The 862nd Soundtrack of the
Week is Eric Clapton and Michael Kamen's music for Homeboy.
The first track is "Travelling East", which has Clapton playing in a relaxed
and melodic fashion, nothing crazy here but it's a nice melody and a good-sounding cue. The same melody comes back a little more quietly in "Johnny", with
Clapton playing slide on an acoustic guitar. Then we step outside this recording for a bit of Magic Sam and his
"Call Me if You Need Me". This is a little dangerous because
it's a very different sound, much stronger, and Magic Sam's guitar-playing
is like lightning compared to Clapton's flashlight. On "Bridge" Clapton plays with some distortion and delay and
the result is nicely atmospheric before exploding into an
impressively heavy groove at the end. Drummer Steve Ferrone adds
a lot as well. Michael Kamen is on keyboards in this band and Nathan East
handles the bass. Another blues artist follows, J.B. Hutto & The New Hawks
with "Pretty Baby", a straightforward blues number with slide
electric guitar. "Dixie" is a spacy instrumental with Clapton and East
playing resonant and billowy tones after which the A side
concludes with "Ruby's Loft", a romantic-leaning and optimistic-sounding
tune for the group. The B side starts with "I Want To Love You Baby" by Peggy Scott
& Jo Jo Benson, a great soul/blues piece with a harder edge than
you usually hear. Clapton then comes back with the short "Bike Ride", a simple
and pleasant piece for solo acoustic guitar, followed by
"Ruby", which has the same guitar playing arpeggiated chords with, apparently,
a second track of Clapton playing acoustic slide added to it. Next up is The Brakes with "Living in the Real World", a very '80s
rock/pop song. It's pretty good. Then the band comes back and Clapton is on distorted electric guitar.
"Final Fight" has really impressive drumming from Steve Ferrone, who
basically gets to solo while the other members of the group
create a context for him. This is followed by a reprise of "Dixie" and then "Homeboy", which
is the same piece as "Travelling East".
2025 June 20 • Friday
I found three books that looked interesting in Copenhagen, in what would have been
an open-air market except for the fact that everything there was free.
Furniture, clothes, books, kitchenware, electrical appliances, whatever. If it was there, you could just take it. I took three books. The first one I tried to read was John Dean's Blind Ambition,
the story of Watergate from his point of view. I think I managed about 40 pages
before I gave up out of boredom and left it on a train in Sweden. The second was Killer in the Rain, a book of Raymond Chandler pulp stories.
I only got two pages into this one before I was fed up with Chandler's
style of overcooked similes. I left it on an airplane in Lisbon. But the third one was, in fact, a charm. Despite my usually negative
experiences with private detective novels that aren't written by Dashiell
Hammett, I thought Ross MacDonald's The Galton Case was terrific.
Of course I'm doing this all wrong. This is series fiction and I should read
it in order. This is the eighth Lew Archer novel and the only one I ever read
before was the second. So that's kind of a disaster. But for the first time in my life I had not brought too many books
on a trip. I actually had nothing to read. In addition to the two previously
mentioned rejects, I had bought The Thursday Murder Club in the Amsterdam
airport, read half of it and left it in a hotel in Malmö. So The Galton Case it was, and now I think I might have to read this entire series. Lew Archer doesn't talk about himself much and neither does MacDonald
waste a lot of time trying to get us to worship this guy. He's
just someone who does his job and his big advantage is just being persistent. He's not a superman. At one point he gets savagely beaten by gangsters and he's
in the hospital for more than a week. It takes him a long time just to be able to
stand up again. Usually in this kind of book, no one ever has a concussion and
certainly our P.I. hero can bounce back from anything just by downing a "slug"
of whiskey. A lawyer Archer knows represents a wealthy woman who wants to find her estranged
son. She's near the end of her life and she hasn't seen him in decades. She feels
bad about the rift and would like to repair it. Also she has millions of dollars
he can inherit. As cases go, this is about as cold as it gets. But it heats up almost immediately
with a stabbing murder, a stolen car, a shooting, Archer getting arrested
as the prime suspect, etc. Archer is doing pretty much all leg work here, driving and flying all around California
and, eventually, to other parts of the country and also to Canada, simply asking
questions and gathering information. It's an almost constant stream of information and exposition but it's never boring.
It zips right around and MacDonald never lets you see the mechanics of what he's
doing. What's really incredibly is how much the plot twists and turns. I lost count
of how many times the reader is directed toward a perfectly reasonable
conclusion that's supported by everything Archer has observed or discovered,
only to find out that, well, no, that's not what happened. But these aren't cheap red herrings. This is Archer doing his job
and finding it to be hard work. And he's taking us along with him. The writing is perfect, stylish and amusing and effective, economical
and precise. The first line is "The law offices of Wellesley and Sable were
over a savings bank on the main street of Santa Teresa".
2025 June 18 • Wednesday
Here's a book that turned out to be disappointing: The Accidental Spy
by James L. Watson.
This is yet another purchase from the Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Book Fair.
There's already talk around Gutbrain Headquarters about going back next year
but getting a table to sell books instead of buy them. Because there
are a lot of them here. But I still want to read them all! So not next year
but maybe in a few years. Anyway, Heather grabbed this book for me because it's a spy novel with a shark on
the cover. Which is all I need. I was immediately a little suspicious, though. The publisher or imprint,
Apollo Books, didn't ring a bell. The copyright page gave them an address
in Connecticut, which never inspires confidence. Then there's the fact that the front cover tells you that this is
"a spy novel". Well, the name of the book is The Accidental Spy
so this isn't exactly a revelation. And on the back cover there's this blurb, in quotes: "'A spine-tingling story
of violence and death'". That's pretty generic but more alarming is that this quote isn't attributed
to any person or periodical. It's just there. For all we know it could
be a quote from the author himself or a member of his family or his agent
or dentist or whatever. But this is all surface stuff. What happens in this book? It's basically the kind of story that Eric Ambler did really well
and, apparently, made look a little too easy. An innocent abroad
gets embroiled in international intrigue and espionage. The highpoint of this subgenre is almost certainly The Mask of Dimitrios
a.k.a. A Coffin for Dimitrios, which actually is
a great book and was adapted into a decent movie while also being
the primary inspiration for Citizen Kane. Our book is narrated by Tim Clayton, a guy who runs some shops in the US
and makes a good living buying stuff in other countries and selling them back
home at huge mark-ups. He and his partner, Elena, posing as a married couple, are yachting around Spain
with Tim's college buddy Mort, who's rich and brilliant but also
a racist, right-wing bigot. Tim has tuned this out and also
lets the reader know that his own background is such that he's
not exactly outraged by this. Tim and Elena go through the usual paces. Mort disappears mysteriously, their
cabin on another ship is searched, there's an attemped murder of either
Tim or Elena, they meet a mysterious man who they think is a bad guy but the
reader will immediately guess is some kind of intelligence agent. Eventually it all leads to smuggling secret plans for something,
I already forget what. In those days it was usually something to do with
radar or missiles but maybe this time it was about some kind of energy source
for rockets. I forget because I definitely stopped caring by the time we got there. Mostly
the book is a travelogue of Spain with the narrator tediously sharing
all of his thoughts, opinions and observations and once every hundred pages or
so getting into a car chase or shooting someone with a spear gun. There is a shark, eventually, near the very end, but it's not a
particularly believable shark and its situation is bizarre enough
to drift into poetic and surreal territory. Too bad for everyone involved, though, this little spark of
interest in the book's last pages is an aberration, and mostly
what we have here is a dull and unconvincing attempt at Ambler-like
adventure. The first line is "Ironically I suppose, all that follows began at the
time which was one of the most pleasant periods of my life".
2025 June 16 • Monday
While no one has told me that they want to see more
U2-related content on this site, I'm sure that many readers
of this blog are thinking it. And so the 861st Soundtrack of the
Week is the music for Captive by The Edge (with
Michael Brook).
If you look up Michael Brook, it does seem that he collaborated
with The Edge on this music. But while the record states "Written by
The Edge" and "produced by The Edge and Michael Brook"—the two of them
play all the instruments except drums on one track and French horn on
another—the movie credits on the back cover have "Music Score by The Edge
and Michael Berkeley". Also one song is "written and produced by
Michael Brook". If you look up Michael Berkeley on wikipedia, it says that he, too,
co-wrote this score with The Edge. So, uh, I don't know what's with
these Michaels.
Anyway, I saw U2 once. It would have been around 1987, in a football stadium. Bono
had his arm in a sling. I haven't thought about them much at all since then. But this score by The Edge is pretty good. It starts with "Rowena's Theme",
a very pretty piece with the aforementioned French horn, played by Lesley Bishop.
The Edge is gently
picking out the notes in some chords, sort of arpeggiating them,
while the horn and synth and piano float over it. The other track with a guest musician, drummer Larry Mullen Jnr, comes next.
"Heroine (Theme from Captive)" has a perky and bright energy but also
a dreamy sort of feel to it. The vocals are
by Sinead O'Connor, who also co-wrote the lyrics with The Edge. "One Foot in Heaven" is a cool, minimalist groove with some light keyboard
soloing and that's basically it. Then the A side wraps up with "The Strange Party", which has
some ambient textures and a menacing rhythm track. Keyboards and
guitar come in and lighten things up a bit but the track does live up
to its name. Flip the record and the first thing you hear is "Hiro's Theme",
a dreamy, textural and pretty piece of music which features
a synth flute sound. Spacious and echoey guitar returns for "Drift", another tranquil
and soothing number, while "The Dream Theme" is mostly synth washes. Michael Brook gets sole comoposition and production credit for "Djinn",
a hybrid of music and sound design, with an intiguing and suspensful
atmosphere. "Island" is a sunny number that you can tap your toe to. There are
some really nice textures and sliding chords in here and after hearing it
you won't be surprised to see both Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois thanked
on the record. The last track is a reprise of "Hiro's Theme". It's a pretty cool record.
2025 June 13 • Friday
While I remembered that Donald Westlake had named Gold Medal paperbacks as
an inspiration for the Parker novels he wrote as Richard Stark, I had forgot
that he mentioned, besides Peter Rabe's books, a Western that was a specific
influence, a book called The Desperado by Clifton Adams. You probably know what happens next.
This was a great book and made me want to read more Westerns. It's about a young man
whose family was on the losing side of the American Civil War. Like a lot of families,
they were doing well as ranchers before the war but are pretty much just getting
by after. And of course they resent the Yankee control of their
Texas territory. Such resentment leads to occasional violence and Talbert "Tall" Cameron already got in
trouble for punching one such Northern official in a moment of anger. He's a young man who doesn't really want any trouble. He's going to continue as
a rancher and marry his sweetheart from a neighboring ranch. But all this gets thrown out the window when one of his peers, Ray Novack,
also assaults an official and the ensuing commotion threatens to include Tall
as well. To avoid a prison sentence of several months' hard labor, they decided to
ride off into the night to a relative's ranch and hide out for a few months. They never make it. On the way there they run into an older man who's an infamous
outlaw named Pappy Garrett. Novack's father used to be the Marshall and Novack recognizes the man
from wanted posters. Despite being on the run from the law himself he decides it's his
duty to kill this desperado. Tall objects to Ray's intention to shoot the man while
he's sleeping and calls out a warning. Novack gets wounded and is told to leave or die, so he leaves. Tall
sticks with Garrett and the rest of the book is a series of terrific Western
set pieces, from shoot-outs and cattle drives to ambushes and stampedes. As the old and young man travel together, a sort of friendship develops, as well as
a mentorship and the hint of a father and son bond. Garrett teaches Tall how to shoot,
but really shoot, and Tall finds a use for the unusally clear focus he's
always had in moments of conflict. Westlake described the book perfectly when he said it was about a "character adapting to
his forced separation from normal society". He also noted its economy and understated treatment
of violence. I have to agree. Adams's writing reminded me of the efficiency and
beauty of Hammett's. Westlake also cautioned that Adams wrote a sequel that's so bad it almost ruins the first
book. I'm going to find out! The first line is, "I awoke suddenly and lay there in the darkness, listening to the rapid,
faraway thud of hoofbeats".
2025 June 11 • Wednesday
It wasn't all paperbacks at the Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Book Fair.
Hardcovers, too, as well as magazines and ephemera. This November 1956
issue of Male magazine caught my eye because I have some
hot-rod novels, still unread, by William Campbell Gault.
His name isn't mentioned on the cover but the seller had noted it as
the most salient feature on a piece of paper inserted with the magazine
in its plastic bag. Like many such titles, it would be worth having for the illustrations alone.
There's great work in here by titans of the craft such as Mort Künstler
and Samson Pollen.
There are also several excellent black and white pieces throughout. So what about the story? Well, The Strange Women is misleading in at least two ways. There
aren't really any strange women in it, to begin with. Second, it's actually a shortened version of Gault's 1952 novel Don't Cry
For Me. It's good enough that I wouldn't mind reading the original version. It's
told from the point of view of a young man who had a brief moment of
glory as a football player but is now the black sheep of his well-to-do and
respectable family. Pete doesn't too anything terrible, he just lives behind his means,
which are an allowance of a hundred dollars a week from his brother. He's
got a steady girlfriend who'd like to get married but Pete hasn't got
the money and also seems unsure of the idea. Flat broke, he goes along with a friend to a mobster's house and wins a
bunch of money in a craps game. He gets in a fight with another mobster
there and the next day this guy is found dead in Pete's apartment. So now you've got the mob, the cops and Pete trying to solve this
mystery, sometimes in concert and sometimes in conflict. There are some interesting touches. Pete's next door neighbor is
a writer for the pulps and another pulp writer who specializes in
westerns shows up later. James Joyce's Ulysses turns out to be a clue and
Pete also tells the reader that he tries to unwind by "get[ting] into
Maugham, into Marquand, into Irwin Shaw". Saroyan and Ellery Queen
are also mentioned. It was a good read with some nice period details and slang. The only
real complaint is that you're asked to believe that taking a few drags
on a joint is going to affect you
like a combination of LSD and pneumonia.
2025 June 09 • Monday
The 860th Soundtrack of the Week is Stelvio Cipriani's very
guitar-heavy Scorticateli Vivi.
It starts out with "Spanish Nights in Black Satin (Main Title)", an up-tempo
sort of salsa disco track with hand percussion and wailing electric guitar. Then it switches gears with "Chicago U.S.A." which is actually
the "In-a-Gadda-Da-Vita" riff played on bass guitar while
electric guitar solos on top in a relaxed jazz/rock fashion. A slow and romantic guitar feature follows this for "The Night Dance",
after which piano joins the guitar for the fusiony lounge
"We Must Rescue Franz!". Some weird noises from guitar effects join the guitar soloing
in "Like Cain and Abel" while acoustic guitar provides a background
for more electric guitar explorations in "Remembering Pain". The "In-a-Gadda-Da-Vita" riff returbs for "Percussion Gun" but
this time it has synth solos, which return in the next cue,
"Raid at the Station". "Under the Eyes of Anubis" has a love theme sound to it
and is a very pretty little number. Throbbing bass and hand percussion are most of "Everybody Gets
What They Deserve" with some synth wash coming in near the end. Guitars come back for "The Predator" which is laid back and groovy. Then we get a vocal number, "Lyonesse" which recalls "Windmills of
Your Mind" as well as "La Vie en Rose" as well as some other
anthemic pop songs. "Changing Face" has a fast walking bass line and jazz drums
while once again electric guitar solos excitingly. Then it's time for big band swing that sounds like it
could be for a casino/hotel scene in "Crazy Town". A fairly sick synth sound comes in for the romantic groove of "Evelyn"
and then the next track, "Down with Apartheid" is for solo hand percussion.
The record wraps up with reprises of "Spanish Nights in Black Satin",
"Chicago U.S.A." and of course the "End Title".
2025 June 06 • Friday
There are some similarities between tennis and chess so after
perusing the August 1956 issue of Chess Review it seemed like
the most natural thing in the world to pick up the February 1966
World Tennis.
Of course you glimpse a number of famous names: Billie Jean King, Stan Smith,
Maureen Connolly and Arthur Ashe, to name a few.
The stand out here was this letter concerning a match Ashe played
in Australia. Tennis players, take heart, it's not just you, the bad
breaks reach everyone sooner or later! Ashe served first — and I have never seen anything so utterly stupid as
Newcombe's behavior on changing ends. After only one game, which Ashe won,
Newcombe took about four minutes at the centre line under the umpire's box,
rubbing his racket, his face, bending down and trying another racket, looking
at the "Drinks" box and, finally, at long last, meandering to his place to
serve. He had left Ashe, all this time, waiting patiently for him on the
baseline. Newcombe did this on every change-over. At one stage it was so
patently a "long wait" that the crowd started to clap. Every time Ashe was
left waiting — until this Australian lout was ready to go down to the line at
the other end and take up his position. It was awful. Cliff Sproule was
sitting on the line near the umpire's box and he never should have allowed
John to behave this way. It was rotten, harassing tactics. I was sitting in front of Dr. Harrison (a long-time member), and I said to
him, "I'm going to barrack for Ashe!" "Why?" he asked. "Because he's a good
sportsman and a gentleman," I replied. Then came that awful incident of the
netcord. The netcord man must have been asleep and could not have had his hand on the
tape since everyone heard the ball hit the net. Ashe never moved to play the shot,
waiting for the "let" to be called. It wasn't. The game, without further ado, went
to Newcombe. It was simply dreadful. That point gave Newcombe the third set. The
netcordsman was removed and a substitute came on for the fourth set. When Ashe came back he didn't try very hard to hit anything over and he
didn't run for anything. It may have been his leg muscle or he may have been
upset, but Newcombe won the two final sets. I was absolutely furious with
Newcombe on a lot of counts. The papers reported that Ashe in reply to a
comment on his poker-like face and nonchalant demeanour, said "My outward
appearance is no indication of what I feel inside." That's an edifying story. All I can add is that the US Open finals
are played in Arthur Ashe Stadium and I have never heard of John
Newcombe.
I have just seen the NSW Championships and would like to draw attention to two
incidents in the men's singles final. I liked Arthur Ashe's court demeanour
and the complete absence of grandstand play. He is a quiet, modest player with
a very skillful game at his disposal. His serve is splendid. On the day of the
final against Newcombe the wind was terrific. I could not myself have hit a ball
over under such conditions. Ashe, immaculately clad and looking fit, came onto
the court and they hit up. Afterwards a club member told me Ashe had strained a
muscle, but he never showed it.
2025 June 04 • Wednesday
Happy birthday! We're simple people here at Gutbrain Headquarters. We like the same
things everybody else does: watching TV outside, speculating that "time" is not a real thing, getting blood tests and reading
issues of Chess Review that are almost seventy years old (even
though we don't play chess).
As is so often the case, this particular periodical came from the venerable Bookstore
Restaurant in Wellfleet, MA. It isn't summer without a visit to that noble
institution! And this time the bookstore was actually open and in the presumably
capable hands of a young man in a Blockbuster Video uniform. (I discussed this matter with the gentleman in question and it was an
interesting conversation that I, typically, have already almost completely
forgotten.) Flipping through it I was pleased to discover notice of a certain Bobby Fischer!
Pretty neat!
2025 June 02 • Monday
Here's Nile Rodgers with the 859th Soundtrack of the Week:
Beverly Hills Cop III.
After an inevitable but still great run through of Harold Faltermeyer's
"Axel F" theme, Rodgers brings in the orchestra for "Chop Shop Raid", a short
but impressive cue that demonstrates an ease with the orchestral color spectrum. "Your Cooperation/Back to Beverly Hills" has the shortest of orchestral
introductions before swinging back into the groovy "Axel F" theme. Pitch-perfect marching band music tell us "Welcome to WonderWorld" and then
electronic instruments come stinging and sliding in for "Axel Saves the Kids",
which has an insane rhythm track and lets Rodgers put his own spin on
the "Axel F" theme. Straight up and stripped down funk with minimal embellishment to the drums
is what you hear in "Annihilator 2000" followed by a classic orchestral
action cue for "Raid on Truck". A cheeky, acoustic, orchestrasl version of the "Axel F" theme comes next in
"Axel Okey Dokey" and then there's a love theme, "Janice Falls in Love".
Keyboard does most of the work but guitar, bass and drums come in for support. Rodgers returns to the orchestra and weaves the "Axel F" theme in and out
of some tension/action music for "Secret Room/Axel in Mirror". "Chase Through Park" is another effective orchestral cue with action and
suspense, with the suspenseful mood continuing in "Axel & Dave/Axel,
Ellis & Dave", which shows Rodgers coming up with some ingenious variations
on the "Axel F" theme, letting the melody lay back over syncopated
rhythms and staccato horns. This combination of creative reimaginings of the main theme with
terrific orchestral dramatic underscore continues for the remaining
cues, Not the First Time/Bright Light/Axel Out of Bullets",
"Axel Changes Matrix/Fool Named Axel/Sanderson Dies" and "Axel Fox". And after all that there are alternate versions, source music, demos, etc. This
was great and made me want to watch the movie!
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