Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2025 May 30 • Friday

Valkyrie Loughcrewe’s Decrepit Ritual is an extreme horror novella that takes the reader to some very strange places.

It’s told from the point of view of an unnamed suicidal character who’s preparing to end their life in a remote cabin in Norway. Cabin in the woods? Does that ring a bell?

Like the movie of that name, the story does involve horror movie tropes and iconography as well as sacrifices to ancient gods.

The book is written in the second person, with “you” as the narrator experiencing everything, as in the first line, “Drunk and high as you are, you find yourself hesitating at the moment of suicide”.

Looking around this cabin that will be their place of self-execution, the main character finds a video tape labeled “Decrepit Ritual” and decides to throw it on while waiting for the overdose of painkillers to kick in.

The movie starts with a group of people in a convertible at a gas station in an apparent wasteland, complete with corpses and skeletal remains. Eventually they find themselves at the actual cabin our narrator is in.

The characters themselves become more defined and a lot stranger, a futuristic sci-fi TV soldier, a wizard, a supernatural Corpse Monger and so on. Every page brings on a new wave of some kind of monster, from ghouls to evil gods. Reality, other dimensions, reincarnation, meta fiction, all get carried along in the current of gore.

While it does eventually become monotonous, it’s a strange book and a very imaginative one, definitely worth reading for those interested in different takes on horror.
2025 May 28 • Wednesday

Here's the newest acquisition for the Gutbrain collection of foreign-language pulps. It's a German sci-fi magazine called Utopia.

All I want from it is that gorgeous cover, which is fortunate because inside it's pretty much all text, not much in the way of illustration.

2025 May 26 • Monday

For the 858th Soundtrack of the Week here's John Barry's wonderful music for The Knack …and How To Get It.

There was a previous CD release of this a long time ago but with a lot less music and bits of dialogue from the movie scattered throughout as separate tracks.

This expanded version from Quartet Records should be a hugely welcome addition to anyone's John Barry collection.

It's esssentially a monothematic score but what a theme! It's in swinging 3/4 and, as first stated in the "Main Theme" cue, introduced with some pensive Bondish horns before taking off with Hammond organ at the helm.

The organ takes a back seat to the trumpet for "Here Comes Nancy Now!" with the theme surrounded by strings that recall Barry's Stringbeat years.

A very slow, sultry, suggestive, bluesy version puts the "strip" in "Photo Strip" while "Three on a Bed" lets the trumpet and strings stretch out on the theme.

"Blues and Out" is a slow traditional blues for solo organ at first, eventually adding bass, drums and strings.

Then we're back to the theme for "And How To Get It", this time with the organ soloing throughout and a wordless choir joining the ensemble.

An interesting variation of the theme, sort of a next-door neighbor, follows in "Something's Up", which adds a suspense mood to the organ combo plus horns and voice group.

Then high-pitched percussion instruments get to run through a crazy cartoon take on the theme in "Door and Bikes and Things", which switches to a moody 4/4 jazz trumpet section before returning to a laidback waltz time for another moody atmosphere that strongly suggests the theme without stating it, building in intensity with erotic overtones.

A second theme shows up for "Ecstasy!". It's also in 3/4, swings a little more gently, has a more button-down melody. It's still very nice.

Before returning to the main theme, played rather solemnly with elegant and dignified harp, there's a restrained and refined introduction to "End Title".

All of that is from the soundtrack album while the rest of the CD contains mono recordings of the original film soundtrack. You can hear some interesting variations in "Tolen's Bedroom/Try It On!/Colin's Bedroom" and "Carpentry Job".

2025 May 23 • Friday

In the movie Goodfellas, Joe Pesci tries to remember the name of the only Western that Humphrey Bogart was ever in and someone offers Shane as a joke. It doesn't quite come across in these subtitles, which can't handle the people talking over each other.

Now I don't know if Martin Scorsese has ever said anything about the importance of Shane to him, but I have heard him talk about The Searchers and I Shot Jesse James as movies that meant a lot to him, so I have to imagine that Shane is up there.

Shane features this little exchange:

Which of course reminded me of this:

Of course that scene was famously improvised but that doesn't mean an absence of direction or suggestion, or that Scorsese and De Niro hadn't just watched Shane.

It doesn't necessarily mean anything but there it is. Are there other Shane references in Scorsese movies?

2025 May 21 • Wednesday

I threw on Shane the other day, thinking I'd just watch the first twenty minutes or so while eating lunch. I had seen it before, when I was in high school, and only remembered that, yup, sure enough, that was a movie, but I hadn't been much impressed by it at the time.

This time around, though, I was riveted, by the gorgeous deep-focus Technicolor photography, the script, the acting and of course Victor Young's music.

In addition to being a classic Western, it's also a template for hundreds of movies to follow, all that hero's journey stuff, but really they're just doing a quick re-write of Shane, they don't have to know about ancient mythology.

It's based on a book and so I decided to read the source novel.

The book is fairly extraordinary as well. It's a very simple story told from the point of a view of a child, who reports events that the reader understands more than he does.

The relationships are nuanced and the adults communicate in ways that go over the narrator's head. Presumably in hindsight he could be filling in the implications that he didn't catch at the time but it's much more effective writing to leave them there for the reader to pick up.

The movie actually complicates the story quite a bit. It brings on the conflict almost right away, while the book is a slow burn, taking its time to establish the intensity of the relationships between Shane and the narrator's parents.

Shane himself is a deeply satisfying hero character, clearly attempting what he accepts is a doomed-to-fail transition to a life based on goodness and community, as opposed to being a dangerous lone wolf.

Some habits die hard, with Shane always sitting with his back to the wall and facing the door, but he takes off his gun at the beginning of the book and doesn't put it on again until the climax, inexorably arrived at and almost unbearably exciting, for the reader as well as the narrator.

One thing that differentiates both the book and movie of Shane is that the villain of the piece isn't there just to be evil. He's also a relatable character and while he isn't nice and does play dirty, he actually kind of has a point.

He's not obeying the law but the way things are going, his survival is at stake. He's greedy and mean but he's not crazy and not entirely wrong. This is incredibly refreshing. Usually it's not clear what the hell movie villains want anyway. What if Darth Vader had just ignored the rebel alliance? Or what if he woke up one day and the rebel alliance was just gone? What would he do then? What is it he even wants to do in the first place?

So that's a definite point for Shane, that the bad guy is wrong in his actions but sympathetic in his motivations. I don't know if this is so rare because it's hard to pull off or if it's just been determined that nobody really cares, they just want to see pins get set up and knocked down.

Both movie and book have Shane's opposite number, a formidable and ominous gunfighter dressed all in black, who wears two guns. Shane only wears one and tells our narrator that there's really no reason to carry more.

This character is played by Jack Palance in the movie and made more explicitly evil than he is in the book, particularly as regards a character played by Elisha Cook, Jr., a Confederate veteran who doesn't exist in the book.

When Shane finally retrieves his gun and resigns himself to having a tainted soul, forever warped by killing, and also to the reality that violence and villainy will always prey on the good, in the book, he just does it without comment or reflection.

Alan Ladd in the movie has a wonderful moment where he indicates to the viewer, with one quiet gulp, that Shane is actually scared in this moment. This is serious and his own death is a very likely result.

It's a magnificent movie and book.

The first line of the novel is "He rode into our valley in the summer of '89".

2025 May 19 • Monday

Happy birthday, honey!

The 857th Soundtrack of the Week is Victor Young's score for Shane.

The "Main Title (Prelude)" is a classic orchestral western style with that slight cowboy sway to it. It starts out soaring, ends soothing and is wholesome all the way through. The ending, with banjo and what might be celeste, is perfect.

"Starrett's Plans" is basically a reiteration of it but with harmonica as a prominent instrument.

For "The Tree Stump", the scene in which Shane really bonds with the farming family he's staying with, Young creates a rhythmically propulsive and energetic cue with strings and horns blasting straight ahead, with occasional "classical" music embellishments.

Sounds of carefree innocence and buoyant, happy feelings run through "Pastoral", which also offers a new, slower interpretation of the main theme.

The main theme gets stated by some kind of trumpet to begin with"Off to Town/Grafton's Store". The first hint of real menace gets introduced in the midst of an otherwise comforting string passage as Young brings in darker orchestral colors and dramatic stings.

The wide open spaces and big sky can be heard clearly in "Wyoming Sketches", which revisits most of the themes heard so far.

Perhaps the classic moment from Shane is the fight scene in town. That and the tree stump scene and of course the very end are the parts most people remember or know about if they haven't seen the movie. Young has the orchestra in serious and dangerous mode with the wind instruments in the foreground for "End of Fight/Victory and Trouble". You hear more trouble than victory.

The lilting western theme from the main title comes back in a gentle version for strings and harmonica in "Tender Moments/Wilson/Ride and Memories" but is followed by dangerous tension music and a violent action cue before reprising the peaceful atmosphere it started with.

"The Fourth of July/A Tough Torrey" starts with jaunty celebratory music before switching abruptly into pure menace, communicated mostly by the wind instruments. It's incredible how little percussion Young uses in this score.

The uneasy mood continues in "Trouble Ahead/Torrey's Death/Taking Torrey Home" with just enough references to some of the score's lighter moments to make the heaviness more ominous. "Dixie" is also quote for Torrey's Confederate Army history.

Sadness and suspense permeate "Cemetery Hill" though hope and goodness transcend them with lofty orchestral swells of the main theme by the end.

Strings calmly present the main theme to begin "Peace Party" but are soon interrupted by a frantic and chaotic part for horns. We return to the more placid beginning soon but the rest of the cue is pensive and suggestive of trouble to come.

"Sad Is the Parting" strikes an elegiac note with the main theme played heartbreakingly on solo violin.

The big climax, "The Ride to Town", has the heroic theme given maximum oomph but then becomes extrremely quiet, something silent and deadly waiting to strike.

Cloudy sonorities begin "Apotheosis and End Title" but soon we're back in a reflective reprise of the main theme, slower this time, perhaps a little more mature, like the child character in the story.

Added as bonus tracks to this CD are a solo harmonica track, "Beautiful Dreamer/Marching Through Georgia", which is source music, as well as film versions with music and effects of the cues "The Ride to Town" and "Apotheosis and End Title".

2025 May 16 • Friday

As every schoolchild knows, Big Wednesday started as a Denny Aaberg short story called "No-Pants Mance" in the May 1974 issue of Surfer magazine

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The nostalgia angle is already in place. The narrator is just a kid, Chris, "a young gremmie, maybe 14 or 15" who worships No-Pants Mance, who would become Matt Johnson in Big Wednesday, book and movie both co-written by Aaberg.

He tells us that this is a story of an old era that's dead but he hopes that "No-Pants can bring it to life".

Chris's older brother is more or less Jack Barlow and Mick the Masochist will become Leroy the Masochist.

The story is very short and basically the house party scene from Big Wednesday. Almost everything in the magazine is in the movie and it uses the Jan-Michael Vincent "steam iron" bit as its punchline.

2025 May 14 • Wednesday

Here's another item from this year's Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Book Fair: the novelization of Big Wednesday by Dennis Aaberg & John Milius.

I've always liked the movie and felt that there should be more to it, more depth of character and situation, more time spent with these people over the years. I was hoping that the book would add a ton of stuff but it follows the movie very closely.

The story follows three best friends and "Big Name" surfers, Matt, Jack and Leroy, as they find themselves not so much navigating a transition from adolescence to adulthood as being caught in a riptide of growing older.

Carefree and living and single-minded devotion to the beach and the ocean are all that matters until various waves of consequence crash over them: parenthood, draft notices, death, taxes, all that "inland" stuff.

Readers will learn more about the character of Sally, which is good. We could hardly learn less. It would have been nice for Peggy to have more thoughts on the page as well, but that doesn't happen.

There are some really nice additional details, such as Jack not wanting to join the military because "they'd make me wear shoes".

It's also an improvement to have Jack's mother working on her art painting instead of reading Catch-22 during the massive party scene.

This is one of those novelizations best enjoyed by those who've seen the movie, especially for the surfing scenes, which are so well done in the film.

But it was good. I wish there were more of it! It could have used a better proofreader, though. Among numerous typos of little importance there's a truly bizarre error when the reader meets our three main characters and Leroy is called Mitch for no good reason.

The first line is "I remember a wind that would blow down through the canyons before dawn".

2025 May 12 • Monday

The 856th Soundtrack of the Week is Privilege, which has a score by Mike Leander and songs by Leander & Mark London.

I remember this as being a good movie, a futuristic drama about a pop star whose incredible popularity leads to his being controlled by the state and the church to manipulate the population. According to Wikipedia it was heavily indebted to a documentary about Paul Anka so I have to see that now as well.

The title song is great, a mid-tempo pop/rock number with strings and a melodic line that's occasionally reminiscent of "Can't Help Falling in Love". The lyrics are really good too: "Yeah, it's an honor to meet me / An honor to greet me / An honor to have that privilege / You insist that I’m humble / As soon as I grumble / You’ll take away my privilege". It's sung by Paul Jones, the star of the movie.

A slower instrumental variation follows in "Stephen", which in turn is followed by a gorgeous instrumental track called "Vanessa", which features acoustic guitar. It's simple but hypnotic and dreamily wonderful. There's also something about it which makes it hard for me to count even though the drum beat doesn't seem to vary.

Then Paul Jones is back for another great pop/rock number, "Free Me", which has more intensity than "Privilege", a bit of a desperate edge to it.

"It's Overotherness Time" is another variation on "Privilege" but this time with choppy strings and roiling percussion creating a feeling or urgency.

Then after a reprise of "Free Me" there's "I've Been a Bad, Bad Boy", a swinging Paul Jones song that almost slides into country or gospel but stays in a pop zone while also perhaps betraying classical music influences in the melody's shape.

George Bean sings the next song, a pop arrangement of "Onward, Christian Soldiers", complete with acid rock guitar.

Pizzicatto strings drive "I'm Alright Jackboot", with drum set coming in now and then to remind listeners of the pop/rock context whil3 arco strings add texture to the pop/rock instrumental "Alvin", another cool tune.

After that George Bean returns with another traditional religious song, this time with "Jerusalem" getting the treatment. This one has a really nice melody and Bean sounds great singing it.

The album concludes with "Birmingham, Oh Birmingham", an intriguing mix of classical chamber group and rock band, with strings, flute and drum set collaborating on a "classical" interpretation of the title song.

2025 May 09 • Friday

Happy birthday!

Look, here's a hardcover edition of the first Parker book, The Hunter, by Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark.

It's even signed by the author.

And here's another hardcover edition of the same book, this time as Point Blank because of the movie adaptation.

This is a UK edition and also signed by the author.

And now here's a third hardcover edition. I don't own this one but that's my hand holding it in the picture. This might have been at Borderlands in San Francisco.

It's not signed by the author since it came out after Donald Westlake's death.

But please note that this third (at least) hardcover edition claims to be the first hardcover edition.

Not only is this clearly false, who the hell cares? Is that the only selling point they could think of?
2025 May 07 • Wednesday

Wyatt is a crime novel by Garry Disher in which the author returns to the title character, a professional thief who was the hero of six previous books published in the 1990s.

The 2010 novel Wyatt was published in the US by Soho Crime. Once readers finish, they're invited to "Turn the page for a sneak preview of the next Wyatt thriller: Port Vila Blues".

I suppose the key word here is "next". Port Vila Blues was published in 1995 and is the fifth Wyatt novel. Wyatt, from 2010, is the seventh. Presumably they mean "next to be published by Soho Crime" but what they actually said is dishearteningly misleading.

The book itself is also a disappointment for readers who come to it hoping for something on the level of the Parker novels written by Donald Westlake under the name Richard Stark.

Indeed, that's why I had read a few of these Wyatt novels already, in the '90s, including Port Vila Blues, but have no memory of them other than being disappointed and noting that Wyatt is always tensing. "Wyatt tensed" is a favorite phrase of Disher's and it appears at least three times in Wyatt.

But perhaps you are already objecting that it isn't fair to compare these books to Westlake/Stark's Parker series.

Well, Westlake himself was kind enough to suggest that Parker had changed his name to Wyatt and moved to Australia. That's how I found out about these books in the first place.

Disher hardly tries to distance himself from the Parker model either. Quite the opposite. Wyatt lives in an apartment complex called Westlake Towers, partners up for a heist with someone named Stark and then wriggles out of a dire situation by stealing the identity of someone named Parker. He literally becomes "Parker" in this book.

But in name only. We're always being told how great Wyatt is, and Disher alternates between giving him superhuman abilities and having him be clueless to a similarly incredulous extent.

Wyatt's set-up is pure fantasy and a fairly cuckoo concoction with a fortune in valuable paintings and two expensive apartments, one to live in and one to escape to in case of trouble. Except that the apartments are in the same building! Which, sure, might seem convenient, but what if the bad trouble prevents you from returning to the building, not just the apartment? There are other obvious objections to Wyatt's arrangement here, but that's the first one that comes to mind.

The heist itself is a simple one that gets way too complicated and involves too many characters, none of them believable or even interesting. The action in the book is also all over the place. I had no idea that Melbourne was so indifferent to shooting guns and torching cars.

The story involves robbing a courier carrying stolen jewels except this time he's carrying millions of dollars in bonds instead and he's also a bad-ass killer and it gets tangled up with various betrayals and loose cannon people of whom the most ridiculous is a psycho stripper named Khandi Cane.

Wyatt has spidey sense that tells him when someone is standing outside of his building but not when someone is standing right behind him. Characters are introduced just to be the recipients of violence and then disappear from the story without ever dong anything memorable.

Wyatt himself, when things go haywire, doesn't react much better than the average person and Disher doesn't mind moving things along with outrageous coincidences and contrivances.

It was interesting to revisit this character thirty years later but you're better off just re-reading one of the original Parker books from the '60s and '70s.

The first line is "Wyatt was waiting to rob a man of $75,000".

2025 May 05 • Monday

Stanley Myers's music for The Time Traveler is the 855th Soundtrack of the Week.

It starts with a pop song called "The Next One", which has some Styx-like energy to it.

The "Main Titles" introduce feels of adventure and possibility with a nice mix of electric and acoustic sounds, followed by a pastiche of traditional Greek music for "Mykonos Theme".

The cello is one of the main voices for "Recollections", which is a lyrical and shadowy sort of cue.

"Talk to Me About Christ" has a lot of space in it and economical expressions from a range of instruments, occasionally settling into some simple swaying sections.

Some ominous synth notes and percussion introduce a clearly menacing context for "Drawning" (supposed to be "Drowning"?) and then we're back to more Greek music for "Hasapikos".

For "Love Theme Pt. 1 & 2 (Falling in Love)" it sounds like synth flute is taking the melody, with gently accompaniment from other synth voices.

Then things get strange and alarming, lots of weird noises and chopping strings for "Premonition", followed by long keyboard tones and more synth flute for "Come Back to Life".

"Talking Nonsense" has some pretty acoustic guitar playing and big organ chords for a reallyt nice piece of music.

The Greek instruments and musical conventions come back for "Glen Is Human", which is follwoed by some very strong electronic music writing, which sounds like it includes processed vocals, pipe organ and electronic drums.

The next two cues sound like they feature some kind of hammered string instrument, like a zither or a cymbalom or something. It's really cool: "Good Friday Echoes (Variation on a Greek Orthodox Psalm" is just that instrument solo and then it's joined by bazouki for "Agean Sea Theme".

Spacy and meditative new agey synth pads make up "So Long Pal" and then we're on to the "End Titles", which actually don't sound like the "Main Titles" for once.

The record wraps up with two great rock/pop songs from Big Alice: "Seventh Heaven" and "Mr. Be".

2025 May 02 • Friday

I picked up William T. Hallahan's The Dead of Winter at the Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Book Fair, expecting a Death Wish-type novel.

It’s actually a complicated and suspenseful mystery thriller. When Vincent Reese is brutally beaten in his apartment and dies of a heart attack in the hospital, the three guys he plays poker with every week vow to get revenge.

And then they do that, right away. Find the guy who did it and kill him. This happens really early on in the book so it’s only a mild spoiler.

Our three protagonists are an interesting trio. Basche is a big game hunter who’s always been curious about the most dangerous game. Tyler is a philosophy professor who has trouble controlling his emotions. And then there’s Lyons, a white collar guy who’s surprisingly adept with lockpicks and rifles. Who also takes the lead on deduction and investigation. Who’s good at cryptanalysis. Who wakes up one day in his apartment, which is locked from the inside, violently ill with a hypodermic mark in his arm and no memory of how it got there…

Hallahan stacks mystery upon mystery. Killing Reese’s killer leads them to the man who commissioned the murder. And that man leads to another. Why was their friend, remarkable only for his phenomenal memory, assaulted and his apartment painstakingly ransacked? Why does… oh wait never mind. That’s enough.

The Dead of Winter is really well written. Never flashy but always atmospheric, adroit and economical. It’s a great New York City book too, dropping the reader into less traveled outer-borough areas and taking advantage of the December setting to show the city as a damp, snowy, windy and dangerous place.

The pacing is perfect and Hallahan sustains various mysterious elements for an incredibly long time without ever trying this reader’s patience. I’ll definitely look out for his other books.

The first line is “He woke up”.