Leap In The Dark

Sometimes when you get to know somebody only through what you see of them on a movie screen or hearing them sing the impression you form of them turns out to be completely erroneous. However there are those rare people who, when you do actually get the opportunity to meet or talk to them, turn out to be just what you thought they were. Richie Haven is such a man. On the morning of Tuesday August 26th I was fortunate enough to spend just over a half hour on the phone with him and it turns out he's the gentle, intelligent, thoughtful, passionate, and humorous person that I had thought he was from seeing his pictures and listening to his music.

After the initial greetings were over and I verified that we were going to have slightly more then the twenty minutes that you're normally allotted for these types of interviews, my query of whether I was going to be first of millions for today was answered with a gentle laugh and an assurance that I was actually second of only a few, we began. It seemed to make sense that we talk a little about his recent release -Nobody Left To Crown so that's where we started - but be warned - both of us (maybe it's something to do with being a Richard) turn out to share the same predilection for deviating from the subject under discussion and getting fascinated by something else. Anyway without further ado -Ladies and gentlemen - Mr. Richie Havens.

When you were putting together Nothing Left To Crown did you have a particular intent in mind about what you wanted to accomplish with the album.

I was trying to actually align it with everything that's going on today in the world, the total surroundings if you would. In some ways it's a reflection of all the questions that were being asked a long time ago that we still haven't been answered. There's also a certain amount of wanting to let others know, those who are just becoming aware and not knowing what the world involves that there are questions that need to be asked. In some ways it was a catch all type of situation, with bits and pieces of of the whole picture in an attempt to show how it all works.

In some ways it's also about trying to avoid the making the same mistakes over again, learning from them - retreating from that aspect of ours selves and finding new ways of being and doing.

At this point I apologized to Richie for any pauses on my part - and told him it was just me trying to keep up in my note taking. I recounted that the very first interview I had done was with Charlie Reid of The Proclaimers and had used a tape recorder. I had fallen in love with his accent and just enjoyed listening to him answer my questions only to discover that I had forty-five minutes of white noise - so I no longer used tape recorders.

(laughter) I was waiting for that (laughs again) But you know, getting caught up in beauty, in the awe in the world, is a good thing.

Not when you're trying to do an interview with somebody

(laughs) No I suppose not.

Speaking of which - I wanted to ask you about two of the songs from Nobody Left To Crown, ones that happen to be favourites of mine, "Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who and "Lives In The Balance" by Jackson Browne. What was there about each of those songs that attracted you and how do you see them as being pertinent to today's world

Those two songs, in fact any song that I do, have first of all moved me in some way. It's like I hear a song and the light comes on because that person has articulated something in such a way that there's no way it could be any clearer. It's been like that right from when I first started out though.

Do you know Freddy Neil? He wrote "Everybody's Talking About". Well I used to travel up from Brooklyn to the clubs in Greenwich Village, and you have to remember I was singing doo wop songs with my friends in Brooklyn, and I heard Freddy singing about "Knocking The Walls Down" and I thought to myself - can he sing that in public? Isn't he going to be arrested or beaten up or something and hauled off stage? The songs were all about the need for change.

To this day I still have feel an awe for the songwriters who can write those tunes that show how it's possible to make a choice in how to live your life - they built a platform that can be built upon. So it was those songs, the songs that moved me that I first sung. (laughs) It was funny how that came about, because, you know, I would be sitting in the audience singing along with Fred and a couple of the other folk playing in those days, and Freddy said to me why don't you get up and sing - you've been singing them - harmonizing - in fact, you know them just as well as I do. The problem was I didn't know how to play guitar, let alone tune one. But Dave Van Ronk and Freddy helped out and it was from them I learned how to tune my guitar down to D and learned the bar chords that I still play today. With those simple chords and that tuning you can play thousands of songs - it's great (laughs) (If you go to Richie's web site there's a specific page where he explains his playing style) I went from singing Doo Wop and having four guys to harmonize with to having six strings to harmonize with.

It all comes back to the awe again really - my awe for the guys who can create those songs that illuminate things in such a way that it shines a new light on a subject so that you might say I never thought of that. So when I'd hear them, they would inspire me to sing them - it's like the songs came to me.

I've always admired the way you interpret other people's music, and I was wondering if you had a particular process that you go through when you prepare an interpretation?

Well, no, I don't have a particular process, what I try to do is let the ring of the writer shine through when I sing someone else's material. It's like I'm the vehicle for their message and allowing it to flow through me. Of course I use my own tuning like we talked about, but I really don't make any conscious decisions about them aside from that - I just sing them because they were powerful enough to make me want to sing them and I hope that comes through - how important I felt the song was.

You know I never think I'm changing anyone else's song, and I'm always surprised when someone says to me - wow you really perform that differently from so and so - because that's never my intent.

This is sort of a silly question to ask someone whose performed and sang as many songs as you, but is there any one in particular, or even one performance of a song in particular that stands out in your mind

(laughs)Well it's not as odd as you think, because I've been thinking a little along those lines. I've been thinking a lot about that first trio that I performed with, you know the guys who were at Woodstock with me. I've been thinking of maybe doing some work with them and trying to show the connection between the music of the fifties and the sixties. For me that's an important connection because of where I came from in the fifties, in Brooklyn doing four-part harmonies with my buddies on street corners, to where I went, which was singing in folk clubs in Greenwich Village.

You know we all like to sing the songs that appeal to us, and writing songs that work for our voices, yet it's the songs that have changed me, the ones that have made think about their messages are the ones that have had the most impact, and are the most important. You know I never thought about changing the world with the music, except maybe on some deep and personal, almost subliminal level, for individuals. If someone would say to me after hearing me perform a song, that they'd never thought of something that way before - then I would feel like I'd accomplished something. It was always especially nice when they would come up to me afterwards and say they'd never understood something until they had heard me sing it. That always surprised me, cause like I said I never saw myself as doing anything different than the person who I'd heard do the song in the first place.

I'd love to go back and do a compilation album of the songs that changed me, as they are the ones that are most important to me.

Speaking of things important to you, I wanted to ask you about a project you started up a few years ago, The Natural Guard, and wondered if you could tell me a little bit more about it

Well the Natural Guard was almost like a test of the things I went through as a young person. I was always thinking about things, and asking questions about things that nobody else I knew was interested in, and there was nobody there to answer those questions for me. So I was just curious about whether or not there were others, kids now a days who were experiencing that same sort of thing. Kids ask a lot of questions and there aren't always the people around to answer them, and this was to be a way to help them find the answers.

It was also to show them that through involvement they can make change, so we'd put out the idea to them that their community is the most endangered environment and they were most endangered species and can be done about that. We didn't want to force anybody to do it, because for so many of them school is enough of a prison already, and we figured if they didn't want to be there they weren't going to be able to accomplish very much. So in the first program we had eighteen kids between the ages of seven and thirteen.

There were quite a few people who said they didn't think it would work, because the older kids would soon get bored of working with the younger kids, but it turned out that the older kids became the teachers for the young ones, and helped them out. We adults stood aside and let them make the decision as to what they wanted to do for their community - the first one was in New Haven Connecticut - all we there for was to provide them with the tools to accomplish the what they wanted.

It was quite amazing how well it worked out - you know kids are great - they went down to the mayor's office and said we want more trees for our neighbourhood, and they got them, because whose going to say no to kids right? But more than that is how they learned what they were capable of - that they were able to make a difference just by being who they were and caring. That first group did so well that they were recognized with a Points Of Light award by Hilary Clinton. It was wonderful - I was so happy that what I felt would work really did work.

What's really wonderful is that I recently heard from one of the young women who was involved in that first project and she's gone on to become an environmental lawyer. That was really a great feeling to hear that.

Well I've probably taken up more of your time than I should already, but if it's okay I'd like to ask you about the movie I'm Not There which you had a small part in

That was a lot of fun... You know when I first heard about what he was trying to do, with the different personas, and different people playing different aspects of Bob, I wasn't sure how it would work, but it ended up being amazing. Knowing Bob, I don't know what else could have really captured him in the way this movie did.

When they introduced me to Marcus, and said this is Woody, I was sort of taken aback (laughs) What do you mean Woody? Woody Guthrie? Yet it all made sense too because of who Bob was and what he went through. There was so much pulling on him all the time that I'm sure it really did get to the point for him that he be wondering where he was and am I there, or I'm not there. Marcus was great, you know, they had him learn six Dylan songs for the movie, and he had to learn how to play guitar too, because he didn't know how before, but I had great time doing our song.

(Me: Yeah I really liked it, on the DVD in the special features they have the complete version of that, not just the edited version in the film.)

Really I didn't know that, I'll have to get the DVD so I can see that. I was sort of disappointed that it was cut in the movie, although I could understand why of course.

Wasn't Kate Blanchate something else though, she was so him it was amazing.

(Me: I know, I'm old enough to remember Bob from that time, and I've seen pictures of him from then, and it was amazing. What really got me was her use of her hands - that was so exactly like him - especially the scenes at the piano)

Putting a woman in that place, to give a female version of self, was brilliant. We were able to see things that might not have come out any other way, just because it was a woman in that place. There's something about women and the way they can change something about themselves without making a big deal about it that allows us to see things that weren't there in them before. That's what Kate did with Bob, brought something to him that none of us had ever seen before. It was exceptional.

Working on that movie was wonderful and I really think it did justice to Bob (Me: I thought it did a better job of telling the story of that period of his life than the documentary Bringing It All Back Home) Yes, I think so too, and I'm really glad that I was involved with it - You know there's a club I play in and it's near where Marcus lives, and he drops in and sits in with me on stage for a few songs, and I really enjoy that. He's got so much natural charisma that kid that you could put him on stage with Barack Obama and he'd put him in the shadows (laughs)

Well I guess I really should be letting you go, but I have to ask what you have in store for the future - you're off to England I know this week (Richie: Tomorrow) but are you going to be touring in support of the new album or do you other things you'll be doing?

Well to tell you the truth, I'm glad not to be touring in support of the new album. I'm actually already starting to work on the next one, I've got a couple of songs in mind for it that I'm working on. One thing always does lead to the next thing though. Albums are often just like pieces that are cut off from the fold, and you don't stop because an album is finished. Although starting a project again is a challenge because of that arbitrary nature of them. I'm just leaving myself open for things to come through. I'm also keeping up with the folk under four feet tall, children, and have become involved with literacy programs for children, so a lot of energy goes there.

Well thank you very much for this, and have a wonderful time in England

Well thank you and maybe we'll see you up in Canada sometime.

There it was, my few precious moments with Richie Havens. I don't know how successful I was in capturing just how gentle a spirit he truly is, while still being incredibly passionate about life and his art. I hope you are able to appreciate just what a rare treasure this man is from my words. If you can't the deficiency lies in my pen (or keyboard as the case maybe) and not in the subject matter. The world would be a lot better off if there were more people like Richie Havens in it

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:35 AM | Permalink

Under the reign of his most holy Catholic Majesty Philip IV, the glorious Spanish empire, although lustrous as the gold it plunders from the new world, is being hollowed out by greed, avarice, and everyone's desire to gain a larger piece of an ever - shrinking pie. Of course she is also having to pay to ensure the misguided Dutch stay true to the one True Faith whether they want to or not. Although she has no problem in spending her loyal sons' flesh and blood, the gold it costs is another matter altogether.

There was a time when Spaniards could strut with pride through the streets of their bustling cities knowing that they were kings and queens of their hemisphere, and neither the heretic English nor the cowardly French would dare challenge her divine right of conquest. Alas, the impudence of a heretic know no bounds, and privateers flying English colours now dare the impotent wrath of Spain. Those cowards, with their better cannons and faster, more manoeuvrable ships, stay well out of range of Spain's heroic guns, and splinter ships into slivers while stealing away her ill gotten gains.

Still, is Spain's pride pricked? Do her gallants display themselves any less flamboyantly? Do her nobles conspire to rob and cheat the crown with any less avarice or the Church stop doing what is necessary to stamp out heresy and line its pockets? No of course not - they all must still receive what they feel they are entitled to, even if it means stealing it from the king's pocket. Like the rest of Spain, their needs being met depends upon how much of the bounty from the fleet of ships making the annual voyage from South America with their holds full of pagan gold ends up in their pockets.

As has been faithfully recounted by Arturo Perez-Reverte in previous stories, that although Spain is becoming the old whore of Europe, the pretty exterior doesn't stand up in close proximity and corruption riddles her like the pox, there are still those to whom honour and pride are not just for show, even if they're sometimes for sale. While there might not be much credence given the saying honour among thieves in most societies, in the Spain of Philip IV its among the company of cut-purses and throat slitters that you're liable to find men sufficiently stalwart, for the right price, to fight for king and country.

So when Captain Alatriste, recently returned from the fields of Flanders fighting for God & King, is required to put together a company of men to carry out a mission of extreme delicacy and importance at the behest of his King, it's among the scoundrels and rogues of Seville that he looks. Accompanying his master, and narrating the events of The King's Gold, the fourth book of the Captain's adventures to be published by Penguin Canada and written by Perez-Reverte, is the now sixteen year old Inigo Balboa. While the mud of Flanders may have opened Inigo's eyes to the reality that the honourable and the proud die just as easily as the craven and cowardly, it has not dampened his enthusiasm for adventure.

It was Alatriste's misfortune to have come to the attention of one of the most powerful men in Spain, the Conde-Duque de Olivares. De Olivares is responsible for ensuring the smooth running of what's left of the Spanish empire, including ensuring the King's treasury receives the share of treasure from the colonies it deserves. Unfortunately a great many of the King's subjects spend much effort and ingenuity figuring out methods of diverting the gold into their own pockets. After all, as nobility they should not have to actually do anything as tedious and demeaning as earn money through industry and trade when every year a fleet of boats comes to Seville laden with treasure.

One family in particular has taken great pains to ensure that they continue to live in the style they are accustomed to, no matter who they have to bribe, and what documents they have to forge. If a ship's documents say that she is only weighs nine tons, and the harbour master and the customs official who examine it agree when it enters port, nobody will look too closely at the extra ten tons of cargo in the hold that doesn't exist. When word of this plan reaches the Conde-Duque de Olivares, and through him the King, it is decided that gold and treasure that doesn't exist can't be reported stolen so perhaps there are some honourable men somewhere in Spain who could be prevailed on to steal it on behalf of their King.

When the King calls, and fifty pieces of gold accompany that hail, Captain Alatriste and Inigo answer. The non-existent treasure is being offloaded onto a smaller boat and Alatriste is to lead a boarding party that will kill the crew, and set the boat adrift so it floats downstream into the hands of the King's guard who will claim the vessel as salvage. As it would never do for soldiers of the crown to be involved with stealing from loyal subjects, if anything goes wrong Alatriste can expect no help from anyone, and be left to suffer the consequences.

As we have seen in previous histories recounted by young Balboa, Captain Alatriste is no stranger to the world of the hired sword. When Spain is done with her soldiers she leaves them to walk the streets of her cities to make their livings as they are able. Since most of them are most able with the sword and the pistol, it's not surprising that the majority make their livings with aid of either one, the other, or both. With Seville being a major port of entry for not only treasure ships but soldiers returning from the wars, there is a thriving community of ex-soldiers living within the confines of Seville's Cathedral. The sanctuary offered by the church has made the Patio de los Naranjos a comfortable spot for many gentlemen of the sword, as it is sometimes the only way to avoid the malady of the neck caused by prolonged exposure to rope.

Needless to say the Captain and Inigo have few problems finding interested parties to join their venture, but finding ones they can trust is another matter. As has become the usual in one of Perez-Reverte's books featuring Alatriste and Inigo, in spite of the sardonic tone of the narration, and the heroic attitudes struck by young Inigo, echoes of Cervantes' work, Don Quixote, ring loud. Alatriste is truly an honourable man, but the windmills he tilts at abide in his soul, as he wars against the stain that killing has left on him.

Ever since the widow of his old comrade in arms placed Inigo in his care four years earlier he takes the charge of educating the boy very seriously. The last thing he wants is for him to follow in his footsteps and become a man of the sword. Occasionally Inigo catches the Captain looking at him with an expression he doesn't understand and is at a loss as to why the Captain thinks he should receive an education beyond that of the sword.. For his part, Inigo hopes to impress the Captain with his bravery and fighting prowess, having a young man's typical affection for the ideals of heroism. In The King's Gold Inigo takes a couple more irrevocable steps down the path that we know is his destiny.

Honourable men die from a knife in the back just as easily as they do from the sword in the heart, and kill with same knife when they have to. But they need to have something or someone in whose name they can carry out their deeds. It doesn't matter who it is or what it is, as long as there is a reason for fighting that one can bow before, honour is maintained. So when Inigo sees his master in court bowing to the King, a King he doesn't necessarily believe in, he begins to understand the despair that his master feels at times; the despair that keeps him awake all night drinking until he can stare off into the distance blind to the future and deaf to the past.

Arturo Perez-Reverte's series of books featuring the adventures of Captain Alatrisre are the stories Alexander Dumas would have written if he had lived in the twentieth and twenty-first century. Heroic attitudes are all very well and good, but if you don't live to see another day what purpose do they serve? In The King's Gold both we and Inigo learn a little more about what the reality of being a swashbuckler for a living entails and it's got far less to do with heroism than any of us have been led to believe.

You can purchase a copy of The King's Gold either directly from Penguin Canada or an on line retailer like Amazon.ca.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 11:18 PM | Permalink

We live in a world full of displaced people. War, famine, disease, and economics have forced millions if not billions of people to leave their homes. While some are fortunate enough to be allowed to immigrate to new countries where they have the chance to start over again, others end up in the squalor and helplessness of refugee camps. Trapped in bureaucratic limbo as no country is willing to accept them and unable to go home, they live on hand outs and take shelter in anything from tents to edifices made of scrap.

Limbo or purgatory can't be any worse than the fate of those doomed to spend their days whiling away the hours awaiting word that they can return to their homes or by some miracle will be allowed into another country. If that isn't a troubling enough fate, what of those who have family and friends to worry about? As long as no word comes saying they have died, they continue to remain alive as long as they are remembered. Those memories are the one thing they retain that assures them there life before this was real, and the people they left behind are all that's left of whatever it was that once rooted them to their homeland.

In 1940 when most of Europe had fallen under the shadow of Nazi Germany, Portugal remained unoccupied and fiercely neutral. Located at the far end of the Iberian peninsula and buffered from the rest of Europe by Spain, little Portugal became the last place of refuge for people fleeing Nazi Germany hoping to obtain a visa that would take them across the water to the United State, Canada, or South America. Whether living under Nazi rule was unacceptable to them or life threatening, made no difference as the result was the same. Standing on the edge of the continent looking across the ocean towards potential salvation, their only recourse was to wait.

Among those waiting was French aviator and author Antoine De Saint-Exupery who is perhaps best known for his children's book Le Petite Prince - The Little Prince. After the fall of France he refused to live in Nazi occupied France and made his way to America so he could continuine to fight. Like so many others he ended up in Portugal waiting for a visa, and it was during his time in Portugal among fellow refugees that he was inspired to write the essay Letter To A Hostage, which is now being re-issued by Pushkin Press of London, England.

Unlike the refugees of today who are resigned to the hopelessness of their situation, the majority of those waiting in Lisbon acted no differently than they would have if they were on vacation in the south of France or other resort area. On the whole these were people who had the where with all to have bought their way out of whatever troubles they might have experienced in their homeland. Once ensconced in Lisbon they proceeded to live as if their circumstances remained unchanged, dressing up every night and going to the casinos or attending lavish dinner parties. Of course it was all pretence, or as Saint-Exupery puts it: "As Lisbon played at happiness, they (the refugees) played at pretending they would return"(to their homelands).

I suppose a great many of you have read Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince, but for those who haven't, and for those who may not remember some of the key elements, at one point in the book the Little Prince of the title is being taught about love and friendship by a fox whom he meets on our planet. "What is essential is invisible to the eye. It's only with the heart that one truly sees" says the fox to the Little Prince. In many ways, Letter To A Hostage is an analysis of that sentiment, as Saint-Exupery attempts to define those things that are essential for defining our existence.

Surrounded as he is by those he considers rootless, people who are doomed to be cut off from their previous lives and forced to start over again in a new country, he begins to determine what will enable him to maintain his connection to his native France while he is in exile. What he comes up with is there are people, friends or family, that one can hold onto and carry with you in your heart to act as the ties to your home. Yet because their existence is threatened, his connection to his home is at risk. In particular he thinks of an ailing Jewish friend and worries about his chances of survival in occupied France.

Yet, how can something as simple as friendship, or as insignificant as a smile, be so important that it defines our connection to where we come from, who we are, and in fact be an essential aspect of human existence. Well, according to Saint-Exupery it's because the joy that we are gifted with through friendship, and the way the caring involved in a friendship motivates us to behave, are essential elements of the human spirit. Anybody can prepare a meal for anybody else, but if you or I cook a meal for someone we love, or somebody we care for, it's different from a meal cooked by a stranger for strangers.

You know the things your friend likes and dislikes, so you will go out of your way to include or exclude them from any dish you prepare. You are making something that's unique to that person, and in doing so you are recognizing their individuality and respecting it. Seeing the aimless refugees going through the motions of living without any intent behind their actions, without the invisible essential element of hidden joy that denotes a friendship, Saint-Exupery comes to understand why the consideration of an individual, caring or respect, is so important to preserve. Without a respect for our differences, if, as the Nazis desired, we were all the same, where would the conflict of ideas that generate growth and stimulate creativity come from? Uniformity of thought might make for an ordered universe, but it also makes for stagnation.

In a Letter To A Hostage Saint-Exupery follows a stream of thought that takes him from musing on what he finds so unsettling about the refugees he is sharing Lisbon with at the beginning of WW2 to how respect for each other's individuality is what ensures the continued evolution of humanity. His thoughts on friendship and how that shapes our behaviour towards others act as a natural segue between his contemplation on the nature of the rootless refugee and the deadening effects on human expression brought about by the tyranny of conformity.

Saint-Exupery's use of anecdotes as examples of his theories might be initially puzzling as the connection between the incidences he describes and his conclusions are not immediately obvious. Yet as you absorb the stories and think about them within the context of the ideas he is expressing, they become clear. Originally published in 1943, Letter To A Hostage, is every bit as applicable today as it was over seventy years ago. Think of how we are constantly being told that different is not only bad, but something to be afraid of, and you can see how important it is to be reminded of the importance of diversity.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery disappeared while flying a mission in 1943, but his works have live on long after his death. Works like The Little Prince have instructed people all over the world about the true nature of friendship and the things that are truly important in life. Letter To A Hostage may not be as accessible as his work for children, but it too details the essential invisible things that make life so special.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:52 PM | Permalink

So, when does jazz stop being jazz? There have been all sorts of jazz fusion groups over the years that have incorporated elements of other genres into their compositions from funk to straight ahead rock and roll and I wonder if there's a point where the music stops being jazz and becomes the other genre? Why would a song that's primarily a rock and roll song be still called a jazz piece just because the people performing it are nominally jazz musicians?

Perhaps jazz is less a musical genre and more a state of mind, and what defines the music, and by extension the musicians, is the intent behind the music and not the music itself. People who call themselves jazz musicians don't normally constrain themselves by thinking they have to write for a specific market or create any particular sound. They come up with an idea for a piece and then utilize whatever resources they have at their disposal to bring that to life. In some ways jazz is an organic process in that a composition will often develop out of the process of rehearsal as each player in a combo adds new layers and textures to a basic structure.

While there is always a certain element of improvisation in all music, it's far more likely that a jazz composition will not only have been created through improvisation, but a good deal of the song would continue to be improvised each time it's performed. Sometimes it appears that in order to write the ideal jazz song you only need to create a theme around which all the participating musicians can build their own contributions, and each time its played, the song is almost being rewritten. In that sort of atmosphere does it really matter what styles of music are utilized?

A great example of a band taking the genre be dammed attitude and running with it can be found on Garaj Mahal's forthcoming release on the Owl Studios label, wOOt, which will be in stores on September 9th/08. While some jazz fusion groups might be content with adding either bits of blues, or funk, or rock into the mix, the guys in Garaj Mahal have no hesitation about utilizing any or all of the above in any one song. While that might give the impression that their music is kind of chaotic stew, the reality is ... well the chaos is controlled anyway. In fact come to think of it, sometimes listening to their compositions one is distinctly reminded of the butterfly in Japan flapping its wings and causing an earthquake in San Francisco. What appears to be a series of disconnected events are in reality very much interconnected.

I have to admit that it took me a while to find a way into their music because I wasn't accustomed to their approach. While I've listened to quite a bit of contemporary jazz in recent years and have been steadily gaining an ability to appreciate it, this disc initially left me confounded. Admittedly part of that was due to my ambivalence to the use of synthesizers, which feature in the first few tracks of the CD, and it wasn't until I was able to get beyond those feelings that I began to enjoy this disc. However, part of the difficulty does lie in the fact that this is music that continually takes you by surprise as you're listening to it.

Unless you're prepared not to anticipate what's going to happen bar to bar in the music you will end up feeling perplexed, puzzled, and not a little lost. Yet if you are willing to let go of preconceived notions of what you think music is supposed to do, you will find yourself being taken on some really spectacular voyages by superlative musicians. Kai Eckhardt (bass), Fareed Haque (guitars), Alan Hertz (drums), and Eric Levy (keyboards) are your guides on this journey, and they'll take you as far as you're willing to go.

There are some musicians who write comic songs, and there are even some of them who manage to be relatively humorous, but there have been precious few who have written music that makes me genuinely laugh out loud. On wOOt's first two tracks, "Semos" and "Hotel" the sounds that Eric Levy produces via his keyboards, (I'm assuming the synthesized sounds were produced by the keyboards, but they could also have been generated by Fareed Haque using a synthesized guitar) were so absurd that I couldn't help laughing at them. Once I was able to overcome my personal bias, I realized just how much fun the band was having with these two tracks and enjoyed them for that reason. It was almost like they were letting you know that although this was pretty complicated music that you shouldn't take it too seriously. Lighten up and enjoy yourself already, they seem to be saying, because we are.

It was only after about the third time that I listened to the disc (okay I admit I'm slow sometimes) that I realized just how much fun Garaj Mahal was having playing what they were recording. I don't know if I've ever heard a more exuberant sounding group of musicians. Unlike so many other ensembles who always seem so serious, these guys haven't forgotten that what they're doing is called playing. No matter how intense the music gets, and it does get really intense at moments, there's always that underlying feeling of how excited they are to be making music and how much pleasure and joy they get from it.

Earlier in the review I cautioned potential listeners about the danger of trying to anticipate a song's progression on this disc due to what seems like the band's firm believe in chaos theory. Or, everything is interconnected, somehow, and even if we can't quite figure out how at the moment we're sure to come up with something, sometime. The seventh track on the disc, "Ishmael and Isaac", starts off sounding like something from Fiddler On The Roof and somewhere along the way changes into something verging on hard rock. Oddly enough though, is that it works. You don't even notice the transition happening until all of a sudden you realize just how hard the electric guitar is screaming. Although you might wonder for a second, what ever became of that nice Klezmar music, it really doesn't seem to matter that much because this is what the song sounds like now - and this is what it's supposed to sound like.

Jazz is all about pushing the envelope and discovering new ways of expressing thoughts and emotions musically. If you're going to listen to jazz you have to be prepared to take quantum leaps alongside the musicians and hope that those who you're travelling with know what they're doing. If you decide to take the trip that Garaj Mahal will be offering on their forthcoming release, wOOt, you'll find that not only are you in good hands, but you're going to have a lot of fun. Not only do they play sublimely, they haven't forgotten what it means to play.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:08 AM | Permalink

Haven't you ever wondered why it is that when there are so many romantic comedies made, that very few of them are any good. You'd think that the people who made those types of films would have had enough practice by now that they'd know what they were doing. Yet, instead it seems like the more of them they make the more they do the same lame old plots that are so predictable that you can almost recite the dialogue along with the actors as they do their scenes.

Then again I guess you can say the same thing about so many movies these days. Once somebody discovers a formulae that works nobody wants to mess with it and be the one who loses money because they dared to do something a little bit different. I'm sure this applies to the movie industry all over the world; from Bollywood to Hollywood the credo is don't mess up and make sure the producers get their end (salary) and at the very least the studio recoups any money it sank into the film.

Therefore, anytime I hear of a movie which even has the slightest chance of deviating from the tried and true, or at least offers a new twist on an old theme, I'm more than willing to give a chance. So when I was offered the opportunity to review the DVD of My Faraway Bride (that's it's title in the United States - the rest of the world will be seeing it as My Bollywood Bride), distributed by Salient Media, I thought why not. The premise, while not completely original, at least offered the potential for something different from the norm, and I was interested in seeing what they would do with it.

Alex (Jason Lewis) is a young American who meets Reena (Kasimera Shah) a beautiful Indian woman on vacation in California. As is the case in all of these movies they have a whirlwind romance and fall in love. One day Reena disappears, and Alex discovers that she has left the country and returned home to India without saying good-bye. Determined not to let her go that easily he heads off to India. Somehow, although he only knows the name of the Mumbai suburb where she lives and her first name, he is determined to find her.

Unfortunately there are a couple things he doesn't know about Reena. One, she is already engaged to be married to a man her parents have chosen for her, and two, the man she is engaged to be married to is the producer of the movies she stars in as she is one of Bollywood's leading ladies. The good news is that her being a star makes it a easy for Alex to find her, as her face is on almost every billboard in Mumbai. The bad news is how to get close to her when she is constantly surrounded by movie people, including her thug of a husband to be, Shekhar (Gulshan Grover), for him to have a chance of convincing her to change her mind about the wedding.

Alex receives some unexpected assistance from a sympathetic rickshaw driver(Ash Chandler) and one of Reena's friends in Bollywood, Bobby (Sanjay Suri) in his quest, and although the ride isn't exactly smooth, the ending is pretty much what you expect it to be. What makes this movie so special is that unlike some films which are more than the sum of their parts - it's the individual parts that make this one so special. We know before the movie even starts that the two romantic leads are going to end up together - what would be the point otherwise - it's how they get there that makes or breaks a good romantic comedy. In Faraway Bride the getting there is all the fun.

First of all the director and script writer have made some very sensible choices when it comes to plot direction. The first is they don't overplay the whole stranger in a strange land bit with Alex being in India. Instead they let India speak for herself. It's almost as if they've let Mumbai be an extra character in the movie as the camera spends a fair amount of time showing her off. From the traffic jams, the fancy shopping districts, the open air markets and restaurants, the crowed streets, the vistas of the ocean, to the bustle of the harbour, we're given quite the introduction. Of course their showing her best profile, and we're not seeing her warts, but speaking as someone who hasn't been to Mumbai or India, I felt like I was being shown a clearer picture than is normally portrayed in the West of a large Indian city.

The second thing that helps the movie is the fact that so much of it takes place on a Bollywood sound stage, which gives them an excuse to show a typical Bollywood style movie being made. Yet instead of simply throwing in a couple of big production numbers (don't worry there are a couple) they've filmed done some interesting scenes of Reena being taught her dance routines by her choreographer, Alisha (Neha Dubey). Which brings up item number three that makes the movie work - the subplot of Bobby's relationship with Alisha. When he got his big break and become a Bollywood start he had dropped her like a hot potato, and now he's regretting it big time.

In the roles of the two leads Jason Lewis and Kashmera Shah make for a very comfortable romantic couple on the screen. One thing that Western audiences might not be used to is the lack of flagrant sexual tension between the two leads. Instead, there is more of an undercurrent that runs through their scenes together that actually makes both of their performances a lot more realistic. Of course it doesn't hurt that neither of them are what you'd call difficult to look at.

As is sometimes the case in movies like these the supporting actors get to have all the fun with their characters and do a great job. Neha Dubey and Sanjay Suri are both believable in their roles as the secondary love story, and I especially appreciated how Sanjay was able to show his character gradually shed his "star" image that he had cultivated, and reveal the human underneath. Ash Chandler as the Rickshaw driver was hysterical, and Gulshan Grover was wonderfully slimy as Reena's fiancee/producer.

To round things out, they've included a pretty good documentary on the making of the movie with the DVD. It was also nice to have the sound properly balanced so that the dialogue isn't drowned out by the background noise or any musical accompaniment. When they do stage the full musical numbers the sound is rich and full and allows you to really enjoy the extravagant pageantry to the fullest.

Listen, don't pick up a copy of My Faraway Bride expecting art or genius, but if you're in the mood for a romantic comedy with a little more spice than normal, or if you're a Bollywood fan looking for a movie that's a little more realistic than average, than look no further. It's fun, light hearted, enjoyable, and best of all it never takes itself too seriously. Taken all together, it all adds up to be one of the best romantic comedies I've seen.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:18 AM | Permalink

What do you see when you look out your door? Do you see a street in a neighbourhood with cars, roads, houses, shops, apartments, and people going about their business? Or do you see occupied territory full of things that don't belong, cluttering up the landscape and despoiling the environment? Two people can look at the same thing and see two completely different things, it all depends on your perspective. One person's normalcy is another person's hell.

Look at what we accept normal: famine, war, pestilence, and death. The four horsemen of the apocalypse have been among us for centuries but we've been too blind to see them. What would happen if the apocalypse came and nobody noticed? Guess what - it's happening everyday and you haven't noticed yet. What? You don't believe me do you - you think I'm full of shit and crazy don't you? According to our society the viewpoint I've just expressed is crazy and full of shit because it doesn't accept the agreed upon version, or vision, or normalcy.

If you're going to read John Trudell's book of poetry and song lyrics, Lines From A Mined Mind: The Words Of John Trudell, published by Fulcrum Books, you better be prepared to have your preconceived notions of how the world works challenged. First of all he has spent the past forty years as a resistance fighter on behalf of his people, the Santee Sioux, and the authority you accept as a government are in his eyes an occupying power. It was from his great-grandparents that we stole the land on which we have built our neighbourhoods, and against whom our governments conducted a campaign of genocide in order to deal with the "Indian Problem". A history like that is enough to give anybody a jaundiced eye when it comes to looking at the world around you, but Trudell has also suffered horrible personal tragedy.

He was a spokesperson for the all tribes occupation of Alcatraz Island by Native Americans that lasted from 1969 to 1971 and subsequently joined the American Indian Movement (AIM). He was chairman of AIM from 1973-79, but following a mysterious house fire that killed his wife, children and mother in law he resigned. To this day the cause of the fire has never been discovered, but considering his position, and the animosity that surrounded AIM in those days (and that continues to this day) there will always remain the distinct possibility that the fire was set deliberately. It was after that Trudell began writing, and since 1983 he has released eleven recordings of his music, and toured around North America performing and giving readings of his work.

Lines From A Mined Mind is the first time an exhaustive collection of his writing has been gathered into one publication. For those of you not familiar with Trudell's work, he primarily wrote blues, and blues based rock and roll, but more importantly his lyrics dealt with issues that barely anybody was, or is, singing about. It's not only that he wrote about issues affecting Native Americans, but he also wrote about the effect the world we live in has on a human being's spirit; how we have allowed ourselves to be shaped and moulded to such an extent that we no longer notice that we are being manipulated.

In his introduction, titled "From Somewhere Inside My Head" Trudell outlines the precept behind "Mined Mind". "Industrial tech no logic civilization is the mining process/The intelligence of each arriving human generation/Is programmed to perceive the reality that meets the needs/Of the industrial society each human generation arrives in/The human beings are individually and collectively mined". Society conditions so that we can be of most use to it, but of course as with every industrial operation there is waste product. In our case that ends up being "the fears doubts and insecurity/That affects the human beings perceptional reality in such a way/The human being becomes separated from the being at the expense of being/Resulting in human beings viewing life through their fears and inabilities."

Now, although Trudell has made it cleat that this is how he views the way the world works, he doesn't lay any claims to being superior to the rest of us because of this belief. This is just the backdrop against which all of our struggles to be true to ourselves are played out against. In his poems and song lyrics throughout the book he talks about his struggles to overcome those obstacles. Of course his path is made even more complicated by the fact that he is also a member of a group of people considered to be a conquered race by the majority of our society. For most of his life the government that supposedly is there to protect and serve him, has done its best to deny him his rights as a human being.

What's really wonderful about his poems/lyrics is that they don't just complain about something, or sound like the usual victim's lament. He demands that his readers think about things and poses questions that are designed to try and make you see how his world view came about. In the poem "To God" he ask a few questions about some things that he's been finding confusing "About these Christians/they claim to be from your nation/but man you should see the things they do/all the while blaming it on you". The poem then lists a litany of offences that have been carried out in God's name and then continues "We do not mean to be disrespectful...our people have their own ways/we never even heard of you until not long ago/Your representatives spoke magnificent things of you which we were willing to believe/But from the way they acted/We know you and we were being deceived".

Naturally, as you would expect from a man who has fought for the rights of his people for forty years there are quite a few political poems and songs. However he is more than a one issue person, and writes about everything. From the joy children can bring, our responsibilities to each other as human beings, spirituality, and the relationship between men and women. In fact some of the poems he's written about men and women are the most honest I've read by a man about that subject.

In "Shadow Over Sisterland" he has written probably the strongest denunciation of men's mistreatment of women since John Lennon's "Women Is The Nigger Of The World". "There's a shadow over sisterland/With a Smith & Thomas/Pointed at her head.../Money and authority/Have their own way of talking/...Tethers of chains/Tethers of jewels/Economic bondage/Runs by those rules/". Everything about our society; religion, laws, and even the way the economy runs are geared towards keeping men dominant over women. When you start to consider some of the more regressive laws that have been passed in recent years, ones that have resulted in women going to jail for refusing to have caesarian sections during childbirth, you realize that you might not like the picture he's painting, but that doesn't stop it from being true.

John Trudell is an articulate and intelligent poet and lyricist whose words might confound you because they challenge your vision of the world. You might not like his perspective, and there's a good chance you won't agree with it, yet it you won't be able to deny his sincerity. Because it dares you to look at our society through the eyes of those whose backs its been built on, it's not a pretty picture, but it's a lot more realistic than anything you'll read or see for years to come. For as he makes clear, whether we know it or not, we're all victims of the same machinations.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:09 PM | Permalink

It's been a source of continual amazement for me to watch the way different cultural traditions have gone in and out of style with the various flakes and fakes selling salvation under the catch all of New Age. Initially it probably started in the sixties when pop stars started to traipse off to India looking for a quick fix of spiritualism to go with their new found material wealth and drug habits. That then got mixed up with ideas about the occult, Alister Crowly, the mish-mash of spiritualism that oozed out of the 19th century, and various misunderstood concepts of Buddhism, Tao, and other Eastern belief systems.

From the far East it wasn't that much of a jump to the pre Christian religions of Europe and other indigenous cultures around the world. At one time you couldn't walk into a New Age store without tripping over white turkey feathers painted to look like they'd fallen off an eagle and other so called "medicines" that promised enlightenment. But it was the coming of Riverdance, and the Celtic invasion it spawned, that took the bullshit out of the New Age speciality shops into every gift store and boutique across North America. Celtic Crosses have sprung up like weeds and people who couldn't tell you the difference between the Book Of Kells and Kellogg's Corn Flakes are able to tell you all about their Irish/Scottish heritage.

The saddest thing is what's been done to the music. While Riverdance, and even its successors did a fine job of showcasing Celtic music as a vital, bawdy, and raucous celebration of life, in the hands of those selling enlightenment it's been turned into the musical equivalent of puffed wheat. Instead of pounding drums, violins, pipes, and guitars supporting lyrics celebrating food, drink, love, war, and all the other realities of a hard but full life, you now have synthesizers and ethereal voiced, genderless people singing about elves and fairies.

Thankfully there are some people out there who have ignored this disturbing trend and play the music of their culture the way it is supposed to be. While the Scots have escaped the ravages of New Wave relatively unscathed, at least compared to their cousins in Ireland, a singer like Julie Fowlis, from the island of North Ulst in the Hebrides off the coast of Scotland, who sings the songs that make up the oral history of the islands in their original Gaelic, is still a rarity. Listening to her first North American release, Cuilidh (pronounced KOOL-ee) on the Spit & Polish label, is to be transported to another place and time.

The twelve songs recorded on Cuilidh are a mixture of traditional songs that Fowlis and her fellow musicians have arranged and songs she's learned from other musicians on the islands over the years. Although, truth be told, I think the only difference between the two is that on one hand she's given a traditional song her own arrangement and on the other she's followed someone else's arrangement. Of course a great deal of the delight to be found in this disc comes from the stories associated with the songs themselves, for they give you a sense of the history behind them and the people.

Take "'Ille Dhinn, 'S Toigh Leam Thu", the fourth track on the disc as an example. We're told that it was written by Mairead nighean Ailein (lower case n in the second name is not a typo) who was the great aunt of Domhnall Ruadh Choruna, one of the most famous bards from the island of North Ulst. She composed the song for the man who would eventually become her husband, Julie's Great-Great-Grandfather's brother. A great many of the songs on the disc are similarly taken from actual events that have occurred in the history of the island, some being as recent as only ten years ago, while others five hundred years ago.

Some events are more infamous then others of course and as a result there was more then one version of the song. The story that's recounted in track three of the album, "Ant-Aparan Goirid 's an t-Aparan Ur: Oran do Sheasaidh Bhalile Raghnaill", is of a young woman named Jesse who takes advantage of her engagement party to run away with a man from Skye island who is not her fiancee. If you check the disc you'll see that she's included another version of the song as well, for as she ruefully points out in an interview, she could have included six or seven versions of it.

You'll notice something a little odd about the lay out of the disc in that everything is Gaelic with English being treated as the second language. Gaelic on this disc is a living language, not something mystical or spiritual with secret powers of divination or whatever other bullocks you might have heard. One thing though, the translations for some of the songs aren't going to be that helpful, because they don't really translate that well. These are what Julie calls mouth music songs, or what we might call nonsense. Yet these aren't really nonsense because they were composed to have a purpose in that the tongue twisting lyrics were written to match specific dance tunes. The sounds of the words are important as they become another layer of the rhythm of the song.

As for Julie Fowlis singing and the music on the disc, it's just what you'd hope for. She has a strong clear voice with a good range that allows her to run up and down the octaves at will and as needed. More important is how expressive her voice is and how it can load sufficient meaning into a song's lyric that it doesn't matter that we don't understand a single word in the language. Best of all there's not an electronic instrument to be heard on the disc as flutes, pipes, bass, accordion, mandolin, and guitar handle most of the duties with only the addition of a bouzouki giving it a somewhat exotic flavour.

When you listen to the music on Cuilidh, you're listening to the stories of the people who have lived on the islands off the coast of Scotland known as the Hebrides for thousands of years. This isn't an easy life, scratching a living from the North Atlantic and wind swept land, and most of it is still spent on the business of survival. What little time they have for leisure is given over to playing the music that tells them who they are. If you can't recognize that as magic than I feel sorry for you. Luckily, Julie Fowlis is willing to share a little of this real Gaelic magic with anybody willing to hear and appreciate it.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:58 PM | Permalink

I'm sorry, I guess I'm just an old fart, (although on most days I feel like I'm still only about fourteen but I guess that's normal for most men, even ones closer to fifty then forty), but I just don't get this indie/alt rock thing. I've heard, I don't know how many bands that fall into that category, and quite frankly I can't really see what makes them so different from the main stream rock and roll I've been hearing on FM radio stations for thirty years.

I hate to break it to people but loud guitars and feedback have been around since the sixties and it sure as hell doesn't make you alternative. The only reason I can think of why these guitar bands have been called alternative is because there's been such a paucity of anybody playing music with actual instruments on the pop charts that people with no memory of what music sounds like get all excited. Okay so that really does sound like the rant of an old fart doesn't it - well I don't apologize- nobody's forcing you to read this anyway.

Of course, when you do finally hear something that's a real alternative it sticks out and makes you realize just how bad everything else really is. To be honest the first time I listened to The Places We Lived, Backyard Tire Fire's forthcoming release on Hyena Records (August 26th/08) I was ready to toss it on the pile of just another band not worth listening too rejects as it sounded far too much like every other so called alternative band. Yet something about them niggled at the back of my mind and I decided to give them another listen.

It's a good thing I did, because otherwise I would have done these three guys (Ed Anderson guitar, keyboards, and vocals; Matt Anderson bass; and Tim Kramp drums) from the Mid-west a huge disservice by ignoring what they were doing. Instead of being just another collection of guitar driven, middle of the road rock music full of stolen riffs from some of the worst excesses of the 1970's, these guys know how to write and arrange songs and understand what melody means. What had held my attention on that first listen had been their vocal arrangements on the first couple of songs, especially track two "Shoulda Shut It".

Instead of sticking to the mid-range, where most vocalists tend to perch safely, Ed Anderson pushes his voice an octave higher. The whole song was then pitched to suit the vocals, with the result being a piece of music that has a tinge of soul to it, as the music sways underneath it instead of pulsing like a rock song normally would. While there was a slightly disconcerting resemblance to some of the sappier white soul of the seventies, it was saved from that because of the slightly harsher underpinnings they allowed to happen musically. The contrast between the rock attitude and the soulful voice went a long way towards making this a genuinely alternative offering.

In contrast to this was the very next offering on the disc, "Everybody's Down", a nice, solid blues based rock song reminiscent of late sixties early seventies Rolling Stones, which is a harder sound to create than people think. It's easy to do boring blues based rock, but it's difficult to write a song in that mode and make it interesting. While both those songs were interesting it's the fourth song on the disc where their originality really comes through.

On "Time With You" they take the very big risk of deliberately creating discordance between the keyboards and guitar. My ear isn't good enough to tell exactly what they were doing, juggling pitch or playing in different keys, but there was something wonderfully jarring about the song that made you pay more attention to it than you would have otherwise. I think what I especially like about it was the fact it was interesting to listen to, without sounding like they set out to make it "interesting". There was nothing about there music anywhere that indicated pretence or artifice, instead they were obviously looking for ways to make their music more expressive and willing to take chances to do so.

In my mind that's what an alternative band should do, take chances and be willing to make mistakes. Not that these guys seem to make many mistakes. Each time I listened to the disc it kept getting better. Most of the time you listen to a disc a couple of times and there's nothing new left to discover. Backyard Tire Fire's The Places We Lived on the other hand keeps offering up little gems of adventure with each new listen. The mix of strings and keyboard on "Rainy Day Don't Go Away", juxtaposed with the seemingly straight ahead rocker of the previous cut, "How The Hell Did We Get Back Here", is just one example of their willingness to experiment with styles of music. Instead of worrying about what they are "supposed" to be playing, they seem more concerned with figuring out what's appropriate to the nature of the song they have written.

Every time you turn around there seems to be another alternative band out there that sounds just like every other alternative band until you get to the point of wondering who they think they are an alternative too. So it's a real pleasure to find a band like Backyard Tire Fire who really are an alternative to the usual dreck that passes for different. Some of the songs don't work as well as others on their latest disc, The Places We Lived, but that's only because their not afraid to take real risks with their music. If they're allowed to maintain this level of freedom of expression they will definitely be a band to watch for in the future.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:48 PM | Permalink

There's a big difference between feeling depressed and suffering from depression. If you're feeling depressed it's a temporary thing that you'll usually pull out of within a few days, after the effects of whatever it was that caused you to feel down wear off. Clinical depression on the other hand is a permanent condition that some people cope with their whole lives. Its insidious as it can emotionally and psychologically cripple you, leaving you bed ridden as surely as if you suffered from some physically debilitating disease.

You are overcome by a lassitude of such magnitude that you eventually don't see the point in getting out of bed. While there are all sorts of scientific explanations for what happens to the brain because of depression - hormonal imbalances and various chemicals either not reaching the brain in sufficient quantity or too much arriving all at once leaving the brain swamped - it's not certain whether or not this merely describes what's going on in a depressed brain or if these are causes of depression. While it's true that the medication used to treat depression works on flat lining emotional responses by inhibiting certain chemicals, they are not cures for the ailment and barely even treat the symptoms.

In a society where feelings are frowned upon to the point that we're taught to repress them from an early age there's a lot of stuff that gets bottled up inside. Most cases of depression are as result of that bottle coming uncorked and the person being overwhelmed. The chronically depressed person deals with that permanently, as unlike the majority they haven't shut down their ability to feel and without an avenue to express what that does to them they fry. The so called "artistic temperament" is in actual fact a creative person's ongoing struggle with depression as they search for the means to express what they are feeling.

I suppose this must seem like an odd way to start off a CD review, with a dissertation on depression, but Jake La Botz's latest release on his own Charnel Ground Records label,Sing This To Yourself And Other Suggestions For A Personal Apocalypse is as lucid and honest examination of the subject as you'll hear anywhere. Without a trace of self-pity or melodrama the eleven songs on Sing This To Yourself explore and describe what a person going through depression experiences. While some might wonder at the rationale behind creating a recording of songs about depression, La Botz's explanation of "My hope is that these songs could be a comfort to those who are struggling" is worth remembering.

Depression is an incredibly isolating illness, so for the person suffering with it the knowledge that somebody understands what they're going through is more valuable then any medication. Now that's not to say this album should only be listened to when prescribed by a shrink, (although I personally think it's a far better medication than Prozac or any of the other deadening drugs they give to depressed people) as it's an amazing collection of songs that has a lot to offer anybody who appreciates a well written blues tune. For Jake La Botz has an astounding capacity to express emotions in a way that anybody listening can't help but understanding and be touched by them.

Jake reminds us where the blues came from and what drew people to it in the first place. That's not because he's trying to imitate what somebody did sixty years ago, but because he deals with the stuff that troubles the human spirit in the same manner that blues people of old did. Of course he's not singing about the things from yesterday that caused the blues; what it's like to be on a chain gang in the deep south, picking cotton, or being a sharecropper, he's singing about the things today that scrape us raw and leave us wounded in the heart.

"Hungry Again (Put Me In A Hole)", the opening track on the disc, describes the kind of life that can make a person feel too much. "Left alone too much as a small boy/Learned to walk and talk from the animals/they taught me what to eat". Neglect and abandonment are sure fire ways to turn a person in on themselves as they feel like they don't matter and they know the people who are supposed to care about them don't, so why should anybody else? That song expresses the hunger that burns in a person's chest to be wanted, to know that somebody cares about what happens to them.

The great thing about Jake La Botz's music is Jake himself and what he brings to his performance of the tunes. His guitar work is elegant in its simplicity, as he picks out individual notes with the precision of gem cutter splitting a stone to expose the heart that was hidden within the matrix. The notes he plays traces a similar path through his songs, as they follow a line that lead us to the heart that beats inside each tune - its emotional core. Speed isn't important for these songs, in fact it would be the worst thing possible for them. We gloss over emotions in our world by whizzing past them, so Botz's music allows us the opportunity to stay in the moment and properly experience them.

Jake's singing voice is as singular as his songs, and as raw as their content. Like the folk and blues singers of old, Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, his voice is that of a person who has experienced the world and seen his share of hardship. Yet in spite of that, or maybe because of it, there is a strength of spirit to his voice that makes these songs positive experiences. In a world where men aren't supposed to express their feelings, here's this guy pouring his heart out in a strong, sure voice that cracks with emotions. If nothing else it's certainly an example for other men to follow about how to be emotionally real.

If you want to see Jake La Botz perform songs from Sing This To Yourself and other recordings he's in the middle of his third "Tattoo Across America Tour", which is seeing him play tattoo parlours from the east to the west coast until the middle of September/08. He's on the East coast right now and about to head south to Florida - so check you local listings because Jake La Botz could be coming to a tattoo parlour near you and you don't want to miss that concert.

Jake La Botz's Sing This To Yourself And Other Suggestions For A Personal Apocalypse is as fine a collection of traditional acoustic blues music as you're going to find anywhere. The fact that it also happens to be some of the most emotionally honest and beautifully passionate music as well makes it even more special. Do yourself a favour, the next time your feeling down, give Jake a listen, his blues are the best medicine that money can buy.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:34 AM | Permalink

New York city is the city everybody loves to hate. Those of who live outside of it despise those who live there because they arrogantly believe that its a Mecca for artistic talent and home to some of the most diverse and interesting creative people in North America, What really pisses us off is that of course they are right. Anybody who has spent anytime at all in New York City with their eyes and ears open will know that there is undeniably something about the energy of the town that creates the tension required to stimulate creative juices.

One only needs to look at the facilities and organizations dedicated to the arts to realize how ingrained they are into the very fabric of the city. Outside of cities in Europe I've never seen a metropolitan centre that not only celebrates the arts but the artists who create them as they do in New York. Whether a diva in the Metropolitan Opera company or a poet in the Bowery, each are given equal credence as artists. Is it any wonder that young people chasing their muse descend upon the city in the hopes that not only will they obtain recognition, but find others of like mind with whom with they can collaborate and commiserate with over failures.

So when a young Willie Nile left his home in Buffalo NY looking to set his poems and stories to music, it was only natural that he headed to New York City. It's been his home since then and in the years since his arrival he's been putting his words to music and earning the respect of his peers, if not the commercial acclaim, he deserves. He's even survived the curse of being tagged the next Bob Dylan, after Bruce Springsteen but before Steve Forbert. Although he fell through the cracks for a bit without a contract, he's now back in full swing, and in 2006 released Streets Of New York, the album he refers to as the one he's always wanted to write, a homage to the city that took him in and gave him his opportunity to shine.

To celebrate the release of the album, he and his band decided they wanted to do something special so they did a one off gig at the Mercury Lounge in the lower east side of Manhattan. It was Willie's record label, 00:02:59, that suggested they film the event, and now two years latter, Live From The Streets Of New York, the DVD, and a CD of the same name, of that concert have been released. Of the fifteen tracks on the DVD and the live CD, ten are taken from the Streets Of New York release while the other five are from various points in Willie's career.

I've known the name Willie Nile for years, but I doubt if I could have named a single song that he'd written or sung before watching the Live From The Streets Of New York DVD. Now after seeing him and his band put on one of the best and most intense rock and roll shows since I saw The Clash in 1982, I won't ever forget him or his music. Musically his material ranges from good solid rock and roll with overtures of punk, anthems that are strongly flavoured by his Irish heritage, to elegant ballads played on the piano. His lyrics range from surreal creations that he co-wrote with drummer/percussionist Frankie Lee, songs about the human condition, to songs about the state of the world.

One of the really remarkable abilities he has is to be able to take a song about a personal matter, like the end of a relationship, and give it a universal appeal as it speaks to ideas and emotions that can be applied to things happening all around us. "On Some Rainy Day" is a great example of a song like that as he asks at one point, "Will you think of me of some rainy day" which on one level could be someone asking their ex if they will spare them a thought occasionally, but also asks us, will we think of anyone aside from ourselves on occasion.

As I mentioned earlier quite a few songs on the disc are songs that he co-wrote with Frankie Lee, and one of those is also one of the more surreal offerings on the disc. "The Day I Saw Bo Diddley In Washington Square". First of all it sounds like a tune that either the Pogues or The Waterboys would have sung, as it has the feel of an Irish pub song, all slow and anthem like, but the lyrics sound like they're from a psychedelic walk in the park. How many times is the sky actually orange or do balloons appear to be growing on trees instead of leaves? It's a beautiful exercise in letting your imagination run wild, and it actually captures the rare beauty that can happen in a big city on a fall day under the right circumstances - especially if the late Bo Diddley happens to be wandering around.

Two songs that he sings back to back, "Hard Times In America" and "Cell Phones Ringing (In The Pockets Of The Dead) are very angry. Not in the sense that Willie is angry at anyone in particular, but angry at a world that can let the sort of shit happen that he's describing. The first is pretty self explanatory and even though it was written twelve years ago, it is still as depressingly applicable today as it was then. One of the fun things about it though was that half-way through it Willie's two guitar players, Andy York and Jimmy Vivino became, in their own words, "axe wielding fiends" as they enjoyed bashing leads back and forth between each other like tennis players involved in a long rally.

In the special features section of the DVD there's a short feature where Willie and the band members talk about some of the songs on the disc. "Cell Phones Ringing (In The Pockets Of The Dead) was written after the terrorist attack on the train in Spain in 2004. One of the New York papers ran a headline about cell phones ringing in the pockets of the dead in reference to the fact that bodies were lying on the side of the railroad tracks in their body bags, and phones started ringing inside them as people began phoning family and friends they knew had been travelling on the train. You can hear the anguish in Willie's voice as he sings this song, a song that wonders at the horrors that mankind can keep inflicting on itself.

The band that Willie has assembled for the DVD is the band he plays with whenever the opportunity arises, but it's not that often anymore as they all have other commitments that keep them busy now. So this night was special for all of them, because it doesn't happen as often as any of them would like that they get to climb up on stage with Willie Nile. Aside from the three already mentioned, there was Rich Pagano on drums (he also mixed down the album and the DVD) and Brad Albetta on bass. One of the hardest things for a rock and roll band to accomplish is to sound loose but be incredibly tight at the same time. These guys have that chemistry, what with having a history and sharing a common focus of knowing and loving to play Willie Nile's music, all of which combined make for a great rock and roll concert.

Although, it's two songs that were the furthest removed from rock and roll on the disc that were the ones that moved me the most. "Back Home" and "Streets Of New York" both feature Willie sitting down at the piano. While the former has the band backing him up the latter is just him solo. Both songs tell you a little bit of the kind of life Willie has had, but there's no sense of self-pity or cheap sentimentality about either of these numbers as he is simply telling a story. Willie is a real troubadour in that way, as he has the ability to tell a story with a song and let you draw your own conclusions about what's going on. He can touch your heart with a song and his piano playing, but he never once tries to tell your heart how it should feel.

Both the sound and the video on this DVD are excellent and make you feel like either you're a member of the band or you're watching the show standing on stage beside which ever member of the band is the focus of attention at the moment. As far as I can tell the sound is regular stereo while the picture is definitely fullscreen. However you are so close to the action that none of that technical stuff really matters, as who cares about it when you can watch the guitar player's fingers walk the fret board and Willie's fingers caress each piano key.

Live From The Streets Of New York is one of the best concert DVDs I've ever seen. Not only does it do a great job of recording a great concert, it records a great concert by a great artist, Willie Nile.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:46 PM | Permalink

For all its innocuous sounding meaning, a place where things come together or meet, there is something inherently portentous about the word convergence. Referring to a place as a point of convergence implies a significance to the events that will incur as a result of this coming together that meeting, rendezvous, or even tryst fail to convey. Of course until one knows the nature of those converging there is no way to tell how things will fall out. One thing you can count on though is that the convergence will change not only those who involved, but the place where they meet will never be the same again.

In author Steven Erikson's epic fantasy series the Malazan Book Of The Fallen he has introduced us to seemingly unconnected characters, places, and plots that have gradually been woven together into a web that ensnares them all. In the first seven books of the projected ten part series Erikson has laid out tantalizing strands for us to follow. We have learned about the interpersonal relationships between gods and goddesses; met humans and alien races who have ascended to assume god like powers; been introduced to demons and creatures from other dimensions; warlocks, sorcerers, magicians, wizards, shaman, and other beings who control forces of frightening power; and most dangerous of all, the wide variety of mortals on whose power of belief most of the above depend for their existence.

Now as we approach the end of the series Erikson is starting to pull the strings of the web tight around his characters, and plot lines whose beginnings can be traced back as the first book begin to converge. Toll The Hounds, published by Random House Canada, the eighth book of the sequence, sees many familiar faces, and a couple of new ones, brought together at three points of convergence, where some plot lines come to a conclusion and others are propelled a few steps further along their way. One of the truisms expressed early on in the sequence, power attracts power, is proven not only accurate at this time, so does the prediction that such meetings result in an unholy mess.

If you've not read any of the books preceding this one, a plot summery will do nothing but confuse you, come to think of it even if you've read the whole series up to now, a plot summery will confuse you. That's not to say that the book is confusing, its just the strands are so many and so complicated that laying out the bare bones in a paragraph or two and expecting anyone to create anything coherent would be the equivalent of handing you a skein of wool after a kitten has reconfigured its molecular structure and asking you to knit a sweater from the resulting snarl. Over the course of nine hundred plus pages Erickson carefully and coherently leads us through the maze of interconnecting lines to produce a heartrending, joyful, celebration of life that poses thoughtful questions about the real meaning of faith, love, responsibility, justice, and sacrifice.

Does that sound unusually heavy for a fantasy story? Perhaps, but in Erikson's hands you don't even notice what he's doing as you are far too embroiled in the lives of the people involved and caught up in the sequence of events to realize he's making these points. It's not until you take a pause for breath - which I would recommend doing after each section to allow your pulse to return to normal- that the implications of what you've just read sinks in. As is the case with all of the books prior to Toll The Hounds layers of meaning are carefully stacked into almost every paragraph, and while you may think you know what's just happened based on the action described, the reality is oftentimes far more complicated.

Yet unlike previous books, Toll The Hounds starts to pull back the veils that have hidden secret motivations and real agendas. For this reason, this is also perhaps the most introspective book yet in the sequence. Where before we might have been merely observing a character's external reactions to a scene, or perhaps their immediate feelings of fear, repulsion, joy, or sadness when confronted by circumstances, we now follow them along their sometimes torturous processes of assimilating implications. Within each of us there abides a place where we can no longer avoid the mirror that reveals our true face, and while some are much more adroit at avoiding that particular confrontation, in the end the majority of us can only put it off for so long.

What good does it do if we fulfill the deepest yearnings of our heart if in order to do so we break it on the way? Are you honest enough to be able to see that in the pursuit of justice that committing an injustice diminishes you and your goal? Are you strong enough to look in that mirror inside of you and admit to your own true motivations, or acknowledge that you might not understand another's? Well, it's down those avenues that Erikson takes his central characters in Toll The Hounds. Some come close to being broken by the journey, others are tempered and honed until like the finest steel they shine with an inner light, and some discover a new capacity for life and love.

With the Malazan Book Of The Fallen sequence Erikson has taken fantasy out of the hands of the swashbucklers where action is the credo and the only consequences anyone suffers is usually at the receiving end of a weapon. In Toll The Hounds he continues to prove that he is a masterful writer capable of creating characters who do more then just bleed and kill. At times his narrative is nearly poetic in nature as he makes use of his various character's flights of fancy and singularity of thought to colour his prose. While in the hands of a less skilled author this might prove disastrous and end up trivializing the content of the story, here it increases the poignancy while adding some necessary lightness of spirit to moments that might otherwise have been too devastating to cope with.

If you have not yet read any of the books in the Malazan Book Of The Fallen sequence you could probably read Toll The Hounds and enjoy it for the pure spectacle, but you would have little or no idea of what was going on. For those of you who have been with Steven Erikson since he began the series, be prepared to read things that will break your heart, make you laugh, and have you on the edge of your seat all the way through. As hard as it maybe to believe, not only does the series continue to get better with each book, it continues to amaze and surprise. A brilliant effort by a brilliant author.

Toll The Hounds can be purchased either directly from Random House Canada or an on line retailer like Amazon.ca

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:28 PM | Permalink

It was while sitting in a second run theatre in the east end of Toronto, Ontario that I first saw Richie Havens perform. In 1977 I was sixteen and the Woodstock Music Festival had taken place eight years earlier, but the movie of the event extended its life for people like me who had no interest in the pop culture of the mid seventies. In the days before punk hit Canada the music and the politics of the late sixties seemed far more alive then anything our own time had to offer.

Which explains why on that Friday night there were about forty of us sitting spread out through the Roxy Cinema, squinting through the haze produced by the smoke from about that many nickel bags of Mexican pot, at a so-so print of Woodstock: Three Days Of Peace And Music. Hearing the soundtrack on my brother's cheap stereo at home hadn't prepared me for seeing the force of nature that was Richie Havens playing guitar and singing on the screen. With the camera shooting him in a tight close up, Richie filled the screen, and you could see individual rivulets of sweat running down his face as he curled his body around the guitar he was strumming and poured out his soul into a microphone.

Although there were many other firsts in terms of seeing people perform that night, Richie Havens' performance was the one that left the most indelible impression on me that night. The intensity that he played with and the incredible passion that was being transmitted by this one man to the thousands of people in the audience on screen, and to us in the old and tacky theatre helped make him far more memorable then some of his more famous contemporaries.

It's 2008 now and I own a DVD copy of the director's cut of Woodstock as a memento of my own youth, and as a historical record of the event itself. While some of the musicians have become history, and some of the music sounds dated, Richie Havens has not been swallowed up by time, and as can be told by listening to his latest release on the Verve Forecast label, Nobody Left To Crown his music is as powerful and relevant as it ever was.

There aren't too many people left from the Woodstock era with the moral authority to be singing about the state of the world anymore. They've either left the world, or been co-opted by the very establishment they were supposedly so intent upon changing. Musically many of them have become vapid and are content to play out their remaining years as near caricatures of their former selves. So the performer who has adhered to his ideals for the last forty years and continues to express them through his music like Richie Havens does is a rarity.

Six of the thirteen songs on Nobody Left To Crown are new originals that Mr. Havens has written for this disc, while the seven covers are ones that speak to either issues of the day or express an idea that he cares passionately about. That last bit might be a tad redundant as I can't think of Richie Havens singing a song if he wasn't able to make an emotional commitment of some kind to it. Interestingly enough one of the covers dates back to the Woodstock era, Pete Townshead's "Won't Get Fooled Again", and Havens' interpretation of it keeps it as pertinent today as it was then.

That's the thing about Nobody Left To Crown that's important to know, Richie Havens maybe a figure some of you think of as belonging to a time in the past, but that is unfair to the man and his music. None of these songs are exercises in nostalgia, nor is the disc some sort of sixties revival thing. This recording has been made for today's world, and the messages it has to impart are relevant to what is going on around us. Listen to the second song on the disc, "Say It Isn't So" and you'll hear what I mean.

"Say it isn't so/ That the world must choose again/ Who is foe and who is friend". It could be a commentary on any of the numerous wars that are ongoing in the world today, or it could also be about how our society seems to demand an us and a them in almost every circumstance. We are always searching out somebody to blame for the things that are wrong in our lives. It could be the poor people for being a drag on the economy because we have to pay taxes to make sure they get their welfare, the immigrants who steal all the good jobs, or the minority that got the job and not you. It's our choice whether we live a life of perpetual wars or "realize we are all the same" in the important ways, in the ways that truly matter.

Whether it's his cover of Jackson Brown's "Lives In The Balance" questioning America's friends of convenience in the world, and how can a country say it stands for freedom when it has friends that kill their own people. Or the title track, Richie's own "Nobody Left To Crown", where he questions the way America elects it's leaders, he's showing us what lies beneath the surface sheen of the twenty-four hours of non-stop distraction we call a culture that diverts attention away from the real problems in the world. The more time people spend talking about their favourite celebrity, or reading about their most recent affairs, the less they spend concerned with the state of the world around them. Who cares if the infant mortality rate in America is as high as it is in some developing nations when you can look at candid pictures of some star's boob job?

He doesn't say any of these things directly, he's too good a song writer for that. Instead he points us in certain directions in the hopes that we will think for ourselves and reach our own conclusions. One of the ways he has of making us listen is his voice. While it might have lost a little power over the years, it's expressive qualities and the sense of urgency he can impart with it is still more then sufficient to grab our attention and hold it.

The same goes for the music, as Havens still plays his guitar with the staccato strumming style that made him famous and that has pushed many a song into orbit. However. this isn't just a solo recording as he's accompanied at various times by everything from a cello to the twenty-six string mohan veena played by Harry Manx. While an exotic instrument like either of the two just mentioned can be overused to the point where they become the focal point of a song, in the case of Nobody Left To Crown the instruments are used perfectly to accent which ever song they are being used in. Either the sitar sounding mohan veena will silver in the background of one song or the cello will gently interject a counter point to the rhythm of another. All in all these are beautifully crafted arrangements, whether they are Richie Havens' originals or covers of another person's work.

There's something of the prophet about Richie Havens, not that he makes any predictions with his songs, but rather the fact that something about him suggests that not only can he see things in a way that not many of us can, he can also tell us about them. For more then forty years Richie Havens has been singing impassioned pleas that we examine the lives we are leading and make some decisions about them. Nothing Left To Crown shows that as a performer and a composer he continues to be a musical force to be reckoned with.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:13 AM | Permalink

It's easy to form false impressions of places by basing them on the superficial information available today. From recollections of people's holidays in on line photo albums to what we see of them in television and movies, we're inundated with images designed to entice us to spend our tourist dollars. Air conditioned, air brushed, and sanitized they have as much to do with a place's reality as a centre-fold has to do with real people. In spite of being aware of this, I've never been able to picture Florida as anything more than a collection of motels and beaches, created by Disney World. If ever a state was made out of plastic it was Florida.

Which is of course completely unfair to everybody and everywhere in the state that have nothing to do with the designated tourist zones, but until recently I had no way of knowing that anything else existed. Although in my defence I would ask how many people in Florida think that because I live in Canada I speak French and have to wear snow-shoes year round. Anyway, about a month ago I was introduced to a slice of a much more realistic Florida by a group of musicians from Lochloosa in a band called JJ Grey & Mofro.

I had been sent copies of two of their earlier recordings, Country Ghetto and Lochloosa, on Alligator Records by their Canadian distributor. I was not only impressed with them musically, but by the way they were able bring their part of the world to life. Instead of the mawkish sentimentality or boasting that's earmarked a great deal of the regional music that I've previously heard, these folk created songs firmly rooted in reality that contained elements of such universality that even a city boy from the frozen north could understand what they were about.

One of the things that had impressed me most about those two discs was how they had expanded their musical horizons from the first to the second. Not only did the music become more sophisticated, they also showed a willingness to experiment stylistically. So when I received an advance copy of their forthcoming release, Orange Blossoms due out on August 28th/08, I was interested to see what they had in store this time.

Well these guys don't fool around, and right from the opening track on the disc, the title song "Orange Blossoms", they show that they have no interest in standing still. For if on the last disc they dabbled in funk and R&B, they've taken the plunge here and committed themselves fully to creating a groove that will move you physically, emotionally and intellectually. That might sound like hyperbole, but these are songs that you can listen to just as easily as you can dance to them as the lyrics matter just as much as the tune, and the CD has been produced with that in mind. Not only are you able to hear the lyrics on all the songs, but they're also comprehensible, not buried under a whole bunch of effects so that you can't understand a word the vocalist is saying.

In "Orange Blossoms", JJ Grey plays with the idea of sense memory, the scent of orange blossoms that pervade the spring atmosphere in his part of Florida, in creating a song that starts off appearing to be a typical nostalgic look back at young love/lust. The music is a mixture of R&B and innocent guitar rock and roll that sounds like it could have been written in the early nineteen sixties. The combination of the lyrics and the music work so well together that the twist at the end of the song catches you completely off guard, successfully changing the mood and the implications of the tune.

Track two, "The Devil You Know" moves into the realm of hard funk, complete with horns punctuating the beat and giving it a harder edge then the opener. Where the horns on "Orange Blossoms" added a layer of sweetness, here they give the tune the dangerous feel needed for a funk tune to really find its feet. When coupled with the background vocals, and the tight playing of the rest of the band, "The Devil You Know", has funk classic written all over it.

I have to admit to some qualms about the fact that they listed strings among the instruments used on the disc. Too many time strings have been the kiss of death for many a good band as they turn songs into clichés. "She Don't Know", track four on the disc, is the first time that the strings make themselves really known and they are used in just the right way to make the song that much stronger. The tiny bit of soaring under the vocals, gives way to some really nice punctuation much like the horns have been used on the funkier numbers.

Unlike other groups that use strings in order to prove their emotional authenticity, Mofro don't need the props as they've already established those credentials. So when they use strings it's for what they can bring to a song musically, not how they can be used to manipulate the listeners. In fact the way they are used in "She Don't Know" almost works to push you away from an emotional reaction as they insert breaks into the flow of the other instruments. What was a simple R&B tune is made complicated and brooding by the presence of strings, instead of schmaltzy and vapid.

Something that happened on this disc that didn't on the previous ones for me, was that I really became aware of JJ Grey's singing voice. To be honest I'm not sure how I could have missed out on it before as its really quite amazing. It's not often you hear somebody with a genuinely soulful voice, meaning that his voice is full of soul, anymore. There aren't many people out there who can sing with the type of honesty that he brings to all of his songs, and on this disc it really comes through. I don't mean that he's some brooding and intense guy or some such shit like that, because soulful doesn't have to equal drama queen like so many people think today.

Listen to the fun that Grey is having while singing "On Fire" and you'll see what I mean. You can't do that if you're going to get hung up on being melodramatic over nothing. Being a soulful singer means you sing every song with everything you've got so nothing is left over when the song is done. When you listen to Grey sing, no matter what the song is about, you know that he's not held back, and the song is only over because he's got nothing more to add.

When I first heard JJ Grey & Mofro what caught my attention was the way they had created a sound that reflected the part of the world they came from, and wrote songs that worked within that frame work. With each subsequent disc I've heard them expand on that base and branch out into new directions while still holding on to the core that made them distinct in the first place. Orange Blossoms, being released on August 26th/08 continues that process and shows them to be more than just a regional band. This is music that speaks to you no matter where you come from or where you've been.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:43 PM | Permalink

Well the 17th International Conference on AIDS wrapped up in Mexico City over the weekend and despite being attended by over 22,000 delegates from more then 170 countries, not much of anything happened or was said that hasn't been said or done before. In fact aside from the appointment of a slightly controversial figure as the new president of AIDS International, the only event of any real importance during the Conference was a plenary session featuring a representative of an Argentine Sex Workers association as it marked the first time that anybody from the industry was given standing at the conference. In fact it was so inconsequential an event that the biggest news of the week regarding the disease actually took place outside of the Conference with the release of "Left Behind" a report from Black AIDS Institute on the impact of the disease on their community.

Julio Montaner of British Columbia, and the director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS was confirmed as the new president of the International AIDS Society at the end of last week's conference. He brings not only a wealth of experience to the job but an outspokenness that's seemed to be sorely lacking amongst AIDS bureaucrats for too long. Dr. Montaner came to Canada in 1981 after graduating from medical school in Argentina, and began working at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia. As well as his residency he also began a research project involving the then obscure disease known as pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, which we now know as AIDS.

It was Dr Montaner who started treating the disease with corticosteriods, worked on the first clinical trials for zidovudine (AZT) that was standard treatment for HIV/AIDS for over a decade, and helped pioneer the use of antiretrovirals, the drug cocktails that keep people with the disease alive far longer today then anything else has yet. He also has led the way in making the B.C. Centre an international leader in the field of HIV/AIDS, and making St. Paul's Hospital one of the best treatment sites in the world. He's also a very strong advocate in support of Vancouver's safe injection facility for intravenous drug users, Insite.

His support of Insite, and his general outspokenness, has drawn the ire of Canada's conservative federal government. Federal Minister of Health Tony Clement has even gone on record as criticizing Dr. Montaner by saying he and his colleagues have crossed the line from being scientists to being advocates and activists.

Dr. Montaner's response to his critics was best summed up by his speech at the closing ceremonies of last week's conference where he said that the world's failure to work more resolutely to combat the global epidemic is tantamount to a crime against humanity. He continued by saying we know what causes it, we know how to prevent it spreading, and we've even learned about ways to treat it, so what really matters now is taking action. In others words it's time to shit or get off the pot folks and take some direct action by doing what we know works in order to keep people alive and prevent the disease from spreading any further.

One of most common ways the disease is spread in many parts of the words is through the men, women, and transgendered folk who make their livings selling sex. Up until now nobody has thought to include a representative of the industry at these conferences, which hasn't stopped many organizations from deciding they know what's best for them and often causing more harm then good. This year Elana Reynaga, executive director of the Argentine Association of Female Sex Workers (AMMAR) didn't mince any words when addressing the conference about the current situation facing people around the world in the sex trade.

While her speech was peppered with statistics about the rate of infection among sex workers, its primary focus was to stress the following concerns: people working in the industry be recognized as being legitimately employed, workers be involved in the organization of any programming that impacts on their lives, and that there be an immediate ceasing of passing moral judgements on them as individuals and the nature of their work. In denying them their legitimacy and trying to forcibly "rehabilitate" sex workers, agencies like the International Justice Mission (IJM) who are funded to the tune of millions of dollars by the Gates Foundation to prevent the spread AIDS by fighting prostitution, cause more harm than good.

By coercing governments to crack down on prostitution, they get the American government to threaten to remove states from favoured nation status when it comes to receiving foreign aid, the sex trade is forced underground and the chances of infection increases exponentially. On the other hand, Ms. Reynaga sites the example of Brazil where the government collaborated with the Brazilian Network of Prostitutes on a public health and rights campaign called "No shame girl you're a professional" and the Ministry of Labour now includes prostitute among the list of recognized professions as part of their efforts to combat the spread of the disease.

The continued stigmatization of sex workers and the denial of their rights as individuals places them more at risk then anything else. In some countries sex workers aren't even able to carry condoms as police will use them as evidence of prostitution and threaten to arrest them. As Ms. Reynaga so bluntly puts it, sex workers are dying because of a lack of health care, a lack of condoms, a lack of treatment, and a lack of rights - not because of a lack of sewing machines. (IJM suggests that sex trade workers be taught how to sew so they can get "decent" employment - of course well paying sewing jobs are just lying around waiting to be snapped up aren't they)

Sex trade workers have always been one of the groups at highest risk when it comes to HIV/AIDS, yet instead of helping them organize in their own defence, money is actually being spent on programs that puts them at more risk than if we were to do nothing. Isn't it time people grew up about sex and accepted the fact that people are always going to be willing to buy and sell sex? Instead of trying to pretend it doesn't exist, or pretend we can make it go away, why not ensure that the people involved are as safe as possible by helping them help themselves?

While sex trade workers finally getting a public voice and International Aids selecting a president who will hopefully push for more direct action on fronts that are actually effective is a good sign, the biggest news of the week concerning AIDS didn't come out of the conference in Mexico City, but from north of the border. The Black AIDS Institute's report "Left Behind" revealed statistics that make it obvious that the disease has reached epidemic proportions in Black America. While African Americans only make up thirteen percent of the total American population, 50% of Americans with HIV are African American.

In every single risk group black people are more far more likely to be infected than whites: gay men who are black are twice as likely to be infected as white, more then half of infected drug injectors are black, black people are more likely to be diagnosed late then white which contributes to a much higher death rate - in New York City a black man with HIV is twice as likely to die as a white man with HIV. With black men seven times more likely to be imprisoned than white men, and the percentage of prisoners in the US with access to condoms hovering at 1% of the inmate population, jail represents another real risk to black men for infection.

Unlike other "countries" Black America not only sees a high infection rate among it's at risk population - men who have sex with men and intravenous drug users - it also is showing signs of having symptoms of a generalized epidemic - where the whole population is at risk. While only a quarter of black men have been infected by unprotected sex with women, three quarters of black women have been infected by unprotected sex with men. With black women reporting having multiple partners in a limited time, the chances of the disease spreading among the general population increase dramatically. The report warns of this danger and admonishes black men to be more responsible when it comes to sex.

What must be the bitterest pill for the authors of this report to swallow is the fact that prevention accounts for only four cents out of every dollar spent on domestic programs for HIV/AIDS. Even more ironic is the fact that although the US government insists that countries it funds help combat AIDS have a strategy in place before they receive a penny of aid, America has no strategic plan to combat its own epidemic. It seems like the government of the United States would like its citizens to believe that HIV/AIDS is only something that happens to other people, but not to Americans.

When you combine the statistics reported in "Left Behind" with the disturbing revelation that the U.S. Centre For Disease Control and Prevention has been low balling it's estimated number of new cases of HIV by around 16,300 annually for the last ten years, it starts to look like government has been ignoring the problem in the hopes it will go away. Even worse it looks like they have been cynically hoping as long as they can keep it contained to minority populations, not enough people will care for them to have to do anything about it.

Although if you take these figures in the context of the current American government's policy of allowing their moral agenda to trump actually achieving results with regards to HIV/AIDS funding in foreign countries, their attitude on the home front isn't very surprising. Would you expect them to fund money to hand out condoms or clean needles to prostitutes or intravenous drug users in the United States when they won't over seas? "Left Behind" concludes by saying that as long as we continue to allow political or moral issues to dictate the way we deal with HIV/AIDS people will continue to die.

The numbers don't lie no matter what country or continent you live on. Every year more people are still being infected with HIV/AIDS then are receiving treatment which means not enough is being done to actually prevent the spread of infection. While there was some sign of movement towards a more accepting attitude with regards to sex and the disease at the most recent International Aids conference, and a renewed call for action over talk, we have delayed taking action for so long that it could take decades before we are able to climb out of the hole we've dug for ourselves.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:54 AM | Permalink

It's amazing how there are words whose definition everybody can agree on, but they can still mean different things to different people. While that may sound contradictory, when a word is used to express a concept we might all agree as to its ideal but just as easily have vastly divergent opinions on what it entails. Depending on our social, political, ethnic, and/or cultural backgrounds and upbringings each of us has a perspective that will colour the way we conceptualize an idea - or see an ideal. While the dictionary may say that word justice means the quality of being fair and reasonable and the administration of the law or authority to ensure that quality is maintained, what defines fair and reasonable?

In Canada and the United States we have a code of civil conduct that is based on what our society has decided is morally acceptable.While there is an overall concordance about justice, even within our society there are significant disagreements on its application and absolute definition that stem from differing views on what exactly is morally acceptable. Yet in spite of our inability to define justice for ourselves, it doesn't seem to stop any of us from demanding the imposition of justice in other jurisdictions.

Whether it's George Bush justifying invading Iraq in order to bring Saddam Hussien to justice, demands for justice being made on behalf of the Dali Lama, or justice for Palestinians, it all amounts to the same thing. Us telling them what to do based on our morality. It doesn't matter what your political or religious persuasion is, you're going to be basing your definition of justice on your own version of morality and imposing it on someone else. Think of how ridiculous you'd think it is for a devout Islamic Cleric to pass judgement on your way of life, and you might begin to get the idea of how you look to someone in that part of the world when you tell them what to do.

In her book, Unjust Justice, published in English for the first time by ISI Books, French political philosopher Chantal Delsol postulates that the desire to impose one person's version of justice across the board as a response to various crimes against humanity that have occurred and that might still occur, is as potentially dangerous as the original crime. In clear and concise language she develops her argument through references to social political philosophies of the past millennium, and an examination of the past hundred years of history.

While she makes no bones about her anger at Western Europe's turning a blind eye to the crimes of the former Soviet Union, and is somewhat snide when referring to what she calls progressives, she manages to present her case without being overtly political. In fact one of the most appealing aspects of this book as far as I'm concerned is that there's plenty in it that is bound to piss off people at both ends of the political spectrum. I don't say that just because it appeals to my perverse nature either, but as a sign of her integrity as a thinker. Not once did I find her trying to force her arguments so that they could better accommodate a particular dogma or ideology, indeed she is firm in her warnings about the dangers of dogma when it comes to the application of justice.

As a culture the West has a long and depressing history of cultural imperialism dating back to our earliest recorded histories. Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, and then the Christian Church have all taken their turns at imposing their morality by whatever means necessary throughout history. Ruled by the prevailing dogma of their time, emissaries of these empires sought to create a universal code of conduct, or morality, by which justice could be defined. If it meant exterminating all those who objected, well they were only doing what was necessary to make the world a better place.

While there have been philosophers over the years who have argued against this singular view of the world, and Ms Delsol cites both Immanuel Kant and Charles de Secondat Montesquieu as examples of a more enlightened viewpoint, Unjust Justice argues that our attitudes haven't really changed. While we might believe that the desire to bring the perpetrators of war crimes committed over the past sixty-five years to trial justification for the creation of a tribunal to try those cases, the very act of doing so implies the assumption of a moral authority on par with that of the Catholic church during the Inquisition.

Chantal Delsol argues that the only way a court like this can work are in cases like the Nuremburg Trials, the judging of Nazi Party officials for complicity in the Holocaust and other war crimes, when the people on trial were guilty of contravening the pre-existing laws of their own country, meaning there is a proper context within which they can be tried. Otherwise it becomes a case of arbitrarily creating a frame work within which to hold them accountable. The only grounds we have to justify trying a Serbian leader for crime against humanity and not an American leader for ordering the bombing of Iraqi hospitals, or a Russian for bombing Chechnya is because the former lost and the latter won. While that might play well on the home front, it isn't much of a foundation for a world court now is it?

While Unjust Justice is not an easy read, it is thankfully free of the usual academic jargon that clutters up many philosophical texts. Ideas are examined in depth but never beaten to death so we are given sufficient proof in support of Ms. Delsol's theories to make them plausible, without ever feeling like she's belaboured the point. Kudos must also be give to the translator of the text, Paul Seaton, for ensuring that the clarity of the original text is maintained for its new readership. It's not often that you find ideas of this quality, let alone this important, presented in a manner this accessible. If you care about the nature of justice you really should read this book. At the very least it will make you think, and hopefully it might also get you questioning some of the easy answers other people try to pass off as ideas.

Obviously I've only barely touched the surface of the material covered by Ms. Delsol. What it comes down to is that justice, or the application of it anyway, is as individual as each society. One only needs to look at the differences between two countries as similar as Canada and the United States as to what passes for justice in their legal systems to see that. In Unjust Justice Chantel Delsol issues a warning about the dangers of assuming any of us know what's best for anyone else that we would be wise to heed. In our eagerness to see justice done we run the serious risk of committing a serious injustice.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:30 AM | Permalink

Country music is one of the most maligned genres around these days as a lot of people, myself included can't resist taking shots at it. Of course with the big hair, the rhinestone suits, and too many songs about pick-up trucks and the girl running away with the dog and getting killed by a run away train, it kind of lets itself open to it. The problem is that because of this there's a tendency to forget some really important information and ignore some really great talent.

One of the things that most of us forget about is that people like Bob Dylan owe as much to country music as they do to anything else for shaping the direction their music went in. Bob's great idol, Woody Guthrie, might have sung songs about dust bowl survivors and building strong unions, but his musical roots were firmly in the hills of Oklahoma. Country music originated with the descendants of Irish and Scottish settlers singing their versions of traditional folk songs of the British Isles, and grew from there. It was only in the sixties, with the commercialization of folk music, that country was relegated to a second class citizenship.

However the really good country musicians like Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Jeff Walker never lost sight of their origins and kept singing and writing music that was firmly rooted in the communities they came from. Now while the big hair set still get most of the publicity, some of today's performers haven't completely forgotten where they came from. Listening to Dale Watson's most recent release on Hyena Records, From The Cradle To The Grave, reminds you that country music, in the hands of the right person, can be every bit as real as any other music.

Of the ten songs on From The Cradle To The Grave only one, "It's Not Over Now" clocks in at over three minutes in length. When I popped the disc into my CD player and the read out said ten songs in under thirty minutes I was really taken aback. In these days of digital music it's rare for a new release to have under forty minutes of music what with discs now being able to hold over an hour's worth of information. Yet once you start listening to Dale you are so taken up in the songs and his delivery that considerations like that become irrelevant. He's able to accomplish in under three minutes what very few people can in twice the time.

First of all he doesn't fool around with his lyrics, they are direct and too the point without being simplistic or trivial. He has an amazing ability to communicate complex thoughts and ideas with a very few words, while still managing to maintain a certain poetic elegance. The first song on the disc, "Justice For All", is a great example of this as it presents both sides of the capital punishment argument succinctly and fairly.

"An eye for an eye would leave the whole world blind" versus "Vengeance is mine says the Lord, the Lord is one lucky guy". I can't think of anyone else who would be able to compare the need for impersonal, blind justice, with the emotional desire for revenge as succinctly as Dale does on this song. Not only does he give both sides of the issue their due, you're never quite sure which side of the issue he comes down on. For although he sings "I'd gun that bastard down with a smile on my face" he also says "When on a journey of revenge be sure to dig two graves". When you can pack that much into a song in under three minutes what need is there for long winded epics that don't really say much of anything.

Dale delivers all his songs in a rich and smooth baritone, that's saved from being too polished by the forcefulness of his delivery. He doesn't make any attempt to hide the debt his voice owes to Johnny Cash, and even points it out when he inserts the line "I hear that train a coming" at the very end of his song "Runaway Train", the last song on the disc. Of course the fact that the song reads like a homage to the late Mr. Cash could also play a part in him adding that line on at the end, but it takes a brave man to draw such an obvious parallel between himself and an icon like Cash.

You run the real risk of being taken to task for doing something like that, being accused of exploiting memories or whatever, but after having listened to the first nine songs on the disc you know that Dale Watson has far too much integrity for that to be true. This is a man who sings songs that are rooted in the concerns of real people and doesn't discolour them with mawkish sentimentality or make cheap attempts at exploiting emotions, so you can trust the choices he makes with his material as being honest and sincere.

If you've been wondering if there's anyone out there in the glitzy world of country music whose worth mentioning in the same breath as some of the old guard like Nelson, Kristofferson and Cash, well you don't need to wonder anymore. Dale Watson is a reminder that country music can speak with a voice that we can all recognize when its performed with heart and integrity.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:15 AM | Permalink

One of the things I've always loved about contemporary jazz is the potential it offers those performing and creating it for freedom of creativity. Thanks to the innovators of the past like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Charlie Mingus (to name only a few) the precedent has been set for today's musician to take the music in whatever direction they want and still be able to call it jazz. From the electronic minimalism of Chicago Underground Trio to the near tribal rhythms of the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, and everything in between and beyond, it seems the only boundaries left in jazz are those that the musician imposes on him or herself.

However, lest one think that any idiot can pick up a noise maker, squawk out some sounds and call that jazz, the music also has a history that serves as the foundation for all that is being done today. Just like an abstract painter learns figure drawing, the basics of perspective, and how colour and light work together, before moving on to trying to fulfill his vision, or the writer has to learn spelling and grammar before attempting to break those rules with free form poetry, the jazz musician must first be proficient on her instrument of choice, and know the music itself inside out before setting out for in search of new horizons. The best contemporary/experimental jazz musicians are the ones who can play traditional jazz forms like dixie land as easily as the fusion creations of a group like Weather Report.

The more knowledge that an artist has to draw upon for his creations, the greater her potential for creating something original and to continue doing so throughout his career. Listening to the latest release from John Ellis on Hyena Records, John Ellis & Double-wide, Dance Like There's No Tomorrow, the immediate impression is of a man who has allowed himself to thoroughly absorb the music in all of it's permutations until they've become as much second nature as breathing is to most of us. It's not that you are able to listen to any of the ten songs on the disc and necessarily cite its heritage like you would the breeding record of a thoroughbred horse. It's more that you feel a sense of purpose and direction that only comes from having his been somewhere else first before he's taken on the experimentation that accompanies works that break new ground.

I have to admit that my judgement on this recording might be slightly impaired due to an inordinate fondness on my part for the bass instruments of the brass section in an orchestra. So when I read that Double-wide included a sousaphone player (Matt Perrine), as well as a drummer (Jason Marsalis) and an accordian/organ player (Gary Versace), I was predisposed to liking it even before I listened to it. When the opening notes, of the disc's first cut, "All Up In The Aisles", were played by said sousaphone, I was hooked. In fact I was so captivated by it that it took me to the second time round listening to the song to pay attention to the other instruments and appreciate the song fully.

What started out as the organ laying down some great gospel quivers over top of the sousaphone, gradually took off into something more up tempo. As John's tenor saxophone joined the fray, along with Jason's drums, it became a song that would most definitely get them up dancing in the aisles of any church. Although I'm not sure there are many churches, no matter how liberal, that would encourage sousaphone leads from their band. There was a kind of sensuality and wild abandonment that the combination of it and the organ generated that wouldn't go over well, especially when they were supporting some of Jason's wilder leads.

In fact the majority of the songs on the disc would encourage a kind of dancing that would be more at place outside of than in the aisles of a church. No matter how gospel influenced, or sounding, the organ playing might be, there's a wildness of spirit that this disc encourages one to feel that would send shivers up the spine of most clergy. Listen to the underlying rhythm of track three, "Dream And Mosh", and the way each instrument's lead spirals almost out of control as its propelled forward by Marsalis' drums pounding insistence, only to catch itself at the last minute as the grounding influence of the sousaphone brings it back to earth, and you'll understand why.

Just when you think these guys are going to take you off into outer space with the wildness of their playing, along comes "I Miss You Molly", the fourth track. Gary Versace's organ and John's saxophone show how a song can be poignant without being mawkishly sentimental. Both the saxophone and the organ have been turned into cliches by too many players when it comes to love songs, so it's wonderful to hear them played in a manner that generates genuine emotion. They both allow their instruments to become conduits for feelings so we really experience the sensation of loss that accompanies missing somebody.

Aside from their honesty and their penchant for a wildness of spirit, what I most appreciated about the music on Dance Like There's No Tomorrow was the sense of humour behind some of the songs. Titles like "Three Legged Tango In Jackson Square" and "Zydeco Clowns On The Lam" give you a fair idea of the mindset involved here. Even better though is the fact that these two songs actually live up to their titles in terms of humour. I'm not talking about obvious stuff like making farting noises with the sousaphone, or something equally juvenile, but witty and intelligent takes on the forms of music mentioned in the titles.

Everyone knows that a tango when performed well is one of the most sensual dances around, so the idea of a three legged tango - along the lines of a three legged race held at a children's sports day - is as absurd as it is unlikely. Somehow they manage to capture that spirit in the music when they play it, and you can almost picture two people trying to dance a tango with two of their legs tied together. While that might sound strange enough, with "Zydeco Clowns On The Lam" they take absurdity to another level. Picture zydeco music as performed by circus freaks from a Fellini film and you'll have a good idea of what's happening with this piece of music. It's inspired brilliance, and you'll never hear zydeco music in quite the same way again.

Dance Like There's No Tomorrow by John Ellis & Double-wide is an album of great jazz music performed by innovative and daring musicians. It's firmly rooted in the history of the genre and daring enough to go places that no one else I've heard has gone before. On top of that its a lot of fun to listen to, and if you let it, it will let you dance like you've never danced before.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:56 AM | Permalink

There were two performances back in the 1970's that turned me on to the power of electric blues. The first was part of the television special on Public Broadcasting called All You Need Is Love that traced the history and roots of popular music. During the segment on blues and jazz they concluded the episode with B. B. King singing his version of "Free At Last" while playing film footage of African Americans from as far back as the late 1800's up to the civil rights marches and sit-ins of the 1960's. Not only did the poignancy of the lyrics hit home, but the power of King's guitar leads really struck home when seen in that context. Somehow they seemed to sing as loudly about hardship and struggle as the lyrics.

The second performance was Muddy Waters singing "Mannish Boy" during the Band's concert movie The Last Waltz While there wasn't the emotional context of the television show, there was something about the sight of this man standing up on stage dressed in a leisure suit looking so normal, while out of his mouth came this amazing, resonating, voice, that was incredibly moving. The song is deceptively simple, as it follows a basic rhythm that repeats itself throughout. However, the way the vocals and the music accented certain points in that pattern gave the tune an emotional power that a more complex song couldn't hope to match.

Now obviously Muddy Waters and B. B. King are tough acts to follow, and both performances were in special circumstances, but on some level or another I'm sure those two performances have been the benchmark against which I've compared everyone else that I've seen since. It's not often that I hear anyone who is able to measure up to the emotional strength and honesty that they generated, but Travis "Moonchild" Haddix's newest release, Daylight At Midnight distributed by Earwig Music, is one of the few that have evoked both of those performances.

It will come as no surprise to learn that Travis has been around the blues since he was born in Mississippi in 1938. His father was Delta bluesman Chalmus "Rooster" Haddix, who played fish fries and juke joints on weekends and worked the fields during the day. If his guitar playing reminds you of B. B. King's, it's probably because it was meeting King in Memphis that made him want to learn the guitar. It was during his time in the Armed Forces that he began entertaining as he and a buddy were given the option of guard duty or playing for other soldiers and settled on the latter. Once back from Europe and discharged he joined an R&B band called Chuck & The Tremblers based out of Cleveland Ohio who he stayed with for six years.

It's not often you get to hear someone play who can handle King style leads, R&B grooves, and the deep rooted pulse of the Mississippi valley like Haddix does. In each of the songs on Daylight At Midnight he incorporates at least one of those three styles, if not sometimes more, and as a result has created a CD of diverse and exciting work. Even better is the fact that unlike others who are satisfied with being able to simply reproduce a style, he has used them in order to create his own style that comes through on each of the ten original tracks on this recording.

Perhaps it's his background in R&B, or maybe just a singular attitude towards life, but Haddix has a wonderfully sly sense of humour that comes through in his song's lyrics. Maybe it's because of my predilection for wixing my mords up that I liked his song "Backward Baby" so much, but how many times do you actually hear someone use the words back-assward in a song? Just as funny are the subtle, sexual overtones to "Way Back In The Country" where he talks about the lessons he learned about the birds and the bees. Some of those birds don't sing, eagles who like raw meant for breakfast and buzzards who cruise around waiting for something to die, and not all bees make sweet honey, some will just sting you.

There are far too many blues singers who feel like they either have to always shout their lyrics or put on some type of affectation they think is appropriate for singing the "blues". It's when you listen to a man like Travis Haddix that you realize what you've been missing out on by listening to people like that. He has one of the more expressive voices that I've heard singing any style of popular music in a long time. In fact he's such a skilled writer that the music on some songs was obviously created to take advantage of that and works with his voice to emphasis its expressive qualities.

He has more than just humorous songs, and while his material covers the usual love/relationship/mystery-of-the-opposite-sex topics typical of blues and R&B, there's also a side to his music that you don't find in too many songwriters. The title song, "Daylight At Midnight", is in reference to a tour he did recently in Finland and found himself in the land of the Midnight sun for the first time. In it he expresses his wonder at joy at the "Strange things that happen in this town, it's daylight at midnight - seem like the sun don't go down".

Daylight At Midnight is Travis "Moonchild"Haddix's tenth solo release, and all of his discs, including this one were originally recorded and produced for his own label, Wann-Sonn Records, and are now being distributed by the Earwig label. It's not often you have the chance to hear someone who is able to move so seamlessly between the blues and near funk R&B on the same disc with such authority and assurance or whose lyrics are both funny and intelligent. This disc is a real antidote for all those bands who have forgotten that just because it's called the blues doesn't mean it can't be fun and who don't know how to sing about anything else besides that girl who done them wrong.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:17 PM | Permalink

I like blues music, always have and always will. Yet I'm not blind to the fact that it's probably one of the most abused genres of popular music out there. Almost any idiot who picks up a guitar can play the twelve bars that form the basis for nearly every blues tune and blues based rock song ever written. The problem is that most of them don't seem to know what to do beyond that. It's depressing the number of blues releases I listen to that I don't review simply because they sound just like twenty-five or thirty other discs that I've hear in the last year.

You can usually divide the guitar players into two different categories the screamers and the plodders. The screamers are the guys who rip off guitar solos at every opportunity and play down at the high of the fret board making lots of high pitched noise that they think passes for music while the plodders plough through the music because they equate slow with sincerity. Sometimes if you're really unlucky you'll get somebody who combines the two and plods around making noise every so often.

After a steady diet of this you actually start to dread the arrival of blues discs by performers you've never heard of signed to labels that you didn't even know existed. Fortunately there are still some labels out there who you can usually count on, and even if you haven't heard of the band or individual on the disc, it will be at least worth a listen. Earwig Music out of Chicago are one of those labels and their recent release of Chris James' & Patrick Rynn's, Stop And Think About It is a good example of the quality they tend to deliver.

Looking at Chris, guitar and vocals, and Patrick, bass and occasional vocal, you might not immediately think blues musicians, but once you start listening there's no denying that these guys have talent. While their band, The Blue Four, has played with quite a few more experienced blues musicians and appeared on other people's recordings, this is Chris and Patrick's first solo recording. Of course it's not just bass and guitar as they're joined by friends like Sam Lay on drums, Bob Corritore on harmonica, and Johnny Rapp taking second guitar for a few tracks.

The disc is a good mix of original material and interesting covers. Of course it doesn't hurt that they share my affection for Elmore James, and four of the tracks on the disc are covers of his material. What I like about their covers is that while they show respect for the original material they do more than simply offer imitations. Their version of Elmore James' "Hawaiian Boogie" not only captures the song's original bounce, but introduces some nice swing elements that give it an almost jazzy feel.

What I like about their own material is that while they are consummate professionals, they aren't so full of themselves that they take everything too seriously. You can't write a blues song called "Mr. Coffee" without having a pretty good sense of humour. Hey don't get me wrong, coffee is very serious business and I'm glad to see people are finally giving it more recognition in song. Of course they could also be auditioning for a certain coffee maker commercial now that Jolting Joe has gone. What I especially appreciated about it was that unlike a lot of so called humorous songs, this one has genuine wit and intelligence behind it and isn't just some juvenile throwaway.

Musically they play a mixture of 1950's style Chicago blues and more contemporary sounds. What that does is create an overall atmosphere that is both comfortable in it's familiarity and interesting because of the new touches that they've added. Both Chris and Patrick have a really good feel for the sound of that era, which explains why they do such a good job with the Elmore James songs, and such a genuine appreciation for the blues in general, that you can't help but be caught up by their enthusiasm for the music.

It's one thing to be talented, which they are, but it's another thing all together to be able to convey your love of what you're doing while playing the music. It's under those circumstances that even familiar riffs are infused with new life and no matter how many times you may have heard a song before you can't help but enjoy it like you're hearing it for the first time all over again. Stop And Think About It doesn't break any new ground when it comes to the blues, but it's one of those recordings that reminds you that something doesn't have to be brand new to be exciting.

Chris James and Patrick Rynn have made a recording that once again show us there is no music quite like the blues when it's played with love and enthusiasm. Not only do they bring both to this disc by the bucket load, but they have the skill to channel it into tight arrangements of other people's material, and create originals with their own distinct flavour. Not bad for their first disc.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:14 PM | Permalink

The 17th International AIDS Conference, taking place this year in Mexico City, kicked off on Sunday August 03/08 with the President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, officially welcoming around 22,000 delegates from 175 countries to the gathering. While Mr. Hinojosa's appearance makes a change from 2006 when Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper refused to attend the Conference taking place in Canada, it looks like nothing much else has changed from two years ago when it comes to actually dealing with the disease.

Of the 22,000 or so people who have shown up in Mexico City, one has to hope that they are all aware that HIV/AIDS can only be spread by an infected person sharing bodily fluids with an uninfected person. So in order to prevent the spread of the disease all you have to do is reduce the chances of that happening. Statistical evidence gathered over the past twenty years by organization such as UNAIDS and the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that making condoms available for sexually active people and supplying clean needles to intravenous drug users are the two most effective ways of preventing the disease from spreading as those are the two most common ways the disease is spread. (Please see Elizabeth Pisani's reference page at her Wisdom Of Whores web site for support documentation and statistics)

However, judging by the way things are shaping up at the conference people are either reluctant to talk about the issue of prevention directly or even worse oppose the means of ensuring delivery of preventative measures. For example instead of talking about condoms and needles, the latest refrain is "prevention by treatment". While it is of course inexcusable that only four million out of the thirty-three million people world-wide currently estimated to be infected with the disease are receiving treatment, arguing that ensuring everybody infected is treated will prevent the disease from spreading is a fallacy.

Although it is true that once a person is on the anti-viral medication used to prolong an AIDS sufferer's life expectancy they are less infectious, they can still transmit the disease and need to take the same precautions that anyone else does. The problem is that statistics are showing that once people start taking the medication they believe they aren't a threat anymore and stop taking preventative measures.

Other problems with this approach is what do you do about people who are infected but don't know it? If you don't know you're infected with the virus you're not liable to be taking the anti-viral cocktail of medications required to fight the HIV/AIDS virus are you? Now consider that in light of recent statistics that show 1 in 5 of homosexual men in New York City who test positive for the virus already have full blown AIDS. Considering how long it takes to develop full blown AIDS after you have contracted the HIV virus - sometimes ten years - it means these men have been infectious for that length of time without knowing.

What makes that statistic truly alarming is that the gay community of New York City has been one of the most effective and organized in combating the disease and educating its membership about the dangers of unprotected sex and the importance of early testing. If those conditions exist among as an aware and active community as that, you have to wonder how many other people around the world are walking around un-diagnosed. The normally reliable U.S. Centres For Disease Control and Prevention just announced that the figures they released detailing the number of new cases of HIV in the United States for 2006 was off by 16,300 as there were actually 56,300 not the 40,000 they had originally estimated.

What the hell's the good of using treatment as prevention if we don't even know how many people are even sick, or if they've been sick for any number of years before they even obtain treatment? Anyway the whole idea smacks of closing the gate after the horse has escaped the barn. If you can prevent someone from getting the disease they aren't even going to need treatment. It seems to me the folk recommending this new plan really need to remember the old adage of an ounce of prevention equalling a pound of cure. Especially since we don't even have a cure, only treatment that will prolong life - not save it.

Of course the real problem isn't the people who are pushing this new strategy, the problem is the people they are trying to do the end run around. The biggest problem faced by people working in the HIV/AIDS field has been having to work around politicians and religious leaders who still live in caves and wont fund anything to do with needles, condoms, sex trade workers, or homosexuals. In order to secure funding they have had to convince these folk that "innocents" (women, children, and straight men) are at risk and talk about everything but the people most at risk and the ways that can best prevent the spread of the disease.

Just look at what happened yesterday, at what is supposedly a conference on how to fight HIV/AIDS. Canada's idiot Health Minister, <Tony Clement, gave a press conference attacking Insite, the safe injection site for intravenous drug users in Vancouver British Columbia. He chose to do this in spite of the fact that it completely disregarded the information released by WHO spelling out how effective such sites are for harm reduction, specifically the spread of disease. His government's reason for not liking Insite or any other safe injection site? They can't arrest the people who use them.

Is it any wonder that HIV/AIDS new infection rate still outstrips the number of people receiving treatment by a ration of 5:2 (according to the latest statistics from UNAIDS, for every two people receiving treatment there are five new cases of HIV/AIDS reported) when we're dealing with people with this type of attitude? For the longest time people have even tried to avoid saying which groups are most at risk from the disease for fear of marginalizing them even more than they are already.

Thankfully people like Stephen Lewis, former UN special envoy to Africa for HIV/AIDS, and Joe Amon, health and human-rights director at Human Rights Watch, are at least demanding that the rights of those most at risk must be protected and steps taken to ensure their access to treatment. It's a small step, but at least it's a step in the right direction. Still it's a sad state of affairs when at a conference dealing with a disease for which there is no cure and no vaccine, they can't talk about the best ways of preventing its spread in the opening addresses.

I know it's early days yet and the 17th International AIDS Conference still has a way to go, but from the looks of things we're no closer to dealing with the reality of HIV/AIDS now then we were when the first conference was held. As long as we continue to allow a moral code based on bigotry and hatred to dictate health care people will continue to die and the disease will continue to spread.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:50 AM | Permalink

Near the beginning of 2006 I finished the final draft of my first novel. I had started writing it the previous November during something called the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) where the objective is to write 50,000 words during the month. Of course 50,000 words is barely half way towards finishing a decent sized novel, but by the end of my thirty days I had topped out at around 80,000. It took me until the following April to produce the final twenty thousand, and go through the laborious process of edits and re writes, but eventually it was whipped into a shape that I thought presentable enough to send off for publication.

One of the catches was that the book might have been finished, but the story wasn't. I had left my characters halfway through their adventure and was going to have to write a second instalment to get them over the hump. Unlike the first book where I sat down and wrote with no real idea of where it was going, trusting in the characters to find their way through the story, I'd planned book two out in some detail. I know exactly what should happen when, to who, and where, and so in theory it should have been a piece of cake to write.

Yet, aside from writing some pre-history for the first book that I felt it needed to give it more texture, I've got nothing to show from the last two plus years but an opening chapter and the first paragraph of the second chapter. It's not for lack of trying either, for the first few months I'd sit down everyday and stare at my monitor and write, but more often then not I'd just end up deleting everything I'd written before shutting down the computer. To say it was frustrating would be somewhat of an understatement I suppose, but there really isn't any other word for it.

The problem was that what I was writing on the page didn't sound like it sounded in my head. In my imagination I knew what I wanted the words on the paper to create but I couldn't reproduce it no matter how hard I tried. I wanted to create magic but all I seemed capable of were banalities. I can be stubborn on occasion, and for a while I persisted in sitting down every day. Eventually I just couldn't muster the enthusiasm for opening a file everyday and writing a thousand or so words only to erase them again, so I gave up.

Now obviously I didn't give up on writing as since then I've published around 1000 articles on line, and nor did quite give up on writing fiction either as I made periodic stabs at it. However, nothing ever came of those attempts and each new beginning petered out without going anywhere. Occasionally I'd try continuing the original story from where I left off but had as little success with that as all my earlier attempts. I was genuinely terrified that I had lost whatever ability I might have had as a storyteller.

I tried to convince myself that I was okay with this, and that I would be perfectly content to spend the rest of my writing days talking about other people's work and writing non-fiction opinion pieces, but a part of me deep inside knew that I was only kidding myself. Maybe I only had to wait for the right story to come along in my head and then I would find myself back on track? The trouble was how would I even know the right story when it came along?

After about a year of fretting and worrying about it, I decided there was no point in belabouring the issue as it was only making me even more frustrated. Instead I decided to focus on making the work I was doing as good as I possibly could make it. When I was offered the chance to edit Epic India Magazine by a friend of mine early in 2007 and I had accepted in the hopes that reading other people's work with a critical eye would help me be more objective about my own writing.

It's been a good sixteen months; I had a piece published in the German edition of Rolling Stone Magazine, a couple of authors have used blurbs from my reviews on the dust jackets of their books, I've received appreciative letters from publishers, writers, and musicians regarding the quality of my work, and had the chance to interview some amazing individuals. I've even made a little money from the writing along the way, not enough to make a living with, but enough to occasionally buy myself or my wife something we wouldn't have otherwise been able to afford.

The other day something happened that took me by surprise. I felt the spark of an idea for a story. In my mind's eye I saw what looked to be the starting point and the potential paths I could follow to bring a new world to life. Now in the past when this has happened I've always immediately sat down and began forcing myself upon the idea in the hopes of bludgeoning it into submission, with the result that I've usually ended up squashing the life out of it. I don't think I'd ever appreciated just how fragile an idea is at its earliest conception. and had ended up crushing it under foot like an eggshell.

So I've decided to quash my natural inclination to plunge merrily into the unknown without really knowing where I'm heading, and am curbing my impatience. For any spark to become a fire it needs to be properly fed fuel, you don't just dump a huge log on it and hope it catches. That might work once in a million times if the conditions are exactly right, but most of the time all that will happen is you'll be left shivering in the dark. This time I will try and coax a flame from the spark, before I attempt to build the fire.

I'm a firm believer in magic, I think you have to be in order to tell a story that hasn't been created before. What other explanation can there be for having an idea that creates life out of nothing and provides the impulse that puts words on a page in just the right order that they fascinate and enthral people? It's been a long time since I've felt like there's magic in my life, but now I'm beginning to see its faint glow again. For all I know this could be another blind alley that will lead nowhere, but right now I have to believe that once again I've found my way back into the world where anything is possible and fiction is stranger than truth.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:02 AM | Permalink

There probably isn't a bigger social pariah than the single middle aged woman. My mother discovered that when my father left her and people who had been her friends dropped her like a hot potato. I don't know if it's any easier for a widow, but I suspect once the sympathy over her loss has been properly observed she find herself similarly bereft of friends as the divorcee. Are they afraid that it being single might be contagious?

Every culture has its prohibitions attached to widowhood, and the best that can be said for most of them is at least they don't demand that the widow follow her husband to the grave anymore like they once did. Of course, given some of the prohibitions imposed on widows in the name of respectability by some societies, they might as well be dead. The code of conduct she is expected to adhere to in some cases is even more restrictive of her behaviour then when her husband was alive. In most cases it's usually the woman's own family who are responsible for making sure that she doesn't act in a way that will give them reason to utter those most horrible words of condemnation, "What will the neighbours think?"

In The Story Of A Widow, being published on August 12th by Random House Canada, author Musharraf Ali Farooqi takes us to Karachi Pakistan and introduces us to the recently widowed Mona. Akbar Ahmed, her husband of thirty years, a mere three days after his doctor's warned him that he needed to watch his cholesterol, had dropped dead from a stroke. The one area in his life where he had not been a model, if not a zealot, of restraint was at the table, and it was there after dessert that he met his untimely demise.

It's only after the official forty day mourning period, and the settlement of the will and the estate are finalized, that Mona becomes aware of her new-found freedom and independence. For thirty years she has lived her life according to the dictates of her husband's needs. What with ensuring that his clothes were laid out every morning in the exact manner requested, being certain that his tea was steeped no more or less then three minutes, to making the elaborate meals that he required at the end of the work day, she was left with no time for her self. However, it's having control of the house's finances where she truly discovers the difference between her life as a widow and as a bride.

While Akbar had always ensured there was money for essentials, not once was she ever allowed to purchase anything for herself. There was always a more pressing need to put money aside, or something else that it should be spent on. He even refused to part with money to carry out repairs on their house, insisting that the cracks in the foundation were cosmetic. It takes Mona a while, but soon she is able to buy herself a few things, without looking over her shoulder at the photo of her late husband that looms large on the living room wall.

Still there is nothing about her behaviour to cause her family any worries about propriety as she behaves with all the dignity expected of a woman in her situation. It's not until, Salamat Ali, a widower, moves in to the upstairs flat in her neighbour's house that she even considers the possibility of a man in her life again. For one thing she is just beginning to appreciate her independence, and what could any man offer her in compensation for compromising that? Although Salamat has made it obvious that he is interested in her, Mona is nevertheless taken aback when her neighbour delivers a letter from him asking for her hand in marriage.

When Mona's family gets wind of the letter of intent reactions range from her Uncle and her eldest daughter's mother-in-law stopping just short of calling her a harlot who will bring ruin upon all their good names, her eldest daughter accusing her of disrespecting the memory of her late husband, to her sister thinking Salamat a buffoon not worthy of the family. In spite of, and maybe somewhat because of, their reaction Mona decides to accept his proposal. She does stipulate that she will retain complete financial independence, that they will live in her house, and that the photo of her late husband will always remain hanging upon the living room wall.

With Salamat she discovers just how much of her had been lost during the thirty years of her marriage to Akbar. Not only does Salamat teach her how to enjoy life again, she also rediscovers what it feels like to be considered desirable. Even the discovery that her new husband is a drinker doesn't damper her new joy. After all both her daughter's husbands and her sister's husband drink in spite of their religion's prohibition on alcohol so it can't be too great a sin. For the first time since she can remember she feels like she is fully alive, and a few drinks aren't going to ruin that for her.

Unfortunately it turns out that drinking is the least of Salamat's vices. He's addicted to gambling, and had lied to Mona about the true state of his financial affairs. He had stolen money from a previous employer to feed his gambling habit and had only avoided jail by selling his late wife's house in order to repay the money. Yet even then she might have forgiven him if not for something that had happened early in their marriage.

He had bought her some very expensive jewellery, and when it had gone missing he had convinced Mona that her maid of many years had stolen it and must be fired if not arrested. Even at the time she had her doubts, but now she knows for sure that Salamat must have taken them in order to pay his gambling debts. When her sister and brother-in-law had presented her with the evidence of his earlier misdeeds, they had prepared divorce papers for her to sign without even consulting her first, and she had refused to do so. Now she has no hesitations about going to the lawyer's office and doing whatever was necessary to rid herself of Salamat Ali.

"We're only thinking of what's best for you", are some of the most patronizing and condescending words that you can say to any adult. For thirty plus years Mona had somebody else telling her what was best for her and he almost stifled the life out of her. Over the course of the book Musharraf Ali Farooqi paints a picture of a woman whose life begins with the death of her husband. Even since before she had married Akbar, an arranged marriage, things were being done by others for her own good, as if she was incompetent of being rational. When Salamat Ali entered her life even her daughters would preface almost everything they said with "we only want what's best for you". Yet, as Ali Farooqui makes painfully clear through the other character's actions and words, more often then not people who say that really mean, "we only want what's best for us".

By having Mona refuse to sign the divorce papers her brother-in-law had prepared for her, refusing to do what others think is best for her, Ali Farooqi has her finally declare her independence. What's best for her is that she makes her own decisions and not let others dictate her life anymore. Neither the memory of her late husband, nor the expectations of her extended family on how she should behave are important, what's important is that she continue to hold true to herself.

The Story Of A Widow may be set in Pakistan, but the scenario will be painfully familiar to anyone who has seen the way families can treat a widow of a certain age. Her life is over; she's had her turn and should retire gracefully from the stage. She has a hell of a lot of nerve acting like someone twenty years younger. What will the neighbours think? In order to for a woman to become a widow somebody does have to die, but it doesn't mean she has to as well.

The Story Of A Widow by Musharraf Ali Farooqi goes on sale April 12/08 and can be purchased either directly from Random House Canada or an on line retailer like Amazon.ca.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 12:42 AM | Permalink

You see them on the street corners and in the parks of most cities in North America. The sad, angry, broken people we call the homeless. We see them everyday yet we don't, as we have trained ourselves to look through them in the hopes that if we pretend they are invisible they won't see us and ask us for anything. Why are we scared of their requests for spare change? If it's spare why should we resent handing out a quarter or two to someone who obviously needs it more than you and I can even understand?

Maybe we're scared of what they don't ask us for, but what we might have to admit to if we stop to dig our hands into our pockets or open our purses. If we stop, and turn to face them and look in their eyes we won't be able to deny their existence anymore. We are afraid of the demands they will make on our compassion, for how can we "see" them as individuals and not feel something? As long as they are part of the faceless, nameless and impersonal group known as the homeless, we can ignore them, or at least reduce them to a social problem to be tutted about over our morning newspaper and coffee.Most cities have a couple of square blocks for the hostels, soup kitchens, and drop in centres where somebody else does there best to not treat them like a problem but humans with a history who came from somewhere before their hope ran out.

It's not very often you'll find an author willing to write about these people, let alone able to do so without turning it into some sentimental Hallmark Card, movie of the week bullshit. Yet that's exactly what Richard Wagamese has accomplished with his forthcoming novel, Ragged Company, being published on August 12/08 by Random House Canada.

Wagamese has never made a secret of the fact that he fell victim to the Native Canadian curse of alcoholism, and in the acknowledgements for Ragged Company he gives thanks to the people in the hostels, shelters, drop-in centres, and missions he stayed in through his years on the street and "who showed me the way up when all I could see was down". This book isn't his story, but it is about a way of being that he knows very well, and one that each of us, if we are honest, can see in it something that we recognize. We all have something we are running away from that we don't want to think about ever again, and we all have our means of accomplishing that task.

One For The Dead, Digger, Timber, and Double Dick have been watching each other's backs and sharing their spoils for years now. They all have their own reasons for coming to the street and their own pasts that haunt them, but that doesn't matter in the present, what matters is getting through each day. Those aren't their real names of course, they don't have a use for the names from a past they don't want anything to do with, so they've each let the street name them over the years. One For The Dead got her name for spilling a drop out of each new bottle onto the ground for the dead, Digger because he digs through garbage and sells it to survive, Timber from his former habit of drinking too much without knowing until he stood up and went down like a felled tree, and Double Dick because his French father and English mother named him Richard Richard so they could each pronounce the name the way they wanted.

Winter is a dangerous time for street people, and during the day there aren't many places they can go to keep warm. It was the really bad cold snap that killed three of their own that year that gave our four the idea of seeking shelter in movie theatres, setting in motion the events that changed their lives forever. Fate, or chance, had them sharing the theatre the first two times with an ex reporter named Granite - his real name as his father had been a stone mason and named him for his favourite material. Like the four companions, he was seeking shelter in the movies, but for him it was shelter from the emptiness of his life.

Even when the cold snap ends they continue to go to the movies, sometimes Granite will be there in the cinema waiting for them, and other times he won't, but for the four of them it becomes something of a ritual that helps bind them together, and Granite is gradually drawn into their circle. On the way to meet the others one day Digger kicks what he thinks is an empty package of cigarettes (you kick things when you're on the street on the chance they might have something inside them) and when it skids across the pavement instead of flopping end over end he picks it up. As if three quarters of a pack of tailor made cigarettes isn't enough of a present, there's also sixty bucks curled up inside, along with a yellow piece of paper with numbers stamped on it - a lottery ticket. A winning lottery ticket worth 13.5 million dollars.

As none of them have identification they turn to Granite for help in cashing the ticket, and then dealing with the ramifications of winning. They have all lived on the street for so long that they can't even begin to understand what it means to have money and the ability to get what they want when they want it. It's a steep learning curve that doesn't end with figuring out how to deal with their new found wealth. Being on the street one never had time to think about the past because you were either drunk or trying to scrape the money together for a drink, finding a flop, or sleeping. Now the past doesn't have anything to hide behind anymore and One For The Dead, Digger, Double Dick, and Timber have to figure out how to live with a future that includes the past.

Wagamese has split Ragged Company into five separate narratives, with each of the five main characters telling us what's happening from their point of view. While we learn One For The Dead's story right from the outset of the novel, she's a survivor of the Residential School system that saw Native children stolen from their families and sent off to school, and it was her that brought the four of them together in the first place, it takes the others the rest of the book to gradually reveal themselves. Like life in prison, on the street you don't ask anybody anything, and you don't owe anybody any explanations as to where you came from and why. Even after knowing each other for fifteen years it's only now that they are learning their friend's real names.

As we hear from each character our picture of them develops and our understanding of their lives is deepened. Wagamese is uncompromising in his depiction of them, as they make no bones about who and what they are. Even after their monetary fortunes change, the three men continue to drink from bottles stashed in pockets and hold on to the code, even when if becomes obvious that doing so has become a threat. However, although you may occasionally feel like reaching out and slapping some sense into them, you never feel like you're being asked to judge them for their behaviour. We become so immersed in their world that without noticing it we accept their perceptions as normal. They aren't the ones who are different anymore, we are.

With the character of Granite acting as the intermediary between the worlds, they begin to gradually shed the street from their souls, and we in turn absorb the lessons there are to learn from the struggles that each of the four go through overcoming their pasts. There are no pat answers, nor short cuts to salvation when you are a member of the Ragged Company, and sometimes even a second chance isn't enough to repair the damage incurred during the first. There aren't many books that can rip your heart in two and not put it back together, yet still leave you feeling better about life, but somehow that's just what Richard Wagamese has managed to create. Without sentimentality, without bullshit, but with a lot of heart and soul, this book takes you on a journey into the human spirit, with the unlikeliest of guides, that you won't forget for a long time.

Richard Wagamese's Ragged Company goes on sale August 12th and can be purchased either directly from Random House Canada an on line retailer like Amazon.ca, or your local book store.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:26 PM | Permalink

When Dick Widdington and his cat set off to London to seek their fortune it was because he had heard the streets of the city were paved with Gold. The story tells us that he was sorely disappointed to discover upon his arrival that London's streets were no more paved with gold than any town, anywhere, in the world. In fact, in many ways, it turned out that life was even harder in the big city then it had been in the small town he had left behind.

All over the world, in countries torn apart by war, famine, and other disasters, the myth of a better life awaiting in the West persists even today. Television, glossy magazines, and other media paint a picture of a fabulous lifestyle filled with luxuries just waiting to be lived by those fortunate enough to make it to the promised lands. The reality of course is the same crushing disappointment felt by Dick Widdington. For the majority their new life is in many ways worse than what they had left behind as they didn't even have the comfort of the familiar for solace.

In the the late 1940s and early 1950's following the partition of Britain's former colony into India and Pakistan the subcontinent was rocked with religious violence. Muslims and Hindi were moved from homes they had occupied for generations as all of a sudden their neighbours turned against them after years of friendship and doing business together. Muslim families in what is now India and Hindu families in what is now Pakistan gathered what they could carry and fled. The fortunate ones were herded onto trucks and trains to be shipped to their new homes in a new country while others were forced to try and make their way across the new border, avoiding rampaging mobs out for Hindu or Muslim blood.

Many people of both faiths exercised a third option and headed to the land of their former colonial master. Quite a few of those who made this decision had been British educated and were considered well off. They expected the West to provide them with the life style that the movies and the glossy magazines claimed was everyone's right. Unfortunately the Britain they landed in was in the midst of an economic tailspin that would last until the 1980's. Not only weren't the streets paved with gold, but they also found themselves the object of racial and political attacks. They, it turned out, had stolen all the jobs and were the cause of all Britain's woes.

Hanif Kureishi has made a successful career writing about the South East Asian community's attempts to find their way in England. Movies and television shows like My Beautiful Laundrette, Sammy & Rosie Get Laid, and The Buddha Of Suburbia have detailed the stories of the first generation born in England and their struggles to fit in with their contemporaries. Now in his latest novel, Something To Tell You, being released on August 19th/08 by Simon & Shuster Canada, that generation has grown up and are raising children of their own. Dr. Jamal Khan is a psychoanalyst, separated from his wife, the father of a son on the cusp of adolescence, and in firm denial of his own middle age.

Neither he or sister Miriam have ever fully recovered from their childhood. Their father was a Muslim born in colonial Bombay (Mumbai) and their mother was a suburban girl from London. When they separated it was because Jamal's father wanted to go home where he felt like he belonged and moved to Pakistan. He would visit England a couple times a year, and Jamal always felt like he had to live up to and impress his father. He was everything that Jamal thought he wanted to be; confident, intelligent, and always surrounded by beautiful and intelligent women. Both children grew up in that shadow, but Miriam as the girl was ignored and grew wild in a desperate bid for attention

In Something To Tell You Jamal tracks backwards and forwards through his life, every so often popping in for a close up of the periods he considers most important. Those include the time he spent with the woman he still considers the love of his life, Ajita, during his late teens; a trip to Pakistan to visit his father who feels as displaced there as he did in England; and the reappearance of Ajita in his life in the present. Jamal has ruined each of his adult relationships, including his marriage, by comparing them to his memories of the idyllic time spent with Ajita. Of course nothing in the world of adult responsibilities can match the time he spent wallowing in the freedom of young love where reality had no home.

Carried away by his romantic notions of love, it's during this time that Jamal commits an act that brings about his downfall and helps force him come face to face with reality. As a result of his actions, Ajita leaves India to rejoin her mother in India, who like Jamal's father had been disappointed by the West. It's while pinning for his lost love, he and his sister are sent off to visit his father in Pakistan and discover their roots. What he finds is that his father is not the giant of his childhood imagination, and everything about Pakistan is completely alien. Combined with his lost love, and the secret of his terrible deed, he falls into a state near to catatonic upon his return to England.

Although this is what sets him on his career path, the psychiatrist he sees inspires him so much that he decides to become one himself, in some ways he never really leaves his state of catatonia behind him. As we follow him along his path we realize that everything he does, including his career, continues to shield him from reality. Listening to other people's problem allows him the luxury of ignoring his own. Worshipping a love that's twenty years old prevents him from ever committing emotionally to anyone else, and even in his relationship with his son he tries to be more like a buddy than a father.

With Something To Tell You and the character of Dr. Jamal Kahn, Hanif Kureishi continues to explore the strange half life experienced by the children of immigrants to the West from India and Pakistan. While some of Jamal's problems are of his own making, its obvious that he has been affected by his parents, and their contemporaries, sense of displacement. The dark humour that permeates the book is in its own way a means of disguising the depth of Jamal's desperation. It's those moments when Kureishis has Jamal pull back the curtain to show us what lies behind his placid exterior, that give this book its real power. Certainly there are some very funny things that happen in the Something To Tell You but it doesn't offset the knowledge that a life has been denied the opportunity to live up to it's full potential.

Prejudice, the false expectations created by Western self-aggrandizement of the superiority of its lifestyle, combined with the feelings of alienation felt by immigrants to Great Britain from India in the 1940's and 50's made for the creation of a lost generation of children. Hanif Kureishi has been telling the stories of those people for thirty years with love, compassion, and not a little bit of humour. Something To Tell You shows us that even though on the surface those people may appear settled, underneath the struggle to define themselves continues well into middle age. For those of us raised on the illusion of the happy, hard working immigrant, this book might be hard to swallow, but as Jamal Kahn can tell you, sometime the truth is a little indigestible.

Hanif Kureishi's Something To Tell You goes on sale August 19th/08 and can be purchased directly from Simon & Shuster Canada or an on line retailer like Amazon.ca

Posted by Richard Marcus at 11:44 PM | Permalink

Well, for a change there's a little bit of good news in the world. The 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic by the United Nations agency responsible for AIDS, UNAIDS, shows that efforts around the world are finally starting to pay off as there are declines in both the numbers of people being infected with, and dying from the virus. On top of that the number of people living with AIDS has stabilized and more people are receiving proper treatment as well.

While Paul De Lay, director of evidence, monitoring, and policy at UNAIDS, said that the increased efforts in teaching people prevention methods are beginning to make a difference, as shown by the drop in the infection rate, he also cautioned that the epidemic was not over in any part of the world. The number of cases may be stabilizing - i.e. not showing any increases - but that number is still very high, and there are parts of the world and marginalized communities where the virus continues to run rampant. As an example he sited the figure that two of every three new cases of AIDS occurs in the Sub Saharan region of Africa.

While some of the figures the report sites show improvement on various fronts: actual number of people living with HIV/AIDS 33 million, new infections down to 2.7 million from 3 million in 2001, total deaths down from 2.2 million in 2005 to 2 million in 2007, number of children infected down from 410,000 to 370,000 in the same period, and the percentage of infected pregnant woman receiving anti-viral drugs has risen to 33% from 14% in those two years, they also show just how far we have to go in order to bring the disease under control. With a new infection rate of 2.7 million people each year and no cure in sight for the disease, it means that any let up in prevention efforts could see the numbers spiralling upwards again.

An example of the breadth of the problem that's still being faced can be found in another figure quoted by Dr. De Lay: for every two new people receiving treatment in the world there are still five new people contracting the disease. Treatment is very expensive, and according to Purmina Mane, deputy executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, the cost to supply everybody currently infected with the disease would be 11 billion dollars American annually. That's a cost that will continue to rise substantially of course, unless something is done to reduce the annual infection rate.

While it's possible that the United Nations might reach the target date of 2015 for achieving an actual decline in the numbers of people living with HIV/AIDS, it's goal of universal access to treatment, prevention, care, and support for all those living with the disease by 2010 is not looking good. That makes me wonder how much of the first goal will be met by people currently infected dying, and how much by any actual reduction in new cases of infection? If we can't provide universal prevention, how can we possibly stop the spread of the disease?

The problem is that universal prevention isn't going to happen given the current political climate in the world. The simple facts of life when it comes to HIV/AIDS is that nothing has changed since the 1980's and in order for the virus to spread you need an infected person, an uninfected person and an exchange of bodily fluids between the two of them. The most common ways that happens is through unprotected sex and intravenous drug users sharing needles. Theoretically it should be easy to prevent the disease from spreading, simply ensure that neither of those events occur.

Unfortunately there is quite a bit of disagreement on how you prevent unprotected sex or intravenous drug use. According to the Catholic Church, the current American administration, certain conservative Christian groups, and various Muslim sects the use of condoms is worse than spreading disease, so they recommend abstinence. Actually, they insist on it, at least as much as they are able to. In the case of the current American administration that includes refusing to fund any program that advocates condom use anywhere in the world.

While some countries have remarkably sane attitudes towards ensuring a supply of clean needles for intravenous drug users, Iran has needle dispensers on the streets of Teheran and a needle exchange program in its prison system, others are like Canada and the United States where needle exchanges are barely tolerated and they refuse to admit that drug use even exists in prison. Of course the prisoners don't have sex either, so there's no point in supplying them with condoms.

The solution offered by these folk is for everybody to abstain from pre-marital sex and using intravenous drugs. While the second suggestion is noble, and a good idea, the former is utterly ridiculous, and both deny reality. In the United States itself only twenty-seven per-cent of those people who sign so-called abstinence oaths promising to refrain from pre-marital sex, actually follow through on their vows. Even more unfortunate is the fact that the majority of those who succumb to temptation don't use a condom, so not only risk contracting a sexually transmitted infection, but the other, more traditional, side affect of sex, pregnancy. If the programs success rate is that poor in the U.S. among those who are supposedly willing, what does that say about it's validity as a means of prevention elsewhere?

I started off by saying that there was some good news for a change, and have pretty much gone on to refute that statement with the balance of the article. However, any signs that inroads are being made against the spread of HIV/AIDS are positive and a reason for hope. The problem is that the position is still very precarious and it's not being helped by those who willing to risk other people's lives by imposing their morality on the world. If you don't want to use a condom when you have sex that's your choice, but don't force somebody else to risk their life for a little pleasure.

As former UNAIDS employee Elizabeth Pisani says commenting on the report at her "Wisdom Of Whores" web site, "...somewhere between two and three million people are still getting infected every year with a completely preventable disease that we are spending over 10 billion dollars a year on. That’s a scandal that no amount of report-writing has been able to change."

We've known for close to thirty years how to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS yet the disease was allowed to reach epidemic proportions because of so called moral issues and those attitudes haven't changed. The miracle is that there has been any decline in the number of deaths and infections - thank God for the immoral people out there passing out condoms and making a difference.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:12 AM | Permalink