Once upon a time I actually did a gig or two
with the great bass player and multi-instrumentalist and
composer and improvisor Kato Hideki. His music for the documentary
film El Viaje de Monalisa is our 595th
Soundtrack of the Week.
This mood and gentle, slow not-quite pulse are continued in
"Transformer", a dreamy and soothing piece that has a hint of possible danger.
2019 November 08 • Friday
In 1969 or 1970, 17-year-old Wendy Allardyce runs away from her safe
and cozy and secure but stultifying home because she feels like she's
not being taken seriously or given the independence, trust and autonomy
that she has earned. What happens next is the story told by Lee Kingman in The Peter
Pan Bag.
This is, I think, a "young adult" book. I read it anyway and found
it to be very well written and absorbing. There's a clever and not overdone
Peter Pan motif, what with Wendy being named Wendy and another major character,
a catalyst for much of what happens, being named Peter. Kingman does an amazing job of balancing both a gentle and optimistic
story with some harrowing elements that are true to real life's
possibilities. The book itself is somewhat protective of Wendy, but while she is
shielded from a lot of harm that could come to her, both she and the
reader are aware of the potential dangers. At one point she takes way too much speed, under the mistaken
impression that the pills are aspirin and will stave off a debilitating
headache, and blacks out at a party. She wakes up to find her earrings
were stolen, but realizes with alarm that any number of things
could have happenedd and she there wouldn't have been anything she
could have done about it. The other young people she meets are all well drawn and distinct
characters, from aspiring photojournalists to rich kids more or
less playing at being Bohemia to a traumatized Vietnam vet—still
a kid but permanently damaged. It's not always to tell the kids on drugs from the kids with
serious mental illnesses, the kids who can check in and check
out of the hippie scene at well from the kids who cram themselves
into rat-infested basements with dozens of others because they have no
other place to go. I don't suppose anybody could or would write a book like this
today. It's hard to imagine such a book being published. But it's a
remarkable and rewarding novel as well as a time capsule of sorts.
2019 November 06 • Wednesday
John Shirley's Cellars was great reading for the Halloween season, especially
since it takes place in New York City in the days leading up to and
including Halloween itself.
The edition I read has a really lackluster, blah cover.
The original paperback printing presented it much better.
Edward Lee is not a familiar name to me and since introduction does
little more than relate his enthusiasm for Shirley's novel, it didn'do much for me. The book itself is quite good, though. This is a real horror novel: creepy,
violent and disturbing, much like its environment, New York City and
the Lower East Side in particular in the early 1980s. By all accounts
that was an unhinged, near-apocalyptic, beyond damaged and decayed
place.
The book opens with our hero in 1955 at the age of ten and gets down to business. This boy has supernatural powers, among them the ability to communicate with or at least hear the dead. But this is the kind of gift that can seem like a curse and he's traumatized into repressing them, forcing them down deep, disowning them and forgetting them.
Then we're in 1981 New York and dead bodies are being found ritualistically slaughtered and disemboweled along with symbols and writings that indicate that they're being offered to demons in exchange for wealth and power.
This is actually literally the case and as a metaphorical forecast of the Reagan era, yuppies and big business and huge cultural, social, political and economic shifts that still need to be reckoned with and reversed.
The pace of Cellars drags a little bit at the end, and I think I prefer it without the revised ending that Shirley has added to this edition.
It's described as a hardcore horror novel and that seems apt. It's brutal enough and hardly pulls any punches.
It does have some Fiction Writing 101 tendencies to have literally everything be connected to a very small group of characters—you might find yourself thinking, "wait, he 'just happens' to be his nephew?" and such things—but it keeps things moving along. Not too much plot getting in the way of the story, as Joe Bob Briggs used to say.
I really enjoyed it and will look for something else from Mr. Shirley in the future.
The first line is "'Maybe he's a gypsy,' said the taller of the two boys".
2019 November 04 • Monday
The 594th
Soundtrack of the Week is Marcello Giomnini's
music for L'ossessa.
"Suspence in Crescendo" is a variation on this
with more space and some deep and mysterious drumming. "Ritmico Triste" is another cheap-sounding keyboard lounge
track but this one is pretty nice, with a cool melody and a laidback groove. Things get weird again, and kind of Radiophonic Workshop-like, in
"Suspence Diabolica B". "Tema Drammatico" blends the keyboard with strings successfully
for a fuller sound and a classical-influenced piece of dramatic underscore. An excited and creepy-sounding group of chanting and calling voices gives us
"L'ossessa (Litania Satanica)" and then there's a massive 11-minute track
that kind of does it all: weird electronics, groovy drums, wailing choir,
beats and keyboard drones... "Messa Nera" is perhaps even more alarming, with genuinely weird vocal
parts that might be processed somehow, combined with an insistent and relentless
clanging sound and more hard to identify electronic sounds. Things get wrapped up with the moody "Tema Mistico (Finale)", another
keyboard special.
2019 November 01 • Friday
LIMITED FARM BILL FAVORED! (And 3 NAMED TO FIX LIABILITY COSTS.)
The Twilight Zone: "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" March 03, 1961
