadians headed down to Louisiana - the only non-
British controlled, French speaking colony in North America.

Like the majority of French settlers in New France, the Acadians were originally from the Normandy and Brittany areas of France, and had brought the cultural traditions unique to those areas with them. When they headed south to Louisiana, their music and unique French dialects came with them. (French Canadian films today are still sub-titled in parts of France as the language spoken in Quebec has remained relatively unchanged and is still a version of a 16th century Normandy dialect) When they arrived in Louisiana they were absorbed into the all ready existing French community, but made enough of an impact that an abbreviated, phonetic, version of their name has become permanently associated with the culture of the region: Cajun.

Today, while the sound is somewhat muted, you can still hear the echoes of those "Cajuns" who came down south looking for a home. Most of the Cajun music these days contain lyrics written in a pastiche of languages, that include French, English, and Spanish, while the Celtic sound of Brittany and Normandy has been diluted by the myriad influences it has been exposed to. So it was quite a surprise to listen to a CD by a group of young Cajun musicians with not only a great many of the lyrics in French, but the music redolent of the reels and jigs of their forefathers.

Don't get me wrong, Feufollet's forthcoming CD, Cow Island Hop, on Valcour Records, is not some dry and dusty historical restoration piece that will only be of interest to musicologists or folklorists. It's vital, alive, and very much contemporary, but it's also the first Cajun disc that I've heard in a long time that harkens back to the French roots of the colony. That doesn't make it any better or worse than other Cajun music, it just makes it different and distinct.

Cow Island Hop is a mix of traditional tunes arranged by the band, covers, and a couple of originals. What's most impressive is that it's next to impossible to tell which tunes are which merely by listening to them. Not only does this mean they have understood the music well enough to create it, they play it with an honesty and passion that makes it live for today's audiences. It's one thing to play an old song note for note like it was played a hundred years ago, or to imitate a style of music when you write a song, but it's another altogether to make the music your own.

Listening to Feufollet play songs like "Femme L'A Dit", "Cow Island Hop", and "Jolie Fille"; a traditional, an original, and a cover tune respectively, you get swept away by the, (forgive me for this), jois de vivre that they bring to the music. The joy of life; that's what music is all about isn't it? An expression of the joy at being alive. Part of that joy means feeling things, and that's not always going to be an easy experience, as it's going to involve occasional heartbreak and anger as well as happiness.

On Cow Island Hop you're listening to music where the musicians feel what they are playing, and play what they feel. So instead of just hearing some nice tunes, played in a quaint old fashioned style, you're listening to songs that are alive. Fiddles and accordions have been playing tunes like these since the seventeen hundreds in North America, and for who knows how long in other places in the world. Feufollet makes the music on Cow Island Hop sound like they've been playing it for centuries, but only wrote the songs yesterday.

Everything else aside though, the best thing about Cow Island Hop is just how much fun it is to listen to. You can be as authentic and passionate as you want, but if nobody is going to enjoy what you're doing, there's really not much point in doing it now is there? There are plenty of great Cajun bands out there today and they are all worth listening to for the various things they bring to the music. What make Feufollet distinct is how far back they've reached for their inspiration when it comes to making their brand of Cajun.

Cow Island Hop is being released on July 1st/08 and if you're a fan of Cajun music you won't want to miss it.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:25 PM | Permalink

And now there are four. Two weeks ago sixteen teams began the final stages of the Euro2008 Football championships after working there way through the qualifying stages. Two weeks of some very exciting and surprising football have reduced the field to Germany taking on Turkey and Spain taking on Russia to determine who will meet in the championship game on June 29th 2008. The way the tournament has been going to this point, I doubt anyone can offer an iron clad guarantee on who will advance to that final game in Vienna Austria, let alone leave the pitch as champion.

Of the four teams only Spain has followed the path predicted for it before the tournament. They handily defeated Russia, Sweden, and Greece in the preliminary round before being forced to engage in a penalty kick shoot out to advance past the Italians in the quarter finals. While Spain might not have looked as impressive in their match against the Italians as they did say against the Russians in the first round, the psychological impact of beating their old adversary, the first time in competition since the 1920's, can't be underestimated.

In the modern era Spain has been the perennial underachiever, never living up to their pre-tournament hype and leaving their fans wondering what might have been. More often than not the team that has been responsible for breaking Spanish hearts have been the Italians. As host country for the World Cup in 1982 they were ahead of the Italians 2 - 0 before falling 3 -2 in their quarter final match. That Italy stunned highly favoured Brazilian and German sides as well as the Spaniards on their way to their third World Cup victory, was probably of little consolation to the team or its fans.

So now they have finally broken the curse of the Azurri and will be facing the Russian team that they defeated 4 -1 in the opening game of this tournament. They won't be overconfident after their narrow win over Italy, but they will have the confidence that comes with winning the games they are supposed to win. Although Italy stifled their speedy forwards and quick counter attacks with a smothering defence, they should find more room on the pitch for manoeuvring against an equally fast paced Russian team that concentrates on offence as much as the Spanish do.

This is not the same Russian side that Spain beat so easily two weeks ago though, as they bounced back from their opening defeat to advance out of the round robin, and then ran a highly favoured Dutch team into the ground 3 - 1 in their quarter final match. Even though the game wasn't decided until the second overtime period, the Russian's constant attack mode clearly left the Dutch exhausted and only the excellence of their goal keeper kept the score from mounting higher and allowed the game to extend into extra time.

While one player does not a team make, the return of their star Andrei Arshavin, after missing the first two games as a result of a suspension carried over from the qualifying round, has made Russia a far more dangerous squad then they were when Spain defeated them. He was a constant threat in the game against the Dutch, made a beautiful crossing pass to set up the winning goal, and scored the insurance goal that sealed Holland's fate three minutes from the end of extra time.

After the Netherlands had beaten both Italy, 3 - 0, and France, 4 -1, handily in the opening round, they rested eight starters for their final game against Romania and still won easily by a score of 2 - 0. Everyone considered them to the team to beat coming out of qualifying; they were poised, professional and elegant, and had looked positively unbeatable in destroying their opposition. Yet, against the Russian squad they looked old and tired as the young legs of Russia ran them into the ground. Indicative of their problems were how many penalties they took for late tackles or tackling from behind as they were continually left in Russian dust.

If Russia's defeat of the Netherlands to gain a place in the final four is a surprise, Turkey's presence in the other semi-final against Germany is astonishing. After losing their opening match 2 - 0 to Portugal, they then proceeded to break Swiss and Czech hearts by staging remarkable last minute come from behind wins of 2 - 1 and 3 - 2 respectively. If scoring the tying and winning goals in injury time against the Czechs to decide who advanced to the quarter finals wasn't remarkable enough, the goal they scored against Croatia that sent their quarter final match to penalty kicks came just before the referee's whistle blew to end extra time.

What makes Turkey's run even more remarkable is the number of starting players they are missing due to injury or suspension. Now it seems like these absences are finally going to catch up to them. Aside from missing their starting goalie due to a two game suspension after committing a nasty, and unnecessary foul, in their match against the Czech Republic, seven other starters will be absent from the line up when the whistle blows to start their match against Germany. It really seems impossible for the German side to lose.

Yet Germany hasn't exactly lived up to their billing as one of the pre-tournament favourites having lost to Croatia in the opening round and escaping with a fortunate 1 - 0 victory over Austria. They looked very impressive defeating Poland in their opening game, but if Austria had had anyone capable of putting the ball in the net, Germany may not have even made it out of the first round. However, in their quarter final match-up with Portugal they played a beautiful, inspired game against one of the pre tournament favourites to win 3 - 2.

So the question is, which version of the German team will show up to play Turkey? On paper they shouldn't have a problem with the horribly depleted Turkish side, but they should have been able to beat Croatia and handle Austria with ease. Yet, it's almost impossible to believe that the squad that handled Portugal so easily will have any problems with Turkey, and that Germany won't be one of the two teams playing in Vienna on the 29th of June. However, if there's one squad that is playing the underdog role beautifully, and who you can't help cheering for, it's Turkey.

If I'm being honest though, I haven't seen anything that the Turkish side has done that make it look like they will be able to get past a German side with so much potential. In fact none of the remaining teams look to have the all round team that the Germans have. While Russia will most likely get past Spain in their semi-final, Germany has to be the favourite to win the 2008 European Championship.

However, if there is one thing that Euro2008 has proven, it's that no result is assured until the referee blows the whistle for the final time and anything still can happen between now and the end of the match on Sunday June 29th.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 01:18 AM | Permalink

I've been receiving review copies of DVDs from Delmark Records in Chicago Illinois for the last couple of years now. While there have been some interesting experimental Jazz concerts, and a few other Jazz discs, the ones I've liked the most have been the recordings of Blues gigs from bars around the city. While a couple of the bars, like Buddy Guy's Legends, are large and well appointed, most of them look like they could be a local bars in any working class neighbourhood in North America.

It's only when the camera pans across the walls of these bars to show the autographed pictures of those who have played them over the years, that the difference between these places and other local watering holes becomes clear. There aren't many neighbourhood bars in many cities that can boast of having had Sonny Boy Williams, Junior Walker, Carey Bell, and Luther Alison perform a gig in their bar, let along play there on a regular basis. The picture walls of these bars are hall of fame galleries of Blues practitioners dating back to the late forties when the post war electric Blues scene in Chicago first started.

They're a far cry from the large venues where today's pop stars perform.You're about as likely to find fancy dressing rooms and special foods laid out here for those playing as you're the Grand Wizard of the Klan walking in the front door. For although the crowds are pretty much mixed these days, they're still located in the old neighbourhoods and pull in a fair number of people from the surrounding streets. Follow the camera through the door and wend your way through the crowd to the small stage, and you've stepped into a world where the old divisions don't matter; everybody is here for the same reason, to listen to the music.

The Natural Rhythm Social Club is located on the South Side of Chicago and in August of 2007 Delmark records brought their recording equipment and cameras out to record Byther Smith and his band for the DVD Blues On The Moon. Released on June 17th/2008, this collection of twelve songs is some of the most intense Blues music I've heard gathered in one place before.

Now if the name Byther Smith means as little to you as it did to me when I first read his name on the cover of the DVD, don't feel too bad as he seems to have flown under everybody's radar until recently. Born in Monticello, Mississippi in 1933, Smith arrived in Chicago as part of the post war migration North in the 1950's. He had been a bass player prior to coming to Chicago, but soon switched to guitar and began playing gigs around town.

According to the biography included in the liner notes of Blues On The Moon although Byther received some local recognition in the sixties and seventies, it wasn't until the 1980s and the recording of his first full length album, Housefire on the Razor label, that he began to garner attention. Listening to Byther Smith for the first time, you have to wonder how the hell a talent as impressive as this could have been missed for so long. His voice is as strong and authentic as any of his more storied contemporaries, his guitar playing assured and stirring, and his own material is the equal to anything I've heard written with few exceptions.

Some Blues musicians are known for their ability to wring emotion out of a lyric, others for the way their guitar playing pulls at your heart strings. Byther Smith brings to his music an intensity of emotion that shines through in the forcefulness of both his guitar playing and his vocals. If emotion is an electrical current powering music, than Smith is a conductor who translates it into guitar and vocals that pulses with an intensity that could power a small city. Constantly driving forward, his music challenges the listener to keep pace with the level of emotion he's transmitting and to let it carry them places where others aren't able to venture.

Eight of the twelve songs on the DVD are Byther's own compositions and each one is as assured and professional a song as you're liable to hear from any Blues musician no matter what their experience and credentials. "Blues On The Moon" and "Give Up My Life For You", the third and fourth songs on the disc respectively, are two that stood out in particular for me due to the two different perspectives they give a listener into Byther's personality.

"Blues On The Moon" can be seen as a funny song about being offered five million dollars to play Blues on the moon. It's sort of silly, but think about his career as a musician and the lack of financial success he's experienced to date, and there's also a certain amount of irony you can attach to the song. Being paid a large amount of money for a gig is as likely to happen to him as he's likely to play a gig on the moon. What's nice about this song is that's there not an ounce of self-pity to be heard, It's just a simple statement of fact, and an acknowledgement that you don't play the Blues in the hopes of fame and fortune.

"Give Up My Life For You" is a far more complex and emotionally intense song then its immediate predecessor. Who else do you know has compared love's intensity with the crucifixion? "Baby Jesus died/He died for this world/ I'm Baby - Don't let Him die for you girl". The power of the lyrics, and their emotional depth, coupled with the intensity of Byther's vocal delivery and the churning strength of the music, makes this a love song unlike any love song you've heard before.

It would be remiss not to mention the four men accompanying Byther on this disc. Anthony Palmer on guitar, Daryl Coutts on keyboards, Greg McDaniel on bass, and James Carter on drums, are equally proficient on their instruments as their front man. Not only do they do a magnificent job of accentuating Byther's creations with their playing, they each add a layer of texture to a song that keeps in mind that the song is what's important, not their contribution.

As anybody whose familiar with Delmark DVDs has come to expect the sound and visual quality of this disc is exemplary, with the options of either 5.1 surround or DTS sound available for those with the equipment. It also comes with a combined commentary/interview track with Byther Smith that you can play while watching the concert. Blues On The Moon is also available as a CD that features the almost identical track listing, missing only the eleventh track on the DVD, "My Baby's Mean" .

You may never have heard, or even heard of, Byther Smith before listening to Blues On The Moon, but you won't be forgetting him soon after this disc. His passion, intensity, and talent combine to make him a truly remarkable Blues musician.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 12:26 AM | Permalink

You ever wonder what people are implying when they refer to a band or a performer as "hardworking"? I mean don't all bands work hard in one way or another? Sometimes I think it's almost an insult implying that the act in question doesn't have very much talent but they sure do try hard. Other times I wonder if it's an attempt to make them sound like "regular folk", who, like the rest of us, have to work for a living instead of leading the life of glamour that so many associate with being a professional musician.

The irony is that the majority of musicians don't lead anything remotely resembling a glamourous life style. If they're lucky they make enough money that they don't have to take a second job in order to make ends meet. Even to do that means spending large amounts of time being away from home, living out of motel rooms, setting up and taking down their equipment for each gig, and spending long hours on the road driving between gigs. Sometimes that will mean not getting to bed until three in the morning after a gig and only getting a few hours sleep before having to spend hours driving to the next town.

On the other hand there are some bands, and some individuals, who are able to to connect to their audiences in a way that other's can't because of the feeling they generate of "being one of us". Sometimes it's the topics of the songs they choose to sing about, sometimes it's the way they sing the songs, and even rarer still are the ones who feel like they are singing with the voice of the audience. It's not much of a surprise that most of those who fall into the latter category are also Blues musicians, as a great many of those performers have lived the hard scrabble lives that give them the experience required for that voice to ring true.

William P. Homans, better known as Watermelon Slim, front man of Watermelon Slim And The Workers, is a veteran of the Vietnam war who worked as everything from a journalist to a truck driver. He's not some pretty boy rock star, in fact you'd be generous to call him road weary and shop worn. His voice isn't what you'd call melodious, but it is the voice of a man who has experienced any number of ups and downs on the road that's carried him to his current destination, and the voice of a man you feel you can trust.

From the first to the last song on No Paid Holidays, his new CD on the Northern Blues label being released Tues. June 24th, Watermelon Slim shows once again why his music is able to reach out and touch people hearts as well as their minds. It doesn't matter whether or not you are familiar with the topic or if he's singing about something you've experienced, he sings in such a manner that it becomes something you can identify with.

You're usually going find one or two songs on his discs that you'll be able to identify with, and No Paid Holidays isn't an exception to that rule. I'm sure at one point in time everybody has been in the same predicament as the one described in "Call My Job". Staying out too late, and drinking too many the night before aren't a combination guaranteed to make you bright eyed and bushy tailed for work in the morning, and "Call My Job" put's that experience into perspective. I don't know about anyone else, but the times I did that, were when I had a job that I wasn't that keen on, and was feeling frustrated with my life. Listening to this song I could hear all of those feelings reflected in the lyrics and in the way the song was being delivered.

While all the songs on No Paid Holidays are worth listening to, the one that stood out the most for me was Slim's version of the Laura Nyro tune "And When I Die". Years ago David Clayton Thomas and Blood, Sweat, & Tears had a hit with this song back in the 1970's, doing it as an up-tempo, pop song with a full horn section. It was very dynamic and uplifting, much in the same way really good Gospel music can carry you away. Instead of trying to compete with that, Slim has gone the opposite route and performs a nearly acappella version that is just as powerful in it's simplicity.

I can't really put my finger on what it was about the way he sings it, but from the very first note to the last he had my complete attention. Unlike the Blood, Sweat, & Tears version which was very slick and polished, Watermelon's version is rough hewn and raw, It sounds like each word is costing him, as he struggles to express what he needs to say about a subject that none of us really like to talk about. Yet, at the same, time you can hear the dogged determination in his voice that says how important it is for him to say what needs to be said. He sounds like anyone of us would sound trying to deal with something particularly difficult.

Watermelon Slim And The Workers may or may not be a hard working band, but I do know that they are musically one of the tightest bands you're liable to hear in any genre. On No Paid Holidays they are joined by special guests Dave Maxwell on piano for a couple of cuts and Lee Roy Parnell on electric slide guitar for "Bubba's Blues". Yet what makes this band, and Watermelon Slim in particular, so distinctive isn't what they do, but how they do it.

In the early days of modern theatre, back in the middle ages, they used to do performances of religious plays featuring a character called "Everyman" who represented all of humanity. It's a ridiculous conceit to think that one person can represent the experiences of a whole species, but a person can speak with a voice that is familiar enough that we all recognize at least some of what he's saying. No Paid Holidays proves once again that Watermelon Slim can sing a song in such a way that nearly anybody can identify with it. He and the Workers can rock the house and break your heart, and do it in a way that we can all understand.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:36 AM | Permalink

The way the story goes is that after Adam and Eve screwed up and committed the "Original Sin", humans were gifted with something called "Free Will". In a lot of ways it was akin to God giving humanity enough rope to hang themselves. The deal was you can either follow my rules, live a good life and end up in heaven after you croak, or you can be a sinner and go to Hell. It was a very convenient way for the Church, and those in charge of the various dominions etc. to ensure that their subjects toed the line.

It gave everybody the impression that they were free to do as they chose to do, when in actual fact they were being "programmed" to live according to certain social, moral, and political standards that suited those who dictated what constituted "good" and "evil". It's much the same today, as most of our laws and social codes are aimed at ensuring the few in charge are able to control the many who aren't. After a couple thousand years of this code dictating our behaviour most of it's so ingrained that it's second nature and we have developed what we consider natural inhibitions that prevent the majority of us from deviating very far from the accepted norm.

Our society isn't unique in this, all societies develop codes of behaviour that are geared towards sustaining the status quo and keeping order. However it's not only learned behaviour that dictates our actions. Feelings, like the love a mother bears for her children, may not tell us how to behave directly, but because they are a part of our overall matrix, they colour every decision we make whether we are aware of it or not. Who hasn't considered those important in their lives before doing something like accepting a new job, or even deciding on going out after work before heading home?

Of course there are always people looking to turn the way our brains work to their advantage. If you have any sense of awareness, you'll realize that these days you are continually being bombarded with information that's designed to manipulate the way you think. Commercials, political speeches, and anybody with an opinion, continually try to trigger reactions in your brain that will make them seem favourable to you. Like Pavlov and his famous dogs, the commercials, and everyone else, are trying to train to drool for their particular bell.

While that's insidious enough when you think about it, wouldn't it even be worse if a means were discovered where human behaviour could be manipulated by surgically activating or deactivating certain parts of the brain? What if you could convince somebody that when they felt pain they were feeling pleasure, or trigger them to be continually terrified? In his latest book, Neuropath, published by Penguin Canada, Scott Bakker postulates that very horrifying reality.

Professor Thomas Bible teaches psychology at Columbia University in New York City. His marriage has just ended and he's trying to deal with the repercussions of that, and maintain a relationship with his two young children in spite of the limited access he has to them through the custody arrangements. So when his old friend from University, Neil Cassidy, turns up at his door unexpectedly one night he's thrilled to see him. As the night wears on and Neil describes the work he's been doing for the government, Tom becomes more and more disturbed.

Neil had gone into the practical side of working on the human brain, and become a neuro-surgeon. Instead of going into surgery though he had taken to researching the brain and how it worked; what parts controlled what aspects of a person's behaviour. Eventually his research attracted the attention of the National Security Association and they set him to work on devising new and better ways of "interrogating" terrorist suspects. As is always the case when there's a military application, unlimited money and resources were put at his disposal, and he can now trigger almost any reaction he wants in a person through manipulating parts of their brain.

While this is disturbing enough on its own for Thomas, the worst is yet to come. Leaving Neil sleeping off the booze they drank, Thomas heads into work the next day to find three FBI agents waiting for him. They show him a video disc that had been mailed to their office, of someone who has had their brain re-wired in such a way that she can't differentiate between pain and pleasure. It's only after they've shown him the disc that they tell him that Neil is their prime suspect. He vanished from NSA a couple of weeks earlier, and when the disc showed up at FBI headquarters two and two were added up to make Neil.

They've come to Thomas to ask the big question - why the hell is he doing this, what is he hoping to accomplish? The answer is that he is proving to the world that free will doesn't exist - the brain does what it wants, not what we want, and we have no control over it. Environment, outside stimuli, and anything else that triggers a reaction among our synapses does so because of the brains construction, not because of us exerting any "will". As more discs are mailed to the FBI showing people doing things that they obviously have no control over, it becomes obvious that Thomas is right.

For those of you who've read Scott Bakker's previous work, The Prince Of Nothing trilogy, Neuropath will come as a shock as it's a substantial change of pace from epic fantasy. This is a taut, and nerve wracking psychological thriller that is not only spine chilling, but also intellectually challenging. Is it really possible that we don't have any control over anything that our brain does? That everything we do and say is merely the mental equivalent of an electronic pulse produced by a spool of copper wire conducting energy generated by random flashes of lightening?

What's especially unnerving is that the technology being utilized by Neil to carry out his experiments doesn't even seem very speculative, and there's no reason to believe that some government agency somewhere isn't carrying out these same experiments even now. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't put it past most security services in the world to try and do some of things Neil describes doing while he worked for the NSA. (In fact in an author's note Scott Bakker points out that there is now technology available that allows doctors to predict a patient's choices before they are conscious of making them).

Neuropath is not set in the future, nor on some other planet where another race has access to advanced technology that allows it to control humanity. It's set right here, and right now in a world populated by people who are every bit as believable as you and me with pretty much the same technology that we have available to us. That's what makes it so frightening.

Those wishing to purchase a copy of Neruopath can do so by ordering it directly from Penguin Canada or Amazon.ca

Posted by Richard Marcus at 11:37 PM | Permalink

As a kid I remember one of my favourite stories was the Rudjard Kipling tale called "Riki-tiki-tavi", about a brave and resourceful mongoose. From what I could tell from reading the story as a child, a mongoose was a weasel or rodent like mammal not that much bigger than a martin or a fisher. What makes them so unique is their absolute fearlessness when it comes to facing down the mighty King Cobras of India. The mongoose takes advantage of its speed and agility to elude the deadly bites of its opponent, until it can manoeuvre itself into position to grab the snake from behind and snap its neck.

Ever since then I've had nothing but admiration for those little mammals and their bravery. Finding out later that they not only will take on Cobras above ground, but will follow them down into their tunnels as well, only made them that much more impressive. This was one tough and brave little animal willing to go up against creatures many times bigger than it and from whom the smallest of bites would mean death. Even today any reference to a mongoose, no matter how oblique, attracts my attention.

So when I was offered the chance to read and review an advance copy of Tobias Buckell's forthcoming release, Sly Mongoose I jumped at the opportunity. I was even only slightly disappointed when I found out that it wasn't about a sentient race of mongooses, but that the Mongoose of the title referred to the elite fighting force of a Rastafarian government in space.

At some point in the future Earth had made contact with an alien race called the Sataraps and proceeded to sell millions of their people into slavery in exchange for technology. Eventually the descendants of those slaves revolted and were able to defeat their overlords and form their own societies. Instead of unifying under the banner of their species though a good many developed their own societies, while others created a type of imperial federation known as The League of Human Affairs.

That the League's main interest seemed to be forcing the independent human governments to join them, resulted in the world of New Anegada creating its elite force of warriors, The Mongoose, to help protect the other free worlds from the League. When Pepper, one of the founders of the elite fighting unit, literally falls out of orbit and through the protective shield keeping the city of Yatapek on the planet Chilo safe from the boiling hot acid of the world's atmosphere, it's not because he was trying to set a new record for free fall.

It was a desperate move, that cost him literally an arm and a leg, so that he could carry a warning of a deadly invasion force making its way towards Chilo, from which no human would be safe. One by one the passengers and crew of the ship he had been travelling on had succumbed to the infection that turned them into mindless extensions of a collective consciousness known as The Swarm. Instead of killing those who stood in their way The Swarm was more interested in making everybody one of them by spreading the infection through the simple expedient of biting their potential victims.

At first it's thought that Chilo was only a random target, but Pepper finds out information about the city of Yatapek that makes him question that assumption. The city depends on what little precious metal it can excavate from the beneath the surface of the planet for its survival. Centuries ago when it was founded the original colonists had purchased protective suits that allowed people to walk on the surface for short periods of time. Over the years the suits have worn down and the city can't afford the technology to repair them let alone upgrade them. The only people able to fit in the suits anymore are teenagers willing to starve themselves to maintain a small enough stature to fit in them.

On the day Pepper fell through the atmosphere Timas was walking the surface in an attempt to gauge the extent of the damage that the debris from Pepper's forced entry caused the drilling apparatus. While out there he swears he saw other life forms moving across the surface. While nobody else believes him, when he tells Pepper, the Mongoose Man thinks he sees a reason for the invasion. What if there are survivors of the former overlords somehow living on the planet's surface and the League has created this "infection" as a means to eliminate them?

With Sly Mongoose Tobias Buckell has taken your standard space action adventure story and given it a little extra bite with the addition of a zombie army seemingly intent on replicating itself until it swallows all of humanity. While the story line is pretty much as old the genre, mysterious alien threat, Buckell's ability to create interesting characters keeps the book from descending to the level of a cliche. While at first glance Pepper appears to be nothing more than a standard action hero, he's gradually revealed to be a far more complicated and interesting character than your average killing machine.

Of course what made him all the more appealing to me was that he shares many of those attributes that I had so admired in Riki-Tiki-Tavi all those years ago; not only is he brave and a good fighter, he's also smart. Many a good strong fighter has gone down in battle because they don't have the ability to think three steps ahead of their adversary. That's not a problem for Pepper, for like any good mongoose knows, his survival depends on being able to anticipate where the cobra's fangs are going to strike before they do - so he can be somewhere else.

Yet it's actually Timas, the young man who serves his city by walking on the surface of Chilo in a dangerously old environmental suit, who is the most interesting character in the book. He's spent his whole life being conditioned to believe that no sacrifice is too big to make in order to preserve both his city and the status allocated his family because of the work he does. They are given preferred housing, access to better food, and whatever luxuries are available to the city because Timas risks his life on a weekly bases.

Racked with guilt every time he eats at the thought that he might gain weight and no longer be able to fit in the environmental suit, he has become a bulimic. After every meal he forces himself to throw up in a desperate attempt to stay small. Timas' struggle to overcome the emotional blackmail of his parents and his community is as interesting a battle as the one that rages between The Swarm and Chilo's defenders. Its the added dimension that elevates Sly Mongoose out of the ordinary and into the worth reading category.

With Sly Mongoose Tobias Buckell has written more than just another two dimensional space adventure. While it contains plenty of action, and enough plot twists to satisfy anyone's need for excitement, it's his ability to create convincing and interesting characters that makes this book really worthwhile.

Sly Mongoose will be published this August by Tor Books, and is available for pre-order at most on line retailers.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:18 AM | Permalink

There's a type of British comedy that when done well combines all the best attributes of farce, theatre of the absurd, and their own Pantomime tradition. Comedy troupes like Monty Python's Flying Circus and Beyond The Fringe were great examples of how this translated into sketch comedy for television, stage, and film. In fiction the best known example of this style was the late Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series.

While the sketch comedy routines of television and radio didn't need to worry excessively about plot or even a narrative line, and could routinely go off like small bombs of comic excess with no worries about what would come next, Douglas Adams didn't have that luxury. Whether in its first incarnation as a BBC radio show, as a television series, or a sequence of novels, his Hitchhiker's Guide would not have worked without having its various plot lines and sub plots to guide its seemingly unconnected random moments of silliness.

It's a difficult path to navigate, balancing lunacy with the needs of a full length novel, and there aren't many writers who seem capable of carrying it off. One need look no further than Tim Scott's first novel, Outrageous Fortune, published by Random House Canada for proof that merely being funny doesn't make for a good novel. Like Adams, Tim Scott began his career with the BBC, appearing in the sketch comedy show, And Now In Colour under the name of Tim de Jongh, before continuing on to writing and directing successful children's shows.

Unlike Adams though Scott does not appear to have understood what is necessary to make a good novel. While there is no denying he has a keen sense of the absurd, and even shows some flashes of genuine insight into human nature, his inability to tie together the bits and pieces that he's written into a coherent shape results in a novel that doesn't so much finish but peters out in the end.

Set some time in the future, Outrageous Fortune follows the misadventures of Jonny X as a particularly bad day turns into a particularly bad couple of weeks. After coming home from his job as very successful dream manufacturer he finds that his house has been stolen. Not robbed, but the whole structure had been shrunk down to a hundredth of its size and whisked away to be sold in all probability on the housing black market. Adding insult to injury the thieves had left a business card in place of Jonny's house emblazoned with the words "Don't you hate it when this happens'? and a 1-800 number with final seven digits spelling out AARRGHH.

If that isn't bad enough Jonny has the dim recollection of having a really nasty argument with his girlfriend the night before, but finds that he can't quite bring all the details to mind - in fact can't remember a bloody thing about it. Needless to say that doesn't put him in the most receptive frame of mind when an encyclopedia salesperson descends on him from a helicopter and does her best to convince him that what he needs most of all at this point in his life is a complete set. She's not even phased when he points out to her that he no longer has a house to keep the books in. All things considered it's not surprising that Jonny decides getting a drink takes priority over going into work right at that moment and heads off to his favourite bar.

Now the world has changed quite a bit from the earth you and I are familiar with, especially when it comes to local government and means of transportation. Its in the creation of the new society that Scott shows real imaginative flare, and a highly developed sense of the absurd. While there is still an elected government, they are nothing more than a figure head as all real power now resides in the hands of music companies. Instead of wards or districts as cities are divided up in our time, they are now split into areas defined by musical genres.

Each genre is set up as an independent fiefdom with its own rules and regulations. So those living in Classical music obviously have different values and by-laws to adhere to than those who reside in Punk or Rave. Of course if your tastes change you might find things a little uncomfortable until you're able to arrange a move. Still the system works out quite well, as it does ensure that like minded people do end up living with each other, and you don't run into awkward situations of having neighbours blasting their Christmas novelty singles while you're getting heavily into the latest trance/ambient atmospheric creation.

All ground transportation is now done via motorcycle, and the roads that criss-cross throughout the city are each area's responsibility to maintain. While they are allowed to set their own bylaws in terms of speed and noise, the overall control of the roadways are controlled by a quasi-military force called the Zone Traffic Police. This force not only enforces traffic violations, they also seem to have taken it upon themselves to adjudicate any other matters they feel like. When Jonny runs afoul of them, it allows Scott to create a Kafkesque situation of wrongful accusation that starts out promisingly enough, but unfortunately is allowed to continue until absurdity becomes tedium, and you want the story to move along.

This is pretty much where the book falls flat over and over again as far too many times situations are allowed to drag on far past the point of being humorous. In many ways they are like ill conceived skits in a sketch comedy show where the attempt to turn a joke into a scene falls flat through lack of thinking it through all the way. In fact this is exactly the problem with Outrageous Fortune - it feels like a series of unconnected, somewhat ill conceived skits, that are occasionally funny, but don't seem to go anywhere in the end. Scott does make an effort to tie all the threads together in the final chapters, and although he provides a probable solution given the world he has created, it feels very anti-climatic.

While Tim Scott shows that he has a keen sense of the absurd, and can be very funny at times, Outrageous Fortune lacks the through line required by a novel. Outrageous Fortune offers conclusive proof of that it takes more than a collection of funny bits to make a novel.

For those wishing to pick up a copy of Outrageous Fortune you can order a copy directly from Random House Canada or an on line retailer like Amazon.ca.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:36 PM | Permalink

It's really quite amazing how many gifted performers there are in the world of popular music who seem to fly under most people's radar. Part of the problem is that most of them aren't ever going to find themselves getting what you'd call extensive radio play or being the flavour of the week. One thing that most of these folk seem to have in common is a passionate love for what they do, and for the energy that is so integral to playing Rock & Roll.

In most of these folk's hands Rock & Roll is still the music of the streets, and has a wild and untamed feel to that makes it just a little unsafe - just like Rock & Roll should be. That was the big attraction to Punk when it came along in the seventies, it made Rock and Roll dangerous again, gave it back the edge that had been smoothed away by corporate decision makers and pretentious progressive rockers.

A musician who has slid under my radar for the last thirty years has been Alejandro Excovedo. I know it sounds sort of silly but after listening to his latest release, Real Animal on Manhattan Records, I can't help but think that he sounds just like a musician from New York City should sound like. I don't know if there is such a thing as a "New York" sound officially like there is a Detroit sound, but there's something about Alejandro that exclaims New York City in neon lights as bright as any sign on Broadway.

From the tips of his spiked hair to the points of his cowboy boots, and the black clothing and shades in between, he definitely looks the part, and his music has that sharp edge and buzz of excitement that makes me think of the streets of New York. From the pure pop sound of the opening song, "Always A Friend", the raw power of "Chelsea Hotel '78", to the nearly sentimental sound of "Sensitive Boys" Alejandro covers almost all the approaches possible to a Rock & Roll song.

Now in case I've left you with the impression that the music on this disc is bare bones, minimalist, that's far from the case. Alejandro and producer Tony Visconti have incorporated saxophone, cello, and violin to fill out the sound. Yet in keeping with the overall tone of the disc, one of driving energy and power, those instruments are used in such a manner that they augment the strength of the music without making it sound over produced. In fact I don't think I've heard strings used in quite the rock and roll manner that they've been used here.

One of the most striking songs on the disc is "Chelsea Hotel '78", where Alejandro recounts what it was like to be living there during the days of Sid & Nancy. He doesn't romanticize the time like so many others might, but looks at with cool dispassion and a fair bit of irony. "We came to live inside the myth/Of everything we'd heard" he sings in the opening verse. However, the dream goes sour, and the fantasy of artistic suffering turns ugly when it meets the reality of Sid Vicious' heroin addiction. Nancy's body found on the bathroom floor was the final death knell for youthful innocence and a reality check. "So we all moved out/(And it makes perfect sense)/And we all moved on/(And it makes no sense)" is the songs summation, and it could just as easily be the epitaph for the whole sordid and sad affair of Sid & Nancy.

"Sister Lost Soul", the track that follows directly after "Chelsea Hotel '78" is almost the answer to the trauma of those early days. It's a gentle song, about having managed to survive and grow up with your ability to feel still intact. Everybody around has let their hearts grow hard, and the singer feels "like the only one left alive". Yet he throws the shadow of doubt on his own feelings, by admitting, "You're not the first or last I've lied to/I'm lying to myself right now". Maybe there's nothing left but to get what comfort you can, where you can, and be happy with that?

Real Animal contains thirteen songs, and not one of them is longer then four and a half minutes. This disc is a reminder that's there's a lot to be said for, and can be said by, a well written, and passionately played Rock & Roll song. Alejandro Escovedo is a throwback to when Rock & Roll was something that scared your parents, and made the authorities nervous. Real Animal is a breath of fresh air in the normally stuffy world of pop music.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:28 PM | Permalink

It was a couple of years ago that I first heard about the work that Tim Duffy was doing with the Music Makers Relief Foundation. Initially he started out with the simple goal of recording some of the older musicians who lived in and around the area of North Carolina where he was living in order to preserve some great music that he feared would be lost otherwise. This soon evolved into trying to parlay the recordings into a means to raise money to assist those same musicians, who time and fashion had forgotten.

From those humble beginnings the Foundation took shape. Yet this isn't just some charity giving handouts; most of the men and women Tim met while making his initial field recordings were quite capable of still getting up on stage and performing, or going into the studio and cutting sides like they did forty years ago. Sure when someone's in dire straits from medical bills or other such calamity the Foundation is there to lend a hand, but a good many people are being helped by being given the chance to work again doing what they do best - making music.

The Music Maker performers have now played festivals across Europe and down into Argentina, and released numerous CDs and a collection of DVDs. The early recordings were pretty raw, having mostly been culled from Tim's time out in the field from recordings made on a two track machine. As the foundation became more established they built their own studio and were able to bring the musicians in and record them with proper equipment in a more controlled environment. Now it appears they've reached the stage where they are making the leap to the next level and are no longer content to just preserve the music, but inject some new life into it as well.

John Dee Holeman has been one of the stalwarts of the Foundation's roster. He's recorded three discs for them already, two solo releases and one where he was paired up with the Australian alternative folk group The Waifs. Now, for his forthcoming release, You Got To Lose, You Can't Win All The Time, John is backed by a full band, and a slew of special guests adding finishing touches to his music that range from Wurlitzer solos to pedal steel guitar fills.

John plays an old time County/Blues style that has more in common with the simplicity of backwoods music than the modern electric Blues that most of us are familiar with. In fact you're as liable to hear traces of the Carter family in his style as you are Mississippi or Chicago. So when I read in the press release about what they had done with this disc, I was concerned that in their attempts to add to John's music they might have ended up diminishing it through over production. Make something too gaudy with decorations and it loses the integrity that made it attractive in the first place.

Well, as it turns out I needn't have worried, producer Zeke Hutchins has taken the same amount of care working with these songs as an art restorer would take working on a masterpiece. He never once lets any of the additions do anything but augment John Dee's voice and playing, or accentuate the distinctiveness of his style. Of course it doesn't hurt that the key musicians include the president of the foundation, Tim Duffy, on acoustic guitar, and core Music Maker players like Cool John Ferguson on electric guitar, and Jay Brown on bass.

Anytime you get a group of like minded people together working on a project you know the results stand a good chance of being special, and that's the case here. Take the three traditional songs that John arranged for this recording; "Early Letter Blues", "One Black Rat". and "John Henry". I've heard other people record versions of these songs before, heck I've heard John do versions of "John Henry" and "One Black Rat" before, but I've never heard them performed so they sound as alive as they do on this disc. The addition of mandolin and fiddle, plus harmonizing from Ellen Stevenson and Taz Halloween, on "One Black Rat" fills out the sound in such a way that it adds another dimension to the song while still allowing it to maintain its core identity.

When John made his original recordings with Music Makers, they had the comfortable feel of having been recorded on the back porch one night when everyone was gathered around to listen to some tunes and have a few drinks. Listening to them you could feel the atmosphere and the environment that was responsible for creating this style of music all those years ago. Not only does You Got To Lose, You Can't Win All The Time retain that atmosphere, it actually improves on it. Instead of just one man playing for some friends on his back porch, it's now a community barn dance, where all the musicians from miles around have brought their instruments.

John Dee Holeman has been playing the Country/Blues of the Carolinas for decades, and at nearly eighty years old, he was born in 1929, he still brings energy and spirit to his music than most musicians half his age. Not only does You Got To Lose, You Can't Win All The Time showcase John's talents, it does so in a way that brings new life and vigour to his material. It just goes to show, that which was old, can be made new again.

You can pick up a copy of You Got To Lose, You Can't Win All The Time by going to the Music Makers Relief Foundation web site.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:31 PM | Permalink

The riots that rocked Paris last summer in the North African districts were only the most recent chapter in the long and nasty history of the relationship between France and her former colony Algeria. Stemming from the days when Algerians struggled for independence in the late fifties and the French military committed atrocity after atrocity, which the Algerians answered in kind, even De Gaul's ceding the Algerians independence failed to diminish the resentment felt on either side.

Due to the continually volatile state of Algerian politics there has been a steady flow of immigrants from the former colony to France almost since the country gained her independence. Elected governments, military juntas, and fundamentalist factions have all contested for, and occasionally held, power at one time or another in the last forty years. With each switch of power another group of people would find themselves forced into exile as each new authority took the opportunity to clean house of those who might not have been quite as enthusiastic about the change in government as the new rulers would have liked.

On various occasions the exile community has been the focal point of the anti-immigrant sentiments of ultra-nationalistic right wing political parties or the racist attacks of neo-nazis. The majority of Algerians live clustered together in a few impoverished neighbourhoods in conditions that offer little hope for the future. They suffer from the usual indignities that blight the urban poor; underfunded and low quality schools, limited health care, and few, if any, opportunities for economic advancement.

Rachid Taha was two years old when his family immigrated, and he has experienced and witnessed the prejudices faced by the Algerian community both inside France and beyond her borders. The joy of being an Arab in today's Europe was driven home to him when an English security official on the Eurostar train blithely informed him that "We are at war against you, the Arabs." Is it any wonder than that his music, whether sung in French or Algerian, seethes with more than a little anger and lashes out at a society that can't see beyond the colour of a person's skin?

Rachid has been a fixture on the European music scene for some time now, and his most recent release, Rock El Casbah: The Best Of on Wrasse Records (set for release in the U.S, on June 17th/08) was not only awarded the BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music in the Middle East/North Africa category, but Luce Strummer, wife of the late Clash leader Joe Strummer made a rare public appearance to present the award. She had specifically asked if she could make the presentation because she felt that Rachid is not only akin to Joe in spirit and energy, but that Joe would have loved him.

Even if he hadn't included an Arabic cover of the Clash's "Rock The Casbah" (Rock El Casbah) on this CD it would be easy to see, and hear, how this child of Algerian immigrants could be considered the heir to one of the seminal British Punk bands of the 1970's. You don't need to understand the lyrics that he's singing to hear the passion that feeds his spirit and drives his music. He proves beyond a doubt that Punk isn't necessarily defined by the music you play, but by the attitude you bring to what you play.

Rock El Casbah: The Best Of gathers together music from throughout the breadth of Rachid's solo career, and gives the listener a great indication of not only his power, but the range of his ability. While mainly playing a style of music influenced by Algerian Rai, which he describes as a "brutal, powerful sound", he also digs deep into the roots of African pop music. Many of the songs on Rock El Casbah have been influenced by Chaabi, an old style of North African popular music. The song "Ya Rayah", is an example of this style, and was originally written by an Dahmane El Harrachi, a legendary figure in Algerian pop music.

While some might wonder at Taha's decision to cover "Rock el Casbah", the Clash's harsh critique of corrupt Arab rulers, those familiar with the corruption of Algerian politics since independence will understand his decision. He's never been one to shy away from controversy after all. Listen to his version of "Douce France" (Sweet France), a sentimental patriotic French tune, the way it drips with irony and sarcasm. It caused such a furor in France that it was banned from French radio.

He's not just angry though, he also shows a philosophical bent with songs about the nature of truth and love. Yet even here there is an edge, because he looks at the ways in which we can deceive ourselves, or skirt the issues that matter. He describes his song "Kelma" as being about the word we can't bring to mind while trying to recount a story, or express an idea. The word won't come to mind, he says, because on some level we don't want to tell the story or express the idea because they might prove hurtful to us.

While there aren't any translations provided for the lyrics, each of the songs comes with an introduction. In them Rachid provides the listener with his reasons for writing the song, or with information about the song's history. While in some cases it might have been nice to understand the lyrics, the introductions combined with Rachid's expressiveness as a vocalist are usually enough for us to understand the basic premise of the song. It is interesting to note that he hired an Arabic professor to provide an exact translation of "Rock The Casbah"; there are some things just too sacred to be messed with.

Rachid Taha is an amazing vocalist sings songs of power and spirit, and Rock El Casbah: The Best Of is a great way to get to know him. Rachid will be coming to the States this July, and if they let him in the country, audiences in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and San Francisco will get to experience him first hand. I'm jealous.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:54 PM | Permalink

When J. M. Barrie wrote his famous children's book Peter Pan it was an era when British children of the middle and upper classes were relegated to the nursery - as far removed from the company of their parents as possible. The majority of fathers were distant figures who rarely ever figured in their children's lives and mothers ran their households with the assistance of a bevy of household staff. It was the nanny who featured most in the lives of Victorian children.

Children were expected to be proper little ladies and gentlemen, ideally this meant miniature representations of their parents. Not seen and not heard, boys of school age were sent off to boarding schools, while girls were tutored on how to be ladies and wives. In such an environment, the figure of a boy who vows never to grow up, and lives a life of endless adventures touched by magic, would be a figure of irresistible appeal to children and more then a few adults as well.

Yet, while there is no doubt that the repressive Victorian age needed a figure like Peter Pan as an antidote for the constraints placed upon children, his character's refusal to grow up represents a denial of the change needed for the emotional growth required to outgrow the selfishness of childhood. For as children the majority of us believe that the world revolves around us, and everything has been put upon it for the express purpose of supplying us with amusement. Any of us who have run into adults who still cling to those beliefs know full well how annoying these people can be.

In his new book, Tigerheart, author Peter David has taken J. M. Barrie's classic tale of the boy who wouldn't grow up and has passed it through the prism of his imagination to present a slightly different vision from the original. Instead of the central figure being the boy who doesn't want to grow up, our hero is Paul Dear, a boy who wants more than anything to make his mother happy again.

Paul was enthralled by the tales his father told him about The Boy. and the magical land of Anyplace where he fought pirates and caroused with Indians. At night when Paul looked in the mirror he was certain that the figure who appeared opposite him in the glass was none other than The Boy himself. In his travels through the Kensington section of London Paul would chat with the squirrels and pixies who inhabited the various shrubs and trees he passed, and in his dreams at night he would hunt the lands of Anyplace in the copy of a fearsome white tiger.

Paul's life is proceeding along just fine until a tragedy strikes his family that results in his father telling him that he has to be the man of the house, and his mother telling him that it's time to grow up. As growing up means no longer talking to pixies or seeing The Boy in the mirror, his mother takes him to a doctor who gives him pills that will ensure he grows up. Yet Paul knows that the only way he can make his mother happy again, and pull the family out of its tragedy, is by going to Anyplace, and for that he has to believe.

A chance meeting with an ex-pirate in the park sends him on a quest to a curio shop where he finds the mummified remains of Flickerbell the pixie. Through the standard practice of clapping his hands and saying "I Believe" he is able to revive what turns out to be a very pissed off pixie. She promises to take Paul to Anyplace if he will exact revenge upon the person responsible for "killing" her; The Boy. Obviously there's something rotten in the state of Anyplace, and The Boy's denial of Flickerbell's existence - pixies can only die if people stop believing in them - is only the tip of the iceberg.

Welcome to the dark side of Peter Pan - The Boy is selfish, egocentric, lies to ensure that he is the centre of attention, and is firm in the belief that nothing can happen in Anyplace that he doesn't want to happen. Like all spoiled children who are used to getting there own way, he is blind to anything but his own needs, and sulks when he's not the centre of attention. In fact even when Paul, more by fluke than anything else, saves The Boy's life, The Boy convinces himself that he wasn't really in any danger and that Paul's intervention hadn't really been necessary.

For The Boy not growing up means not accepting responsibility for his actions and not caring about the feelings of others. For Paul growing up doesn't mean giving up all he loves in the world, his ability to talk to animals and pixies, it means opening up your world to include others in it. The Boy only thinks of others in terms of what's in it for him. He doesn't rescue Flickerbell from pirates because he particularly cares what happens to her one way or another, but because it give him an opportunity to be the centre of attention by being brave.

While the theme sounds serious, author Peter David has done a wonderful job of making Tigerheart slyly humorous. While Paul and his family speak and act like people from our time period, other characters talk and think like they came out of Victorian literature. Gwenie - a girl who The Boy has been bringing to Anyplace as a den mother for his followers for quite a while, acts, thinks, and talks like she just stepped out of the pages of the original Peter Pan. The depiction of the Pica Tribe, the local "Red Indians" in Anyplace, is so Victorian, politically incorrect that it's funny, and an obvious dig at the whole "Boys Own" Adventure/White Man's Burden attitude that characterized children's literature of that period.

Tigerheart is that a rarest of creatures, the gentle satire, where instead of twisting a dagger into your side to make a point, the author pokes you in the ribs with his finger. From start to finish this book is a delight to read and is sure to raise more than a few smiles, and offer readers any number of surprises. Most of all though it reminds us that just because we're adult doesn't mean we have to be boring and that change is a nothing to be afraid of.

Tigerheart by Peter David will be released on June 17th/08 and can be purchased directly from Random House Canada or from an on line retailer like Amazon.ca.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:50 AM | Permalink

There's always been someone out there trying to cash in on kids as pop musicians. Inevitably the result is some horrible, sickly sweet concoction like "Teeny Pop Punks" or its equivalent. Back in the sixties of course there was a spate of "family" groups made up of real siblings like the Jackson Five and The Osmond Brothers, or artificially generated ones for television like The Partridge Family. Heck even before that there were the child stars of Hollywood like Shirley Temple, Judy Garland, and Mickey Rooney.

So I think it's only natural that any announcement of a band made up of children be treated with at least some cynicism. Yet from the first time I heard of The Homemade Jamz Blues Band about a year back I had the feeling they might be different from the rest of the bunch. First off, they were being touted as a Blues band, and to be honest if you were looking to exploit your kids and make some money off them would you choose to make them a Blues band? I love the Blues and all, but it's not exactly the big money maker that turning your kids into a Hip Hop band would be. Then there was the fact that they placed second out of 157 bands at the International Blues Challenge in 2007, a competition open to adult Blues bands from around the world.

While seeing may be believing in some instances, you only have to listen to someone sing the Blues to know if there's something there or not. If you're heart and soul aren't into it, if for some misguided reason you're only in it for the money, it's going to show up the second you open your mouth to sing, and the first time you put your fingers on the strings of your guitar. Well, I have to tell you, that after listening to Pay Me No Mind, The Home Made Jamz Blues Band's first release on the Northern Blues label, this trio of two brothers, Ryan (16) and Kyle Perry (13), guitar and bass respectively, and their younger sister Taya (9) on drums, have convinced me they're for real.

The first thing you need to know about Pay Me No Mind was that the basic tracks were laid down in the living room of the Perry house in just three days. Part two of the home made equation is the fact that their dad made the guitar Ryan plays out of auto parts, (The Ford logo across its body is a bit of give a way), and part three is that ten of the eleven songs on the disc are originals; lyrics by their dad Renaud and music by the kids.

What I want to know is where did a 16 year old boy get the voice of a Blues singer at least four times his age? This young man Ryan Perry sings with the authoritative growl of someone whose been playing the Blues circuit for more decades then Ryan has been alive. The thing is, he doesn't just sing well, he sings with a conviction and a passion that I've not heard in players with twice his experience and four times his years. Sure on the slower songs his voice shows its lack of training, but goodness the kids only sixteen. Think what he's going to sound like with a couple more years of professional singing under his belt.

Musically a trio can be somewhat limited, there's only so much that you can do with bass, drums, and guitar. So it's a pleasant surprise to hear The Homemade Jamz Blues Band mix it up as much as they possibly can. True they're helped out by their dad laying down some really nice harmonica playing on a few tracks and producer Miles Wilkinson adding rhythm guitar on four cuts, but in the end the trio are the ones who created the music everybody is playing. Take the ninth track on the CD, "Jealous" for instance. It has a low down, down and dirty, funk like groove, running under Ryan's choppy attack on the guitar, that the bass and drums carry with a loose tightness that I haven't heard rhythm sections with twice the experience carry off.

I've been saying - better than people with more years and experience then these kids have been alive, but the most amazing thing about this disc is how quickly you forget you are listening to a band whose drummer won't legally be allowed in bars for at least ten more years. From Ryan's opening challenge at the start of the disc, "Ladies and Gentlemen are you all ready for the blues" to the last notes of their cover of John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom" that ends the disc, this is a rough and ready collection of really well played Blues. Period.

No, wow they're amazing for their age, or any other qualifier that you might think of, because they are, simply put, a good Blues band. They have a feel for the music, and the touch to play any style that they put their minds to. From the hard driving rock tinged of "Voodoo Woman" with its echoes of Jimi Hendrix style Blues, to the slow molasses sound of deep south electric Blues of "The World's Sure Been Good To You", they sound great.

Anybody who thinks that The Homemade Jamz Blues Band is merely another novelty act along the lines of the teeny-pop bands that are churned out like processed food are in for, not just a pleasant surprise, but a shock. These three young people are not only assured musicians, they play a brand of Blues music that is as authentic and passionate as any I've heard. Pay Me No Mind might be the name of their first CD, but if they keep playing music this good, people are going to be minding them for a long time to come.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:40 AM | Permalink

For a guy who first made a name for himself defending Christianity against the infidel hoards of the Ottoman Empire, Vlad the Impaler's reputation has sure taken a beating. Oh sure there was the whole stake thing, where he was supposed to have impaled hundreds of Turkish soldiers up in the Transylvanian mountains while doing his bit for Christ, but the Church has always been forgiving when it comes to excess when dealing with those it considers its enemies. It wasn't until the late 19th century and the publication of gothic novelist Bram Stoker's classic horror novel Dracula that the first stain appeared on Vlad's reputation, and since then it's been down hill fast.

Now I'm sure tales of vampires had been around for a long time before Mr, Stoker was inspired by the good Count's zealous behaviour to create Dracula, but it was his story that first introduced them to the mainstream and helped make them the popular culture icon that they've become today. Films, novels, comics, and television series have been devoted to their exploits, or their exploitation depending how you look at it. Unfortunately many writers have taken the romantic sexuality of their characters and turned it into violent pornography; using them as an excuse to glamourize rape and other non-consensual sexual acts.

Thankfully there are still some writers who understand the difference and are able to distinguish between their character's need to feed upon human blood for survival and other aspects of their life. In fact the really good writers, as far as I'm concerned, make a concentrated effort to show how their character has no control over their need for blood, and that there is nothing sensual in the ripping open someone's throat in order to drain them to the last drop. While they may enthral their victim prior to feeding on them, it's more by way of anaesthetizing them than anything sensual.

Judging by book one of her Eternal Vigilance series, From Deep Within The Earth, published by Immanion Press, one writer who looks to know how to write a great vampire story is Gabrielle Faust. In this, the first of a four part series, plus a prequel, she sets the stage for the rest of the books, by establishing the major characters, the world they live in, and by offering a different perspective on immortality from that which is normally presented.

It seems that vampires, like their mortal counterparts, can wonder if there isn't more to existence than what's in front of them. Vampires may be immortal, but that doesn't mean they can't be killed, and what, some of them wonder, happens to us when we die. Is there an afterlife for those who are supposedly damned or upon their deaths do they blink out of existence, snuffed out like the flame of a candle by a sudden gust of wind?

A few hundred years ago Tynan Llywelyn thought he had discovered an answer; something for vampires to believe in like mortals have their religions and gods. Yet his own tormented soul refused to accept what he had himself created and he walked away from it, abandoning those who had believed in him and his vision, and betraying their faith. Seeking oblivion, he cast a spell of eternal sleep upon himself and entombed himself miles below the earth's surface. So it comes as something of a surprise to him when he finds himself waking from a nightmare at the beginning of From Deep Within The Earth.

Unfortunately that's only the first of many shocks he's about to experience. In the hundred years that he had spent entombed the world had been taken over by the Tyst Empire. After a series of brutal and bloody wars had decimated the population, the Tyst now rule with an iron fist. By denying the general population access to anything but the basic technology needed for survival, they have subjugated nearly every mortal on the planet. Only the Phuree, a rebel army that uses magic to combat the technology of the Tyst, remain as a viable force in opposition to the empire. Yet what hope do they even they have of standing against the empire if its leaders fulfill their dream of obtaining immortality by allying themselves with the ancient vampire god - a god that most vampires themselves don't want to believe exists because of the evil he represents.

Vampires have always held themselves removed from the wars that have plagued mankind in the past, but now that the Tyst have found a way to threaten their existence they have been forced to enter into the fray on the side of Phuree. Yet there is understandable reluctance among the Council of Elders within the vampires to accept the Phuree prophesy that Tynan represents their one and best chance of winning this war and survival. How can they trust him when it was his betrayal that resulted in so many vampires losing their will to live and killing themselves?

Tynan no more wants to be cast in the role of saviour than those on the Council of Elders who doubt him want him to be, but it seems like nobody has a choice in the matter. He's the only one who stands a chance of being able to overcome the Tyst defences and prevent their plans for obtaining immortality and freeing Victus the vampire god, from reaching fruition. The only trouble is that while the prophesy might say he's the one with the best chance of saving everybody, its a little unclear on the details of how he's supposed to go about doing it.

From Deep Within The Earth is completely different from any vampire novel that you've ever read before. There aren't any vampire hunters out to eliminate evil from the world, nor do we enter into a world of twisted, sadomasochistic sexuality that reeks of snuff films. Instead Ms. Faust has made the vampires we meet into complex and deeply troubled people. For the first time in history their numbers have dwindled drastically and their very survival as a species is threatened. Certainly they are proud and believe themselves superior to the mortals they are forced to ally with, but they also remain enough vestiges of their former humanity to know doubt, even if they can't bring themselves to show it.

It's that ability to feel, and his understanding and empathy of mortal emotions, that make other vampires judge Tynan as weak and flawed. It's something he should have outgrown after his first century of being turned; why he still suffers pangs of guilt for every human life he takes when the Thirst comes and he has to feed. Not only that, but he absorbs and retains, on a subconscious level, the memories and feelings of all those whose blood he has drained. Yet, it's that very characteristic that could save them all, if it doesn't drive him insane.

Not only does Ms. Faust have a great talent for creating characters, she shows great skill in bringing the reality of the world that the story takes place in to life. From the devastated city, the opulent luxury of an Elder's mansion, to the austerity of the primitive Phuree camp, the environment is so adeptly drawn that we can't help but be drawn in and feel like we are experiencing all that Tynan does, when he does. Even more impressive is the fact that we are seeing the world from the perspective of a vampire, not a human, and it is every bit as believable as if it were a human's eyes we were seeing through.

Gabrielle Faust has a remarkable imagination, and the talent to make that vision live on the pages of From Deep Within The Earth. If the balance of the Eternal Vigilance series is able to maintain the standard set by its first book, we are in for a wonderful ride. Be prepared to experience the life of a vampire as you've never experienced it before, but most of all, be prepared to believe that they exist.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:53 PM | Permalink

Anyone who watched the documentary or listened to the CD of The Buena Vista Social Club will have noticed a significant absence of women among the featured performers. One who was in attendance, and stood out because of it, was Omara Portuondo. Like the rest of the participants in these recordings Ms. Portuondo was a veteran of Havana's night club scene, and had sung with all the famous bands and orchestras that had played throughout the years.

Although she was brought out to share the spotlight for a duet with Ibrahim Ferrer, she was overshadowed by the men and relegated to a supporting role for most of the proceedings. Yet unlike most of the men her career had continued unabated from when she started as a young woman in the 1940s. Initially she had started as a dancer, but her real love was singing, and when she won a radio song contest she was able to parlay it into her first professional job.

Still in spite of her popularity throughout the Latin Americas, including Mexico, aside from her appearances with the Buena Vista Social Club she has remained a relative unknown to Anglo audiences in North America. Part of that has to be laid at the feet of the American embargo that prevents any interaction between the United States and Cuba, but part of it is the gulf that has always separated Spanish performers from English audiences. While in some metropolitan centres, like New York City, there is bound to be an audience for the other language's music, you're not going to see Omara's music walking off the shelves in Omaha.

Fortunately for those who want to hear the music of Omara Portuondo, companies like MVD Audio are distributing recordings that were originally released some time ago. Lagrimas Negras: Canciones y Boleros (The Black Tears: Songs and Dances) was originally released in 2005, and is made up of two discs of her music. Disc one is from recordings she did in the late 90's with other alumni of the Buena Vista Social Club recording sessions, while disc two is a collection of recordings with various bands and orchestras that she made between 1967 and 1985. While the title of the recording suggest that there would be an even mix between the Boleros and Canciones, in actual fact all of disc one is composed of the dance oriented tunes, while disc two is an even split between the two.

The differences between the two types of music are significant enough to make the fact that the boleros outnumber the canciones a contributing factor in the listener's enjoyment depending on which type of song they enjoy more. My tastes run more towards the less orchestrated and more singer oriented canciones, so I was somewhat disappointed by the predominance of the boleros. That's not to say there is anything particularly wrong with the boleros, or the way they are performed, it's just they sound far too much like the slickly orchestrated numbers that I associate with Hollywood versions of Latin night club music from a 1940's movie.

So while the music is well played, and the singing is highly polished, the final result is something a little too slick for my tastes. It's like they have concentrated on making them as palatable as possible for an Anglo audience and removed any of the rough edges that would have it given it any genuine emotional punch. While it's not as noticeable when you listen to the first disc, as there's nothing to compare them to, I still felt as though there was something lacking in their delivery.

It was only when Omara Portunondo lets loose on some of the canciones on the second side that I was able to understand what it was that I had felt was missing from the material on the first disc. Instead of the slick and polished arrangements, and smooth as silk vocals that marked the boleros, the canciones are musically simpler and vocally rougher. This gives them a much stronger emotional impact, and to my ear, makes them more enjoyable to listen to.

Listening to the two different styles of music on this collection of music you would almost think there are two different vocalists performing. On the boleros Omara sounds as slick and polished as any Las Vegas night club singer. Her phrasing is perfect and she hits every note yet there is no emotional commitment in her voice. Not being able to speak Spanish I don't understand what she is singing about, but from the tone of her voice it might as well be about the weather as anything else.

She's a completely different singer on the canciones, as she allows the passion of the music to infuse her voice. On these songs you at least have some indication of what she's feeling, even if you don't understand the lyrics that she's singing. Even better is the fact that there is passion in her voice as she allows herself to be swept up by the music and the intent of the song. I don't know why there's the difference between the two types of music, but I do know which of them I prefer, and which version of Omara Portunondo I like best.

There is no denying the talent of any of the people involved with the project, or the quality of the production. Omara Portunondo herself is a wonderful vocalist with an impressive range and the potential to have a highly expressive voice. It's unfortunate that the majority of the songs on Lagrimas Negras: Canciones y Bloeros don't give her the opportunity to show off her voice to its finest.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 12:31 AM | Permalink

A couple of years ago I stumbled across an Advance Reader's Copy (ARC) of a book called The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker in a used book store. I picked it up and was immediately hooked by the author's use of language, and his willingness to go deeper into his character's feelings and motivations than the majority of writer's I'd read, let alone writers of Epic Fantasy. So far there have been two other books in the series called The Prince Of Nothing - The Warrior Prophet and The Thousandth Fold Thought, and the epilogue to part three gave an impression of more to come.

I'd like to thank Scott Bakker for taking the time to do this interview, and I hope you find what he has to says about his work as interesting as I did.

I always like to find out why it is people do what they do, so how about you. Where does the creative impulse come from for you, why writing, and what do you hope to accomplish with your writing?

I have no clue. I was the kid who debated the reality of Santa Claus in grade two and three, then the reality of God in grade five and six, then the reality of meaning and morality in grade nine and ten. No joke. I was an irritating, pompous, inquisitive little bugger - and perhaps not surprisingly, I grew up to be an irritating, pompous, opinionated big bugger! Novels just seemed to be the most natural way of expressing those facets of my character.

Writing is one of the few careers where you can get paid for being an asshole. Reviewing is another.

If you didn't answer this already - why fantasy and science fiction?

Because they were what captured my imagination in my youth. I discovered D&D, Penthouse, Black Sabbath, and Mary Jane at the tender age of fourteen - a potent cocktail as I'm sure you know! Our brains don't finish coating neurons in the myelin sheaths that so accelerate signal speed until our mid-twenties. The reason for this, they think, is that the pre-myelinated brain is much more plastic, which is to say, much easier to program. This could be why our youthful hobbies and fascinations leave such an enduring stamp on our adult imaginations.

I'm not sure if I've ever escaped 14. I really need to trade in my wardrobe though. Nothing worse than male camel toe.

Both the Prince Of Nothing trilogy and Neuropath have a lot to do with brain functions - In the former it's the way in which people reason and the latter the technical way that process works. Where did this interest in how and why we think come from?

Well, brains don't come up much at all in The Prince of Nothing. In fact, you won't even find the word 'mind' anywhere in the books. It's all about souls, as it should be, given that the setting is pre-scientific. What both share in common is the question of autonomy, or freedom. The Prince of Nothing explores the relationship between beliefs and manipulation, and the way the "feeling of freedom" seems entirely disconnected from the fact of freedom. I'm actually amazed by the number of people who think the characters that Kellhus manipulates are fools - I always want to pop into the conversation and quiz them on their own beliefs! What makes ideological manipulation so insidious is the way it bypasses our sense of autonomy. It's always the other guy who's 'so obviously' been duped. The fact is we're all manipulated all the time. You. Me. Everybody. Simply by virtue of those beliefs we inherit without question.

Neuropath, on the other hand, primarily explores the relationship between the brain and the question of autonomy.

Do you see any relationship between the methods used by Kellhus in the Prince Of Nothing series and Neil in Neuropath?

There's actually quite a sharp distinction between the two if you think about it. They seem similar insofar as they both defect from conventional morality, but Neil is by far the more radical of the two. There's a 'good' for Kellhus, which is simply what most effectively allows him to achieve his goals. He is the perfect practitioner of 'the end justifies the means' rationality, or what philosophers call instrumental rationality. For Kellhus, the only thing that makes acts good or bad are their consequences. Since we seem to be hardwired, and are definitely socialized, to think that certain acts are good or bad regardless of their consequences, this makes him seem ruthless and unscrupulous in the extreme - nihilistic.

Neil, on the other hand, has done away with good and bad altogether. He literally exists beyond good and evil.

There's quite a difference in style and form between Neuropath and your previous work - from Epic Fantasy to Hard Science. What kind of challenges did that present you with when it came to writing the new work.

Nothing really in particular. I found Neuropath both easier and more difficult to write simply because of my preferences as a writer. There's just something about creating a world whole cloth, as opposed to writing across a world that already exists. I think I'll always be a fantasy writer first and foremost for this reason.

With Neuropath, the challenge I set myself was to create a story that could carry a substantial amount of information without sacrificing narrative momentum, and to write in a style that was as kinetic as an airport thriller without sacrificing the kinds of multiple subtexts I love layering into my prose. A tall order, I know, but then I think I got some kind of aesthetic death-wish thing going. It's a good thing I don't live in a dictatorship.

Electric Shock treatments and aversion therapy have been used as means of behaviour modification in the past on people. What's the relationship between those methods and the ones described in Neuropath if any at all?

In principle, none. All behaviour modification comes down to brain modification, and this can be done using electrical shocks, chemicals, training routines, therapy sessions, magnetic fields, radiation, scalpels, or coat-hangers. But then this is million dollar question, isn't it? What earthly difference should it make, whether we use old-fashioned techniques as opposed to the ones explored in Neuropath?

Think about all the commercials you see. Very few of them provide arguments, which is to say, reasons why it's more rational to sit down with a Whopper than it is a Big Mac. Commercials actually aren't trying to convince you of anything at all. Instead, they're trying to circumvent rational decision making, to condition populations to make them statistically more likely to pick their product. They're literally rewiring your brain, neurologically 'branding' you. And they're enormously successful at it, despite the fact that so many of us like to think ourselves 'immune' to advertising. Since our brain is largely blind to its own processes, we're never actually conscious of what these commercials do to us - they simply seem to fall through us without effect. One after another, an endless train of them. When we do go for a Whopper it's not because anyone forces us to, but because we simply 'feel like it.'

Modern advertising is literally predicated on mass manipulation, on training you the way we train animals, and yet we have no problem whatsoever with this state of affairs. So the problem can't be the fact that we're manipulated, because we are all the time. The problem has to be the way we are manipulated. As it stands, the only manipulations that we don't like are the ones that we can easily see. Who cares if someone's pushing our buttons, so long as we can pretend otherwise?

But if that's our criterion then we're in a whole heap of trouble.

The problem is that our culture spoon feeds us this out-andout magical notion of who and what we are. So when the ad man cries "Caveat emptor! Buyer beware!" in self defence, we're inclined to let him off the hook. Why? because it's an appeal to our magical self-conception. Since ignorance is invisible, we assume that all we can see of ourselves is all that there is - or most of it anyway. Everyone says, "No commercial gets the best of me! I'm a tough-minded, critical adult!" But the truth is, the stuff we can't see composes the better part of us. Which is why the corporations keep ploughing billions into mass associative conditioning, and billions more into what has come to be called "neuro-marketing." The day is fast approaching when they stop training us like animals and start tweaking us like mechanisms.

Education, in North America at least, systematically avoids teaching us anything about our myriad weaknesses and limitations as believers and decision-makers - and the results, I would argue, are nothing short of catastrophic. Take drug addiction, for instance. Simply because of my socio-economic background, I happen to know many people whose lives have been destroyed if not snuffed out altogether by drug addiction. And the common thread between all of them is that they assumed they were in control, from the beginning, and in some cases, all the way to the end, when they became little more than crack or meth or alcohol acquisition mechanisms.

And why shouldn't they assume as much, when that was the magical bullshit that was being drummed into their heads from kindergarten and up? You can't have a healthy respect for your weaknesses if you don't know a lick about them. You can't make informed decisions.

(In case you actually do believe in the magical self, then I invite you to argue with the science, not me. On the technical side, I would suggest Daniel Wegner's The Illusion of Conscious Will, or David Dunning's Self-Insight. There's a small explosion of popular books that deal with our cognitive shortcomings, such as Cordelia Fine's A Mind of It's Own, Gary Marcus's Kluge, or Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational.)

How do you see the science described in Neuropath relating to cognitive psychology theories of how the environment we experience as a child shapes our future behaviour? Is it along the lines of recreating the effects of learned behaviour by mucking about with the brain - or is that overly simplistic?

Only in a retail and incidental way. The real link between the cognitive psychology in the book - all the little factoids about how dumb we are - and the consciousness science is the dilemma this puts us into. If even half of what cognitive psychology tells us is true, then we really have no reason to think that any of our philosophical attempts to blunt the obvious implications of the science - that nothing is what we think it is - are anything more than 'comfort reason' - self-preserving rationalizations.

I know it's early yet, but I'm curious as to what people's reactions have been to the claim by one of your characters in Neuropath that humans are nothing more than a series of programable reactions triggered by the stimulation of different parts of the brain? How much basis in fact is there for that claim?

I was immensely pleased to receive an enthusiastic email from Thomas Metzinger, the co-founder of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, and the author of the landmark Being No One. When I asked him if he would be willing to blurb the book he declined, both because he found the book so disturbing to read, and because he thought I was covering ground that the bulk of humanity was better off not knowing about! I finally convinced him, though, by jumping up and down and going, "Please! Please! Please!"

Nothing else works with philosophers.

On the other hand, I was dismayed to learn that at least one of the "future facts" I pose in Neuropath has come true. Apparently, Professor John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck Institute devised an experiment where he and his colleagues were able to determine, via fMRI scans, what their subject's choices would be seconds before they were conscious of them. Freaks me out just writing about it.

There's going to be people who deny this stuff come hell or high water, just as there's people who can't abide evolution or the heliocentric solar system. Truth be told, I'm one of them. I believe there has to be something to my experience of free will, but all the credible evidence is piling up on the other side, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. All I can do is stomp my foot and say, "No! It just can't be."

Because if it is, then nothing fucking matters.

Maybe I'm slow but I can't seem to understand why anyone would find the contention that stuff doesn't happen for any reason it just happens is anything to get so upset about. Or I have misunderstood the premise of the "Argument" - the great debate between the central characters of Neuropath?

Well, if you're religious you're certainly going to be troubled by it - that is if you don't simply dismiss it. There's actually a running discussion in cognitive science circles about what does or does not trouble different individuals. Some, for instance, really don't care if their will is free or not. Out of the people I know who don't believe there's such a thing as free-will, morality, or meaning, some walk around perpetually bummed, and others just shrug and say, "Pass the joint."

I actually had an e-mail exchange with Richard Morgan on this topic. He says he's okay with the illusoriness of it all, so long as the illusion functions the way he needs it to function. My answer was that this was like having a wife who sleeps around town, but being okay so long as she goes through the spousal motions at home. For me, the first function of this rich, wondrous, experiential life I lead, is that it be true.

Like you, the absence of objective purpose 'out there' doesn't bother me, so long as I can make my life meaningful. It's this latter that's at stake in Neuropath.

Here's the thing. For about five centuries now science has been scrubbing the world clean of anthropomorphisms, the projection of human psychological categories on the natural world. When the crops fail, only fundamentalists shake their fists at the heavens anymore. During this time, the sheer complexity of our brains rendered us immune to this 'disenchantment,' as Weber puts it. We stood apart as the world's only meaningful thing. Humankind, the great meaning maker - just think of how many narratives you've encountered where you find a protagonist struggling to find meaning in a meaningless world, usually via romantic love (a form I play with in both The Prince of Nothing and Neuropath).

Those happy times are gone. The human brain is finally passing into the province of science and its technical capabilities, and guess what? it's disenchanting us as well. The greatest anthropomorphism of all, it turns out, is ourselves. We are the last the ancient delusions, soon to be debunked.

"I think, therefore I am" has morphed into "It thinks, therefore something was."

Some people are probably going to be disturbed by the graphicness of Neuropath, and I was wondering if you could explain why you thought it necessary?

Because it's a psycho-thriller! And because I've been so desensitized by so many B horror flicks that I think I've lost the ability to tell what's graphic and what's not. I felt like I was holding back - being coy even.

What's next from you - are you going to go back to the world of The Prince of Nothing, where you left us sort of hanging with the epilogue, continue on in the vein you started with Neuropath - more hard science, or something new altogether?

The Judging Eye comes out this winter. I'm presently working on the second book of The Aspect-Emperor, which is tentatively titled The White-Luck Warrior. I'm also working on a second crime thriller entitled The Disciple of the Dog. At the rate I'm going I should have both books completed by next spring.

I'd like to thank Scott Bakker for taking the time in his schedule to answer my questions, and I hope what we talked about has intrigued you enough to make you want to pick up a copy of Neuropath when its released in your part of the world. In Canada that will be sometime latter this month - June/08 - and you can check the Penguin Canada web site for the exact release date as I'm sure they'll be letting us all know soon enough when its for sale. If you're in the States, and don't want to pay the shipping costs, it looks like you'll have to wait until winter of 2008 to pick up a copy.

With The Judging Eye, the first part of The Aspect Emperor, a new trilogy picking up the characters from The Prince Of Nothing trilogy twenty years later, due out this winter, and it's sequel scheduled to be finished Spring of 2009 we won't be lacking for new work by Scott Bakker, and that, as far as I'm concerned, is a good thing. No matter what anyone else might think or say, I don't think you can ever have enough of a good thing.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:32 AM | Permalink

I have this wonderful memory from the early 1980's in Toronto, Ontario Canada. I was standing on a subway platform waiting for the train to pull into the station when a Rastafarian man descended the stairs at the far end. With his hair piled on top of his head crammed into a hat, and his erect carriage, he looked to be well over seven feet tall. He proceeded to stroll across the platform, beaming with delight as if there were no other place he'd rather be than this particular station. As he pulled abreast of me he inclined his head in a regal nod, and without breaking his stride, let a small brown envelope slip from his hand and fall at my feet. He continued his passage through the station to the stairs at the other end of the platform and ascended with the same airy grace that had marked his entire passage.

At some point during the mid to late 1970's the political situation in Kingston Jamaica became so volatile that many people left the island country and sought asylum in Toronto. Not only did they bring with them their love of Reggae and Calypso music, many of the people who moved north were also musicians and they formed the nucleus of what became a thriving Reggae scene. Having our own Reggae scene in Toronto meant that there was enough local interest for stores to stock music from bands in England and Jamaica. The first album that made an impression on me was the soundtrack to the movie The Harder They Come featuring Jimmy Cliff, Toots And The Maytels, and other bands from the streets of Kingston, Jamaica.

From there it was only a short step to Bob Marley And The Wailers, Peter Tosh, Burning Spear, Black Uhuru, and Steel Pulse. It's been more then thirty years since I heard my first Reggae album and a lot of water has flowed under a lot bridges. Marley and Tosh are both dead, Marley from brain cancer and Tosh gunned down in his home, and the heady days of political activism which saw the alliance of Punk and Reggae bands in the fight against racism are long gone.

So it was with some curiosity, and not a little trepidation, that I slid the DVD of the documentary Steel Pulse: Door Of No Return from MVD Video into my DVD player. Originally formed back in 1975, Steel Pulse had been one of the first British born Reggae bands, and right from the start had made it clear they weren't interested in compromising their sound, their beliefs, or their politics for anybody. Thirty years is a long time for any band, or anybody for that matter, to stay true to who they were and what they wanted to accomplish when they first started. Were Steel Pulse still the same band that took part in the 1978 "Rock Against Racism" concert in London's Victoria Park alongside The Clash, The Tom Robinson Band, and others?

Some of the faces may have changed among the band's members, but judging by the music and the message that comes across in Door Of No Return the soul and the spirit of the band haven't changed a bit. Directed by Michel Moreau, the documentary follows the band from a benefit concert for Amnesty International 1999 in Senegal to a subsequent tour of the United States, side trips in Africa, and a trip back to the streets of Birmingham where the band was formed. The documentary includes footage from both the concert in Senegal and their tour across the United States. Yet, just as interesting are the interviews with individual band members that sees them reflecting back on what the trip to Africa meant to them, and what it means to be part of a band like Steel Pulse.

For founding member David Hinds the band represents more than just a vehicle for playing music. In interviews with him during this film it becomes obvious that he feels he has an obligation to his audiences to be "uplifting"; informing them about African history - emotionally and intellectually, inspiring them to believe that a better world is possible, and singing about political issues that are important the world over. The chance to play a human rights concert in Africa, like the Amnesty International benefit in Senegal, was for him an opportunity for Steel Pulse to put their philosophy into action, and for the band to contribute to something larger than themselves.

It was interesting listening to some of the younger members of the band describing how they see Steel Pulse as a multigenerational family. Back up vocalist Donna Sterling was the newest member of the band when the film was shot. She talked about how she was learning from the senior members of the band about the world and life, and that one day it would be her responsibility to pass that knowledge along to those who joined the band after her. It's in this manner that Steel Pulse has been able to maintain a continuity of intent that so many bands lose, and will ensure that future versions of the band will carry on what was started in 1975.

Musically the band remains the same interesting mix they've always been. They start with a solid Reggae core and add on top of that touches of Rhythm & Blues, Jazz, and Rap. Of course there's always been a strong Rap tradition in Reggae music with dance hall masters like Yellowman rhyming over music long before it became super popular in North America. Steel Pulse uses Rap as a break in their songs that allows them to step out and address the audience directly about an issue.

The songs that are included in the movie, and the two extra pieces of concert footage in the special features section, offer some good glimpses of the band in action. What's really quite amazing is that not only are they musically exciting to watch and listen to, they are a message band who don't let the message get in the way of the music, or being entertaining to watch and listen to. Somehow they strike the perfect balance so that the point of the song is clear, but you never feel like you're being beaten with a stick to get the point.

Steel Pulse: Door Of No Return is a great record of a great band that will provide old fans the opportunity to catch up with some old friends, and those who aren't familiar with them a chance to get to know them for the first time. Presented in both 5.1 and stereo Dolby sound, the DVD will look and sound good on most systems and makes for intelligent and fun viewing; just like the band.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:37 AM | Permalink

Every four years sixteen of Europe's top national football (soccer) sides compete in the European Cup. Held exactly half way between World Cups, the European Cup, is in some ways even more intense and passionate than its bigger cousin. Rivalries between nations in Europe, on and off the football pitch, extend back hundreds of years. Border skirmishes and other ancient grudges are now played out by twenty-two men in front of screaming thousands, instead of in the mud and across no-man's land.

As is the case in all major international competitions the country hosting the event automatically qualifies while the rest of the spots are decided in a series of run-off games. Under normal circumstances that would leave fifteen spots up for grabs, but this year's event is being jointly hosted by Switzerland and Austria, reducing the number of spots available. Unlike EuroCup/04 which was hosted by Portugal whose team would have qualified anyway, neither of this year's hosts were likely to have made it into the competition. I'm sure this has led to quite a bit of resentment on the part of teams like England, a perennial power, who failed to qualify.

Of course the security forces of Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, who are lending men and expertise to its smaller neighbours, are probably relieved that they won't have to worry about the notorious English fans and their potential for violence. They've enough to worry about organizing security in two countries and multiple venues, where total attendance is expected to be in the millions, without wondering whether or not inebriated Englishmen will decide to go on a rampage.

Even without the English in attendance things are tense enough as it is with some of the previously mentioned nationalist grudges starting to simmer over already. Hostilities broke out between Polish and German fans in the run-up to Sunday's, June 8th, match between the two countries resulting in the arrest of seven German men. Hopefully once the early elimination rounds are over, when half the teams have gone home and the crowds thinned out some, the chances of this sort of thing happening will be reduced.

The sixteen teams have been divided up into four groups by random draw and play one game each against the teams in their section. The top two finishers in each group advance to the next round where the team with the most points accumulated in the first round plays off against the team with the fewest. A team receives three points for a win and a point for a tie in the preliminary round. From then on the games are sudden death, and decided by penalty kick shoot-outs if tied at the end of regulation and two, twenty minute, overtime periods.

In a shoot-out each team initially starts with five players, selected from those who are currently playing, and take turns trying to score on the goalie from the penalty kick mark. The team that scores the most goals out of five wins the game. If the teams are still tied at the end of the first five penalty kicks they proceed on to sudden death penalty kicks, where the first side to gain the advantage wins. If the first side scores, the second is given an opportunity to tie, but if they fail, the game is over.

With the goalie not allowed to leave his goal line, or move, until the shooter does, the advantage would appear to reside with the kicker. After all he has a huge amount of net to shoot at, and the goalie can only guess where he thinks the ball will be shot. Yet many a star laden team has gone down to defeat at the hands of an underdog because a game has gone to penalty kicks and their sure-footed scorers aren't able to find the net.

In the last EuroCup, underdog Greece won the championship by playing a tight defensive game and winning games on penalty kicks when their more highly rated opponents succumbed to the pressure of the situation. Greece is back again this year and is once again going to be considered fortunate to make it out of the round robin segment of the tournament - of course that's what everybody predicted four years ago when they won it all in the final over host country Portugal.

As is the case with every international football event, there are certain teams which are always considered a threat to win, and this European Cup is no exception. Germany, Italy, France, and the Netherlands almost always seem to field a team that can threaten to go all the way. This year the advantage is clearly Germany's as through the luck of the draw the other three have all ended up in the same preliminary group which means one of them are going home early. Even without that bit of good luck (if you're a German supporter) the Germans have to be considered favoured as their star players are all in top health and at the peak of their careers. Their only weakness lies in goal, as their keeper has a history of giving up weak goals.

Still, with Italy losing her captain, Fabio Cannavaro to injury in their first practice, and both the French and Dutch sides having star players just back from injury, even without the fortuitous draw, the real threat to the first major German international championship since the 1996 Euros could come from another source. Portugal and Spain are Europe's most renowned under achievers. They always seem to be on the cusp of greatness, but never manage to win in the end.

The loss to Greece on their home turf must have devastating to the Portuguese, but it might give them the desperation required to finally win it all. Yesterday's 2 - 0 victory over a tough Turkish side indicated that they aren't about to go quietly, and any team that can call upon Cristiano Ronaldo - arguably the best player in the world right now - can't be discounted. He scored a remarkable forty-two goals this year for Manchester United and is the front runner for the Federation International Football Association's (FIFA) world player of the year trophy.

The great thing about the EuroCup is that you can't count anybody out, except maybe the two host teams this year. Russia, Croatia, Romania, Turkey, The Czech Republic, and Sweden, can always be counted on to field solid teams with enough talent to pull off an upset. All it takes is a couple of missed opportunities - a goal post here and a missed net there - and a favourite can find themselves sitting on the sidelines wondering what the hell happened. Germany only needs to look at its record of no victories, three draws, and three defeats in the last two EuroCups to be reminded of how dangerous a tournament this can be.

While the idea of a tournament exclusive to Europeans is somewhat chauvinistic, excluding as it does teams from South America and Africa where the game is every bit as popular as it is in Europe, there is no denying that the European Cup makes for nearly four weeks of great football action. Do yourself a favour and check out a match or two, but be careful, you might just find yourself getting addicted. In Canada the games are being broadcast on TSN (The Sports Network) and Sportsnet with each station's web site broadcasting taped highlights of all the games.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:33 AM | Permalink

Living in a small city that has both a military base and a military university changes one's perspective on the military. Seeing men and women in uniform everyday changes the military from a faceless monolithic entity into a collection of individuals. That awareness, coupled with the knowledge that people stationed at our base are rotated in and out of Afghanistan, is enough to make it easy to distinguish the difference between disagreeing with how the military are used and disparaging the men and women who are part of the armed forces.

It's unfortunate that neither the people who support Canada's involvement in Afghanistan nor those who oppose it seem to be able to handle that distinction. On one side are those who say you have to endorse the war in order to support the troops, while the other seems to think that saying anything positive about the military implies implicit support of Canada's military presence in that country. Like everyone else soldiers are more than just their profession, and by forgetting that we make it easier for governments to expend their lives without responsibility. There isn't another profession in the world where those in charge would even consider the death or injury of their employees in terms of "acceptable casualties"

It doesn't help that the majority of military fiction, either in books or filmed, has a tendency to deal in stereotypes and cliches when it comes to the depiction of soldiers both on and off the battle field. It's rare indeed for them to take the time to recreate in any detail the day to day routine of soldiers not under fire, or develop their characters beyond types. There have been some exceptions over the years of course, but not nearly enough, which is what makes Tanya Huff's Confederation series of military science fiction novels such a pleasure to read.

Valor's Trial, distributed in Canada by Penguin Canada, is the fourth instalment of the series that's set sometime in the future. Humanity, and a couple of other less evolved, war like races, have been enlisted by a confederation of elder races (i.e. pacifists) to fight a mysterious alliance of beings known only as the Others. All attempts at finding a diplomatic solution to the war have ended in a lot of dead diplomats. As the two sides are able to imitate the other's technological advances far too quickly for anybody to gain an advantage, the war looks like it could be interminable.

As Valor's Trial begins Gunnery Sgt.Torin Kerr is finally coming home. Well it feels like home to her, as after a series of special assignments she is back with her own company again. Just in time too, as it appears the Others are planning a large offensive and her people look to be finding themselves in the thick of things. Regular combat will almost be a relief to her after having to deal with being at the beck and call of the high command and being a guinea pig for a mysterious alien life form. (See The Better Part Of Valor and The Heart Of Valor, parts two and three of the series, for details) Unfortunately for Kerr, the universe isn't finished messing with her, and it turns out that the first three books were merely a warm up for the main event. One minute your taking cover on the battle field from incoming artillery, and the next minute you find yourself waking up battered and bruised in a cave that's part of a larger complex of tunnels.

It was always supposed that the Others didn't take prisoners, at least there had been no record of it ever happening before. Yet, after somehow surviving the blast that apparently wiped out the rest of the platoon she was with, Torin wakes up to find that she is apparently in some sort of Prisoner of War camp. The section of the Prison Camp she's landed in has been turned into a personal fiefdom by a particularly vile human Sgt. and her first order of business is to rectify that situation. Once she's done that, by the simple expedient of killing the leader and seven of his cronies, she can begin the process of trying to figure a way out of the prison.

Unfortunately that's easier said than done as the food supply has been treated to sap a person's will over time, and the majority of the Marines imprisoned have been so for a good length of time. Eventually Torin leads a party of eight out into the tunnels in a search for a way to the surface of the planet. They're not doing too badly when they run into another party of escaping prisoners - only they aren't Marines or even from the Confederation, they're a party of Others.

So if the Others aren't holding them captive, and vice versa obviously, who has been keeping both of them captive. It looks like Torin's desire for a simple combat mission was never in the cards from the word go. Somebody or something has done a lot of orchestrating to make sure that each escape party is the same size and contains exactly the same proportional representation of species from each alliance. When Torin's lover and a reporter, who both came in contact with the same alien mysterious alien life form that she had in the two previous books, are dropped into space near the prison planet without knowing how or why, it's just one too many coincidences for anybody's liking.

Aside from the fact that Tanya Huff has written the usual taut and exciting story she is capable of, what really makes this book work are the characters. Instead of populating the book with the usual stereotypes - the Marine who was going to be shipped home to his wife and kids after this one last mission and ends up going home in a box after heroically giving her life to safe everybody else - these are all living, breathing beings. They get scared, angry, and occasionally lash out at each other, just like anyone else would under the same circumstances.

Even Gunnery Sgt. Torin Kerr, in spite of the fact that Marine Gunnery Sergeants are able to accomplish three impossible things before breakfast, and then again after lunch, becomes all too human - something she most definitely keeps from her people. The people under her have to believe that she will get them home and alive whether they want to or not and she has to act infallible no matter how devastated she personally might feel.

No matter what species, or what "side" they are on, all of the soldiers involved in this book are individuals characterized by behaviours that anybody can understand. A soldier is a soldier, and a soldier is a person, no matter whether they have fur, exo-skeletons, or human skin. Valor's Trial does the remarkable thing of lifting the mask we place over the face of soldiers, and letting us see the being beneath it, without ever once making it seem like a big deal or preaching. Valor's Trial proves once again that the best anti-war novel is the well written war novel, and Tany Huff is probably the best war novelist I've ever read.

Valor's Trial can be purchased either directly from Penguin Canada or another on line retailer like Amazon.ca

Posted by Richard Marcus at 01:42 AM | Permalink

The hardest movie to make, judging by results anyway, has to be a Romantic Comedy. Really good Romantic Comedies seem to have to gone the way of the dodo, as movie makers tend to rely on the charisma of the actors playing the roles instead of trying to come up with an interesting script or an original idea. Although, when you think about it, perhaps that's always been the case with the genre. When people refer to the heyday of Romantic Comedies they don't talk about any film in particular, instead they refer to teams of actors; Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn for instance.

Of course movie makers don't need to feel too badly, nobody seems to have had much luck with the whole Romantic Comedy thing. Shakespeare's weakest efforts were when he ventured into that field. As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and Twelfth Night can't hold a candle to his dramas and histories. While each of the plays contains some nice comic business and a couple of memorable secondary characters, there is a decided lack of substance at the core. Invariably the love interests who are supposed to carry the play can't sustain our interest over the entire five acts.

Like today's film makers Shakespeare stuck to the tried and true formula that was expected by his audience. A case of mistaken identity, most likely compounded by female characters disguised as men, (in Shakespeare's time the additional twist of men playing the roles of women would have given that an extra layer of humour for his audience), was the most common device, with the subsequent confusion being relied on for humour and propelling the plot.

In today's Romantic Comedy the scriptwriters seem to choose from one of a few formulae; two people with nothing in common who overcome obstacles to find true love in the end; a couple thrown together by circumstances start off casually and gradually become serious in a whirlwind courtship with one or both being scared away by the idea of love until they realize in the end they are made for each other; or two people who were once a couple and have long since moved on to others are brought back together and discover that they never really stopped loving each other. If a director is feeling really daring he might cut and paste from the above, but it's safe to say that there won't be much deviation from any of those scenarios.

It's no wonder Romantic Comedies end up relying so heavily on the actors involved, and their abilities to make us care about what happens to their characters. The audience isn't going to see these movies for their innovative scripts, they're going to see them for the chance they offer to escape into a world where fairy tales endings happen and dreams come true. In order for that to be successful the audience has to at least sympathize with the leads, and the script needs to provide some sort of dream come true potential. Wimbledon, starring Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst as the star crossed lovers, succeeds because it not only features two skilled and likeable actors, but the plot provides the audience a chance to cheer for the long shot.

Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst play tennis professionals competing at the renowned Wimbledon tournament in England. While Kirsten's character, Lizzie Bradbury, is the latest American phenomenon taking the world by a storm, Bettany's Peter Colt is a veteran player who has managed to make a living on the circuit but never seen his star really ascend. Peter is playing in his thirteenth and last Wimbledon and is just hoping not to embarrass himself too much, while Lizzie is making her first appearance and has every intention of winning the tournament.

They meet before the tournament begins when Peter is accidentally given the pass key to Lizzie's hotel room instead of his own, and things develop from there. As the tournament progresses so does their relationship, and their relationship progresses Peter's success rate on the courts rises. When the crises comes it is in the shape of Lizzie's desire to win taking precedence over her desire for a relationship. "Love" she reminds Peter, is equal to zero in tennis. (A game of tennis is won by the first player to win four points scored: fifteen, thirty, forty, and game, and both players start at love, or zero)

While Ms. Dunst is her usual vivacious self and very believable as an early twenty-something tennis star, the real revelation of the movie is Paul Bettany. Previously I had only seen him in supporting roles in A Knight's Tale and Master And Commander, while here he pretty much carries the movie. Ms. Dunst may have top billing, but it's Bettany who is on the screen for the majority of the movie and he is brilliant. Not only is his comic timing spot on, his depiction of a person resigned to surrendering his dreams, only to be given one last, and completely unexpected, chance at fulfilling them is perfectly drawn.

He is able to convey both his wonder at his success, and the knowledge that it could be taken away at anytime, with a realism that makes it easy to cheer for him, and never leaving you feeling like you're being manipulated. Unlike some other actors where being self-effacing comes across as affectation, with Bettany it comes across as a natural part of the character he's created. The fact that Bettany does not appear to be merely playing an extension of himself, but has created the character of Peter Colt goes a long way in making his performance that much more believable. It's not just Paul Bettany up on that screen, but a person who we can relate to on some level. At one point in time we've all felt the inevitable turning of the wheel where reality snatches away our dream, even if it's only the realization that our goal of being an astronaut as a child is unobtainable.

As this is a movie centred around tennis it only stands to reason that a fair bit of time is spent on the courts. The film makers have done a remarkable job in recreating the action and tension of a high stakes match. There was a time in my life when I could be found watching the men's final from Wimbledon first thing on a Sunday morning, and Wimbledon the movie brings that world to life both on and off the court. I wouldn't know how factually accurate it is, but as far as capturing the spirit and the atmosphere it does a great job.

The special features on the DVD go a long way to help explain how they were able to recreate the shots - (it didn't hurt that they used professionals from the tour to play opposite the actors in the matches or that the actors trained for an extended period of time under former Australian pro Pat Cash)- using camera set ups and CGI tennis balls. The other features provided take us on a behind the scenes tour of the Wimbledon facility, and a commentary by Paul Bettany and director Richard Loncraine.

Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst may not have the sexual energy of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, but they make a pleasant and comfortable couple. This is a relaxing and charming movie, which like its male star exceeds expectations both on and off the tennis court. Now that its a couple of years old you should be able to pick up a copy of the DVD either used or inexpensively. At any price though, Wimbledon makes for a charming diversion, and a genuinely enjoyable hour and a half.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:13 PM | Permalink

Ever since Ry Cooder broke the rules and went to Cuba to record the first Buena Vista Social Club disc, (he ended up having to pay some sort of astronomical fine as a result of that first visit and only was able to return for his second go round because the last official act Bill Clinton did as President was to sign a special permit giving him exemption from the embargo imposed on Cuba by the United States), there has been a resurgence of interest in that country's music. While the music that Cooder and company recorded, and the subsequent tours that those recordings spawned, were undeniably of the highest quality, there have been quite a few releases since that have looked to merely cash in on that success without seeming to care about the quality.

Historically Cuba was the gateway for ships crossing the Atlantic coming to the Caribbean. Originally a Spanish colony, the island country saw its fair share of slaves deposited on her shores. It doesn't require a great deal of imagination to see how what we know today as the Afro/Cuban sound developed out of that history. Contact with both South and North America in the first half of the twentieth century continued the evolution of the sound that is now so familiar to our ears.

While the Afro/Cuban big band sound has attracted all the attention, other performers do exist and have continued to evolution of the Cuban sound by drawing upon much the same influences as young musicians the world over, while holding on to their original foundation. One of the effects of the American embargo on Cuba is to have created the impression that there has been no new music developed on the island since the hey-day of the ladies and gentlemen of The Buena Vista Social Club.

Nothing could be further from the truth of course, and as Cuban musicians begin to circumvent the embargo by signing with labels outside of their own county American audiences are going to realize that there's more to Cuban music than they first thought. One of the rising stars of the new music scene is Yusa, and with the release of her latest disc on June 10th/08, Haiku, on Britain's Tumi label, the world should begin to notice the new direction Cuban music is taking.

In the liner notes of the disc, Yusa quotes Mexican poet Octavia Paz's definition of a haiku as "a poetic experience re-created as lived poetry". For Yusa that means singing about the intimate details of life, which could be anything from the swaying of the sea to a friend's dream. To sing about that type of subject matter requires a more personal style of music than the brash and romantic sounds of the Buena Vista generation. Yet, even though her arrangements are far less complex, there is no denying that her music bears the stamp of the same Afro/Cuban heritage.

Yusa is another one of those multi-talented woman who are able to not only play a multitude of instruments, but writes all of her own music as well. Part of that is a reflection of her extensive musical education that started in grade school and continued with studies at a conservatory of music, but it's also an extension of the passion that she brings to her work. She sees the poetry in life around her, and that compels the creation of her music.

The songs on Haiku range from solo efforts where she accompanies herself on keyboards, bass, and tres guitar, to those with a full complement of musicians including a horn section and a variety of percussion instruments. Interestingly enough, even those tracks with multiple performers appearing on the disc maintain, the atmosphere of intimacy. Instead of what happens so often with other performers, where the accompaniment becomes the focus of the songs, here they have managed to ensure that her voice is always our point of focus,

The majority of the song lyrics on Haiku are in Spanish, and although translations are provided for each song, it still feels like you're missing out on the subtleties that the songs might contain. Yet, by listening to the music and the expression in Yusa's voice while reading the translation, you are able to get a fairly good understanding of her intent each song.

The one song whose lyrics are in English, "Walking Heads" gives you a very good idea of what Yusa means by saying her lyrics reflect her inner world and the music the world around her. This song features a full band and the music captures the gentle sounds of the city around her, while she puzzles out thoughts about love. "There's no answers in the room/Just walking heads" brings to mind the way people can worry a thought or concern to death and not come up with any answers. Just pacing back and forth with your head full of thoughts that don't make an iota of difference to anybody - least of all you.

For those of you who still only think of Cuban music as being performed by the Buena Vista Social Club, or others of that generation, Haiku by Yusa will be a revelation. Not only is she a wonderful singer with a range that allows her to be as expressive as she needs, she has a wonderful ear for how song and lyric work together to create a mood. If Yusa is one of the new faces of Cuban music, than we can only hope that more of the new music finds its way to North America. Yet another good argument for ending a silly embargo.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:44 AM | Permalink

There are some people, who if they weren't so genuinely nice, you'd be hard pressed not to hate them. Kate and Anna McGarrigle, and their extended family of exceptionally talented musicians and artists, have been amazing audiences around the world with their wonderful music and winning hearts with the atmosphere generated by their stage shows. One reviewer, normally a man I regarded as being somewhat of a cynic from having covered popular music for years, literally gushed about how attending one of their performances was like being invited to sit around the fire in the family parlour.

That was close to thirty years ago, and a second generation of the family has begun taking the world by a storm. Kate's marriage to Loudon Wainwright ended in divorce, although he still occasionally plays with the band, but not before the couple had two children. Rufus and Martha Wainwright have not only inherited the family musical talent, but the also the other qualities that endeared their mother and aunt to tens of thousands of people. While Rufus has had a successful solo career for a number of years now, Martha had stayed in the background supporting both the family band and her brother with her vocal harmonies.

All that changed a couple of years back when she released her first CD and served notice that she too could take centre stage. Her second disc, I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too is being released June 10th/08 by Rounder Record's Zoe label. Martha is joined on the fourteen tracks, twelve of which are originals, by not only her extended clan, but also guest appearances by Garth Hudson, Pete Townshend, and Donald Fagen (of Steely Dan fame).

From the provocative title to the line up of performers, and the pedigree of the headliner, I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too has all the hallmarks of an exciting disc waiting to happen. Yet, while there is no denying Martha Wainwright's talent as both a vocalist and a songwriter, there are times on this disc when you wished that somebody had exercised a little restraint when it came to production values and arrangements. While on some songs the balance was maintained, on others it felt like a use everything plus the kitchen sink approach was being taken - a little too much of everything, is worse than nothing at all.

Martha Wainwright has one of those glorious voices that combines the torch song abilities of a cabaret singer, the homespun country feel of Iris Dement, with the honesty and integrity of Lotte Lenya. In other words; range, passion, and sincerity have been wrapped up in one amazing package; the voice of a chanteuse. Unfortunately this is not a commodity that has a place in the current pop pantheon in North America. In an era where squeaky voiced little girls or strident voiced divas are the norm, sultry, subtle voiced, integrity is neither a commodity much in demand or one record companies seem to know what to do with.

That Ms. Wainwright composed twelve of the fourteen tracks on this disc would be itself enough to distinguish her from the rest of the pack. When that's coupled with the fact that the majority of the lyrics are intelligent and replete with genuine emotion, instead of the usual manipulative sentiment being foisted on audiences these days, it makes her talent all the more unique. All of which makes me wish that she had been given a better forum to display it in then the frame that's been hung around her with I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too.

I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't dim a shining light's glow by surrounding it with mirrors and glitter that divert the eye from the purity of the source. On more than one occasion the production values on this disc have done exactly this with both Martha's voice and the lyrical content of her songs. Instead of the focus being on her voice and her songs we are distracted by swelling strings and keyboard generated sounds. What makes this even more disappointing are the tantalizing glimpses that we're given of just how good she can sound.

The title track, which is also the opening track of the disc, is wonderful. Her lyrics are wise and wounded and delivered with a passion that only comes from sitting up all night worrying a subject to death. The "other" woman has never been seen is so sympathetic, and real, a light before. Just because she fell in love with a married man, doesn't mean that she's a bad person, and in fact she's got feelings too. There's no self-pitying whining or pleading, just a stating of honest passion that's redolent with feelings of regret and tinges of betrayal.

You couldn't ask for a more obvious contrast than track two on the disc, "You Cheated Me". There's a phrase in Yiddish that roughly translates into English as "a little too much of everything" and that's the case with this song. It feels like they kept adding layers of sound to the song and didn't know when to stop. It got to the point where listening to the song became a frustrating experience as I was far too distracted by the constant demands placed on my ears by what seemed to be extraneous noise to pay attention to the lyrics.

I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too makes it obvious that Martha Wainwright is an extraordinary talent, with an incredible voice and a wonderful ear for writing lyrics. Unfortunately it's also obvious that nobody is sure what to do with this talent, for instead of letting her be the focal point of each song, there are far too many occasions when she is buried beneath a wash of sound. The occasional flashes that are allowed to shine through make this all that more frustrating an experience.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:27 PM | Permalink

Folk tales and fairy tales can be almost anything we want them to be it seems. In fact one person's folk tale could just as easily be another person's religion. Go to any book store and pick up a copy of what somebody has euphemistically called a collection of folk tales, and odds are good that you'll liable to find yourself in the middle of somebody else's creation story. Yet I doubt that many people reading this right now would ever consider calling The Bible a collection of folk tales.

Yet what are folk tales if not just what they say they are - tales about a folk. The Old Testament is a history of the Jewish people and The New Testament the story of Christianity. To Jews and Christians both these books have special significance respectively, but to the rest of the world they have no more intrinsic value than any other tales recounting the exploits of various folk heroes. Job and Jonah are no more or less important than Robin Hood or King Arthur to a Hindu or a Buddhist.

Folk heroes are developed as a means of instructing people in the ways of their civilization. They can either take the form of an idealized role model who exemplifies the attributes that make a person a worthy member of society, or they can be a contrary type character whose behaviour provides a lesson in how not to behave. With that in mind it only stands to reason that periodic attempts are made to update our tales so that they reflect how our attitudes have changed over the years.

Over the past few years we've seen many fantasy writer experiment with this idea, and quite a few anthologies have been published with that express purpose in mind. One of the newest entries into the field of folk tale revising has been provided by the American poet and author Catherynne M. Valente with her recently published A Guide To Folktales In Fragile Dialects published by Norilana through their Norilana Curiosities imprint.

Now much has been made by so called traditionalists about people revising stories to suit their needs and changing them to something other than what they are supposed to be. The only thing is that some of these "traditional" stories have already undergone any number of revisions over the years that have reflected various changes in doctrine and belief. Many stories that predated Christianity for instance, were altered to reflect the usurping of a matriarchal society by the patriarch.

I know that sounds like tired feminist drivel, but there also happens to be some truth to it, as the Church found it convenient to simply rename many holidays and figures from myth in order to make conversion more palatable to the masses. It only follows that folk tales would have undergone similar conversions. So Ms. Valente's retelling of stories from the perspective of the women involved is nothing more than a continuation of the ongoing process of a story's evolution.

A Guide To Folktales In Fragile Dialects is a collection of poems and short fiction that gathers stories from cultures around the world and adapts them so that the story is not just seen through a woman's eyes, but also reflects her needs and desires as a person. What if Cinderella didn't have any intention of marrying Prince Charming, but only wanted a chance to go to a ball? Was Rapunzel really in need of rescue, and what about all the rest of the fair flowers that we've read about waiting a knight in shining armour or its equivalent? Maybe they didn't really want to be rescued?

The poem "Glass, Blood, and Ash" in this collection tells the Cinderella tale from the perspective of a young woman who doesn't particularly want a Prince Charming. "I never wanted it" she says. "I just wanted to look like you for one night. It should be you hoisted up like a sack of wheat...You will like it - they will put emeralds in your hair and a thin gold crown on your head". Argument after argument she mounts in order to convince her sister that she is the one who should be marrying the Prince and not her - all she has to do is fit in the shoe and the Prince won't know the difference.

Of course how much vengeance might she be enacting with this gift, there is the matter of ensuring the foot fits after all. "The doves, their claws still dusty with kitchen-ash./brought me a knife hammered out of a diamond./It is so thin/that a whisper will shatter it,/but so sharp/that the flesh cleaves/believes itself whole./Give me your toe..." Here dear sister, hold out your foot and I'll whittle it down to size so you fit into the glass slipper - then you can be princess. Isn't that a kind, sisterly, thought. Well of course it is, for as Cinderella says -"Give me your toe./ I'm the gentle one, remember?"

Earlier on in the book is the poem "Rampion", another word for Rapunzel, the name of a type of wildflower, where Ms. Valente gives us her take on that particular story. In this version Rapunzel is a compendium of plants parts and grows accordingly. Her mother is a witch who had no milk to feed her with and so she was raised on vegetables of all kind until she became onto a plant herself. "Can you not love me, liebling,/who nestled you in a tower-/a plant will grow only so great as its pot", says the witch to her foundling who she has raised so big, strong and healthy.

Of course when the hero comes to "rescue" her he saw..."a tower wrapped in vines,/in cornstalks like knotted ropes./You slashed into them,searching for a door,/and I cried out three times. You heard only the sweetness of wind singing through basil and mint./and looked up, starving,/your teeth wet and white." Poor Rapunzel, just another flower to be devoured by a man who sees without understanding. Women throughout history have been taken for delicate flowers and treated accordingly, now here is one who really is, and what happens? - She's devoured.

From Rapunzel and Cinderella to Persephone and Sita, women from all over the world, from reality, myth, and folk tale, are given a voice of their own through the words of Catherynne M. Valente. They may not be the voice that some of you are used to, or some of you even like, but that doesn't make them any less valid than the voices that they have spoken with at any other point in time. Folk tales speak with the voice of the folk who are writing them and as an expression of the community the writer represents. Ms. Valente's early education as a Classicist, and her history of publishing critical analysis of myths are sufficient to give her authority to tackle this project credence, but it's her imagination, and beautiful use of language that make it work.

A Guide To Foktales In Fragile Dialects is a magical journey into the world of folk tales and myth led by a guide with a definite passion for the subject. Each of the pieces makes for thought provoking, and sometimes humorous reading. They're all tales that my kind of folk would tell - how about yours?

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:30 AM | Permalink

You know, if I worked in television in North America I don't think I could help but get frustrated with British television. Not only do they have an insufferable amount of high calibre acting talent and a literary tradition dating back to before quite a few countries even had invented the wheel to draw upon for their television shows, they also seem to be able to have the pick of the best of contemporary writers whenever they feel like it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not blind to the fact that the Brits are every bit as capable of producing bad television as the next country, but they also have an annoying habit of being able to produce stuff that leaves anything we do on this side of the pond in the dust. One of the big differences is they don't appear to make the distinction between working in television and working in film that is the norm over here. An actor, director, or script writer could be working on a movie one day and a television series the next and think nothing of it.

In the past North American audiences had only limited exposure to British television through rebroadcasts of select shows on Public Television stations in Canada and the United States. However all that's changed now with the expansion of the home entertainment market and speciality television stations. The advent of digital media has allowed distributors on our side of the Atlantic an inexpensive means of making a great deal of material that previously would never have been seen over here.

Acorn Media is one of those companies offering a wide selection of quality productions from both the BBC and independent television companies in Britain. On June 3rd/08 they will be releasing yet another example of British television drawing upon the vast array of talent available to them, in order to produce shows literate and entertaining. A Time For Murder was originally produced in 1985 by Granada Television and featured six original scripts written by some of Britain's finest mystery and script writers at the time.

Charles Wood (the movies Iris and Help). Gordon Honeycomb, Frances, Galleymore, and Michael Robson might not be household names over here, but Antonia Fraser and Fay Weldon have both graced best seller lists across North America many times. Each of them, whether we've heard of them or not, are highly experienced and adroit writers. While it doesn't necessarily follow that a good novelist will make a good screenwriter, none of those involved with this project suffered from making the transition.

Take for example Fay Weldon's contribution, Bright Smiler. It doesn't follow the usual convention of the television mystery of a murder committed followed by the hunt for a suspect. Instead she has created a suspenseful drama that relies on the characters and the situation to create the mystery and build the tension. It starts off innocently enough when an overworked scriptwriter checks into a health spa in an attempt to get some rest and relaxation. She's immediately put upon a regime that includes a near starvation diet and plenty of massage. It turns out the masseuse is a fan of one of the earlier shows that the writer was responsible for, and begins to obsess upon the fate of its lead character.

As a young woman the masseuse was taken horrible advantage of by a man. He promised her the moon, and ended up throwing her away when he was done with her. Since then she has become the "Bright Smiler" of the title. Always trying to be helpful and walking through life with a smile painted on her face, when in reality she's a seething cauldron of rage and resentment. After years of suppressing her rage, the combination of an offhand comment by her scriptwriter client and the appearance of the man who scorned all those years ago at the spa with his wife, brings everything to the surface.

Will her anger and resentment build to the point that she will go on a killing spree? The more she talks to her client about the betrayal, and we see what happened in a series of flashbacks as she tells the story, the less she smiles. The less she smiles the shriller and more dangerous her voice sounds and more unhinged she becomes. Trapped on the massage table, covered only in a towel, and face buried in a pillow, the client must try and find a way to talk the woman out of a murderous rampage.

While Fay Weldon created a taut psychological thriller, Anotnia Fraser's contribution, Mister Clay, Mister Clay is slightly more conventional. Set in a down at the heels school run by a penny pinching head master, the story revolves around the murder of one of the school's students. A particularly horrible child, he had delighted in making all the teacher's lives as miserable as possible, especially young Mr. Clay. It was he who would lead the other students in reciting the taunting chant of "Mr. Clay, Mr. Clay who are you going to kill today?"

When a pair of Mr. Clay's gloves turn up hidden behind a locker suspicion falls on him, but there is far more going on in this school than meets the eye. The headmaster's wife has a roving eye and appears to be more friendly than necessary with one of the other teachers, who in turn is dating a young female member of the staff. What were the contents of the letter that the headmaster received that unsettled him so much, and to what lengths will he go to keep his school open?

Anonia Fraser's script is replete with red herrings and plot twists that will keep you guessing to the very end as to the murderer's identity. Nobody is as who they seem to be, and everybody is potentially hiding something, which makes it great fun to watch the plot unfold.

These two scripts are merely an example of the quality that permeates the whole series. Each show offers a different variation on the murder mystery theme, and has its own distinct quirks and characteristics, giving them an originality not often seen within the genre. Time For Murder is a wonderful opportunity for fans of mystery stories everywhere to see six examples of what a well written television mystery looks like.

It's just a good thing that the Brits are starting to share their previously buried treasures or you could really work up a good hate for them.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:58 AM | Permalink

According to the Book of "Genesis" it's been all down hill since Eve took a bite out of the apple. From that time forward we humans have supposedly laboured under the curse of that "original sin" with little or no hope of salvation. Christians caught a break though, because they believe a young Rabbi from Nazareth to have been their saviour and if they accept him as such, and live their lives according to whichever sect of Christianity they adhere to, they will obtain salvation after their death and ascend to heaven.

Of course we would have been a lot better off if that silly Eve had never let herself be sweet talked into chomping on that forbidden fruit in the first place. If only she could have resisted temptation, humanity's fall from grace would never have happened in the first place, and the curse of consciousness would never have been released. If we hadn't gained awareness in the first place, we never would have even dreamed of questioning authority, and how much easier a time the church would have in ensuring our salvation.

If they had the opportunity to prevent Eve from succumbing to temptation what do you think the folk running the Roman Catholic Church would do? If it looked like they would be given an opportunity to rid the world of awareness - to somehow reverse the process that was precipitated by biting the apple - would they jump at the opportunity? How much easier it would be to ensure that everybody obeyed God's will, as expressed by the Church, if they could be reverted back to that state of grace - that state of unthinking obedience.

Pretty heavy subject matter for a series of books supposedly composed for young people don't you think? Yet, that's the basic premise behind the spectacularly successful trilogy His Dark Materials by British author Philip Pullman. Published to coincide with the release of The Golden Compass, the first instalment of the movie adaptation of Pullman's work, Random House Canada recently published an omnibus edition of the trilogy bringing all three titles under one cover for the first time. Included in the publication are new afterwards to each book by the author, that encourage the reader to let their imaginations speculate about characters and places mentioned in the book, beyond the confines of the original story.

On the off chance that someone reading this isn't familiar with the story of Lyra Belacqua and her world, His Dark Materials is composed of The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. Long ago the witches of the world Lyra inhabits prophesied that a young girl would be born upon who existence as it was known would depend. Her actions would dictate the fate of not only the world in which she lived, but all worlds everywhere.

In Lyra's world each human being coexists with an extension of itself known as a daemon. Taking the form of an animal, these daemons constantly change their forms while their human is a child, only settling on one self after puberty. It's the relationship between these daemons and their people, especially between children and daemons, and how it is connected to the birth of consciousness that the trilogy revolves around.

Lyra becomes the central figure in the war to control the flow of awareness to human beings. The equivalent of scientists in her world have managed to isolate the particle which they believe carries consciousness and self-awareness to sentient beings. While decrying the existence of "Dust", as its called, as a heresy, the Church in Lyra's world is actively working to eliminate its effects upon the world. A branch of the Church has figured out that a child's daemon doesn't settle on a single form because awareness is still developing. The daemon is a manifestation of a person's awareness and once it settles, that means its person has passed from the state of innocence of childhood into the full awareness of adulthood.

Like I said, quite a heavy topic for a work supposedly geared towards a young audience, and one that you'd think would be nearly impossible for an author to make enjoyable to audiences of any age. Sounds dry as, forgive me, dust doesn't it? Yet, Philip Pullman managed to make His Dark Materials an intelligent and exciting fantasy/adventure story that's loved by millions of readers. How he did so was by the simple expedient of keeping in mind what goes into making a great story: memorable characters, exciting action, and a plot that manages to be intricate without ever becoming convoluted.

Lyra is bright, daring, and fiercely independent. Left in the care of the Scholars of her world's Oxford University in England, she's allowed to run wild. She doesn't attend school, and roams the streets of her town getting in and out of scrapes all the time. She has no compunctions about telling lies, especially if it keeps her out of trouble, and is only really scared of one person - the man she knows as her Uncle Asriel.

The two adults who figure most prominently in Lyra's life, Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter, are both powerful and ambitious people. They also represent the two sides in the fight between the church and science. Mrs. Coulter is in charge of the Church's attempts to isolate "Dust" and successfully remove its influence on people, while Lord Asriel is leading the fight to ensure its continued existence. While neither character is presented in the most sympathetic of lights, they both are far more complex than we originally think. In the end, they are able to set aside their differences to fight for something they both believe in - Lyra.

It's not until the second book, The Subtle Knife that we meet Will, who is the counterpart to Lyra in more than just gender. Roughly the same age, their experiences growing up couldn't be more different. First of all Will is from our world so he doesn't have a daemon companion to act as his confident. Second, unlike Lyra, he has been forced to be responsible from the time he was old enough to understand what that meant. Will's father had vanished in the Arctic leading an expedition when he was newly born, and his mother became emotionally unwell as a result. In order to prevent his mother from being institutionalized, and him being placed in a foster care, Will had to learn how to manage everything a parent normally would.

Each of the children, Lyra and Will, end up with the gift of an object that forces them to learn how to enter a heightened state of awareness. Lyra is gifted with the Golden Compass of the first book's title. The alethiometer is a strange instrument that allows the reader to know the future and find the truth of things through interpreting the symbols around the edges of its dial. Will becomes the bearer of the subtle knife that the second book takes it's title from. With it he is able to cut openings in the fabric that separates the worlds and open doors between them. The two children use their gifts to help them overcome the horrible odds they face on their quest to save "Dust", but its the shared gift of heightened awareness needed to work them that matters most in the end.

Philip Pullman says that he drew heavily upon John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost for inspiration for the His Dark Materials trilogy. However, instead of depicting the obtaining of awareness as a fall from grace, or something bad that we need to atone for, he has made it into a goal that we should all be striving to realize. The innocence we shed as we enter adulthood is in reality ignorance and there is nothing blissful about it. Finding one's true place in the universe is not an easy task - just ask Will and Lyra - as it involves sacrifices and a great deal of soul searching, but the end result is worth the struggle.

Pullman takes us on a wild and wooly trip around an imaginary universe with worlds inhabited by talking bears with prehensile thumbs who are fierce warriors, celestial beings like angels, species who've evolved into sentient beings in spite of looking nothing like us, and all sorts of other strange and mysterious creatures and wonderful people. The His Dark Materials trilogy does what all great stories should do; entertain and inform without letting one interfere with the other. This is not an easy read, nor is it as light hearted as the movie version has proven to be so far, yet they are probably the most rewarding and intelligent books of their kind that I've ever read.

This special omnibus edition of His Dark Materials can be purchased directly from Random House Canada or any on line retailer.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:26 AM | Permalink