FFB: No Sleep Till Canvey Island.

FFB: No Sleep Till Canvey Island by Will Birch

In the USA following the Garage Rock era, it was the 70s Westren Swing Revival and the Outlaw Country movement that were the forerunners to Punk Rock, in the UK it was Glam and Pub rock that really set the stage for the Sex Pistols, The Damned and the Clash. In This book Will Birch traces the history of the scene as it bashed it's way from the little clubs around London to the world stage. Artists like Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, and Ian Dury would emerge from the scene to stand in the spotlight, meanwhile dozens of others played away and became cult bands, and many would go on to be part of that first wave of British Punk Rock at the end of the 70s. Birch was one of those, as the drummer in the form The Kursaal Flyers was involved on the ground and in the trenches.

For those who have never heard of Pub rock, (from Wiki)

Pub rock was a mid- to late-1970s musical movement, largely centred around North London and South East Essex, particularly Canvey Island and Southend on Sea. Pub rock was largely a reaction to much of the popular music of the era, which tended to be dominated by progressive rock and highly polished, supposedly over-produced American West Coast 'AOR' sounds. Many viewed such music as inaccessible and 'out of touch', while pub rock was very much about getting 'back to basics', tending to be based around live performances in small pubs and clubs, playing unpretentious music, from country rock to rhythm and blues-influenced hard rock.

I read the book a back in July of 2003, I recall because it was what I was reading when I visited Japan. It is filled with the information and the details, but a little low on narative drive, and one of my firends in Sweden who is a fan of the music went so far as to call it boring. I don't know about that, but if you are all interested in the time, the place, and the music it is worth checking out.

I was inspired to write about this book due to the imminate release of two films that deal with Pub Rock, Sex & Drugs & Rock'n'Roll a biopic about the late Ian Durry and Julien Temple's latest rock documentary about the Group Dr. Feelgood, Oil City Confidential. I am looking forward to seeing both films.

Anyone interested in the music, there area a couple of solid Pub Rock collections out there: Pub Rock: Paving the Way for Punk and Goodbye Nashville, Hello Camden Town: A Pub Rock Anthology.

Will Birch has a Website HERE & He has a Blog for his new book on Ian Dury (which I am looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of) HERE.

thoughts, comments, fave raves from the Pub scene?

FFB: The Strange Case of Edward Gorey...

FFB: The Strange Case of Edward Gorey by Alexander Theroux

I recall my mother watching the PBS series Mystery! when I was young, and liking the title sequence more than the shows. It was only later in the '90s, when I was in the throes of my Horror Punk years, that I really started to explore the world of Edward Gorey and see the influence that he had on many of the things that I held dear. His morbid, dark, and sketchy cartoons seemed to be remnants of a past era, and built a world and body of work that was in many ways a dark American version of the great P.G. Wodehouse.

A reclusive and cult figure, it was only after his passing in 2000 (and isn't it fitting that a man who was so stuck in the 1900s would only live only to see the turn of the century) that this slim 68 pages biographical volume was issued. It's a quick read that includes examples of Gorey's work, and some insight to his world. Writer Alexander Theroux was not only a fan of Gorey, but a friend and neighbor, giving him an authority on the subject that many biographers don't have.

Alas my Horror Punk years are behind me, and slowly as I have drifted around my book collection has drifted away, however this little biography has stayed.

Thoughts, Comments?

Leningrad Cowboys: Thru the Wire

Leningrad Cowboys -Thru the Wire

Starting off with the sombulistic Sax and the sound of the rain, The Leningrad Cowboy's tune Thru the Wire is a crime drama more in line of the down and out damned than anything involving cops and crooks. It drips with a midnight of fear and a need to escape, building slowly from that initial shimmer of radiance before dipping into a world of bitter black coffee and cheap smokes.

Thru the wire

Funny how things always look the same
Holes in the shoes collar turned up
up against the rain
Another cheep hotel
Some girl she’s on the floor
Once more hopin gonna make it
Singing hopin singing

Chorus

Thru the wire
It’s been a long time honey
And your dreams they get so old
Oh yeah
This might not be the greatest story ever told
Just one more heart
Just one more heart coming in from the cold

clock in the mark square
It’s chiming 12 o’clock
Slow across the border
Another car gets stopped
Uniforms asking questions papers getting read
I’m feeling half dead
Thru the wire

Chorus

The word gonna out tonight
Why the spinning stops
My body’s feeling broken
And I want to turn it off
But I just keep rockin and ????? and singing

Chorus

The Leningrad Cowboys were introduced to the world with the film Leningrad Cowboys Go America, and it's soundtrack. It was when I took in a viewing of the film at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis that I first saw the video for the song Thru The Wire. Several music videos were shown along with the film and, even though I really wanted to avoid including videos in this series I would be remiss if I did not at least link it it; (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaEQgUaq5gk)-- so go check it out for your self. I am not aware of any covers of this song out there, but I think someone like Gaslight Anthem or Social Distortion could do it justice, of course I wonder what Johnny Cash would have done with it. If I had to pick a band I would like to hear cover it, at this moment it has to been next months crime tune artist, Drivin'n'Cryin.

The Leningrad Cowboys were really the Finnish band The Sleepy Sleepers with singer Niki Tesco from the UK punk group The Members. I like a lot of their other recording, but it is only on this song that I delve into the darker more noir side of the pop spectrum. My friends in Finland seem to see them as a joke, but I enjoy them, and have their Go Space album in addition to the Go America soundtrack.

Additional info at:

http://www.leningradcowboys.fi/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leningrad_Cowboys_Go_America_%28album%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leningrad_Cowboys

Niki Tesco: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Members

Thru the Wire is the second of twelve posts in my crime tune series for 2010.

Next Month: Drivin'n'Cryin Legal Gun

Thoughts, Comments?

FFB Another Fine Myth by Robert Asprin

FFB Another Fine Mythby Robert Asprin

I find myself writing more and more personal Friday Forgotten Book entries as of late, and this one isn't any exception. I started off thinking about the generation gap between me and several of the other regular contributors. I read about people discovering the 60s and 70s reprints of old pulp stuff, seeking out original 50s pulps before the collectors boom and even having been around to see some of that stuff when it hit the shelves.

I on the other hand grew up in the 80s. Things were changing, book stores started to become more and more prevalent, the book section of general merchandisers was shrinking if not vanishing and the market was shifting. This was true also of many other forms of media, but we are talking about books. I didn't have a chance to discover a lot of stuff by stumbling across it on a spinner rack. Despite living in a college town with several better than average book sellers (of both new and used books) my discoveries were more from word of mouth, or from other media.

Robert Asprin was a writer that I discovered for another reason. I was friends with his son, who went to my school and he was the scout master of my younger brothers cub scout troop. He was known for his Thieves World anthology series and his Myth Adventures series. It is the later of these that is my forgotten book for this week.

Another Fine Myth stars a magician's apprentice, Skeeve, who after his master is killed finds himself looking for the killer. With the help of a demon named Aahz (say it out loud). Skeeve sets out on a quest, and craziness ensues. The book is a comic romp filled with puns and silliness that is light fun and engaging. I have to admit that a lot of the puns went right over my head as a young reader and I didn't really know exactly what was being satirized.

Asprin passed away in May 2008. Around that time I re-read Another Fine Myth, and found it to be fun, refreshing and light. Not the kind of thing that I tend to read these days-- maybe that's not exactly true. I read a lot of crime fiction and a story where a apprentice has his master killed, and set's out with another master to avenge the killing would fit nicely into many a crime story. Maybe I am not as far afield from where I started as I thought.

Looking back on Another Fine Myth, also got me thinking about being a teen in the 1980s. Watching too much TV, eating junk food, and reading then current mass market Sci Fi and Fantasy with my friends. I look at so much of that 80s stuff now and it seems so soulless and cliched, but the Myth books and Another Fine Myth in particular skewers and knowingly plays with those conventions.

Thoughts, Comments?

Books Read: Jan 2010

Books Read: Jan 2010

The Role Call:
Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell
The Jugger by Richard Stark
Nightmare in Pink by John D Mac Donald
The Corpse Wore Pasties by Johnny Porkpie
The Mall of Cthulhu by Seamus Cooper
Peepshow by Leigh Redhead
The Godwilf Manuscript by Robert B Parker
Tommy Gun by Bill Yenne
The Seventh by Richard Stark
Hard Candy by Andrew Vachss (DNF-- Shelved for now)

The Comments:
It was a lot of crime fiction, mostly because that's what I am into mostly these days. A couple of Richard Stark Parker novels are in the mix-- they always fit in nicely after I read in foreign/ uncharted territory.John D Mac Donald Book for the Month: Nightmare in Pink the Second Travis Magee book was tough and slow going at first, but once the action started to roll, I could not put it down. First books introducing seriesPI's for the month? That would be Leigh Redhead and Robert B Parker (RIP) bothof whom I do need to revisit and see where they take/took their PIs. Tommy Gun was the one non-fiction work, which tells the history of the Thompson SubMachine Gun. It was pretty interesting, but did get bogged down with anecdotes about it's use in WWII, still a interesting read to any one who has a curiosity about American crime in the 1920s, The IRA (in the same time period) and of course WWII. Tomato Red was something I picked up because it was on Christa Faust's wish list. It was OK, but really not my thing. The Mall of Cthulhu and The Corpse Wore Pasties were both fun romps, a little on the lighter side, but entertaining enough that I look forward to what every their authors deliver next.
Favorite book Cover of the month:

Thoughts, Comments, favorite candy?

FFB: The Texas-Israeli War: 1999

FFB:The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 by Jake Saunders and Howard Waldrop

From the Back of the book:
On August 12, 1992, England's tiny nuclear arsenal fell on Ireland, on
South Africa, and finally on China. Instantly the planet went up in
flames. In the first half year of what was to be called the War of '92,
half the Earth's population perished. The United States was reduced to
a vast underpeopled land -- and, to make matters worse, Texas had
seceded and taken her precious oil reserves. But Israel, virtually
untouched in a world ravaged by war, was painfully overpopulated.

I was promised an end. Regan/The Russians were going to drop the bomb, a runway comet was going to pass between the earth and the moon, the oceans were going to rise, the trees were gonna die and it was all going to end. Oh, yeah and Jesus was gonna come back as well. It wasn't just me, it was a large part of my peer group. We watched The Day After, Testament, The Road Warrior and countless knockoffs.

And then there were the books, the well endless series: The Deathlands, The Survivalist, Out of the Ashes, Endworld, The Guardians, and on and on and on. There were also the stand alone book, often the better entries in the cannon: The Stand, Swan Song, Earth Abides, Alas Babylon. It got to the point where I used to joke in high school that we have a Holocaust lit class, we should also have a post Holocaust lit class.

Maybe the first of these that I ever found was today's forgotten book. The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 take a moment to just look at that title. It's kinda, well it's a thinker that's for sure. I have to admit that I don't totally recall reading the book, I know that I did somewhere along the line, but what makes it stick in my brain is more how I came into possession of the well worn copy that currently resides in my apartment, and from what I remember it is the story of how the book made it's way into my life that is the better of the two tales.

It was the mid 80's (cue the lamest 80s synthpop in your collection)-- and I had recently been transferred from the minimum security Elementary School Facility where my local government had assigned me to the Maxim security facility known as Forthsye Junior High School. I was in an alternative Jr High Program called MYA, and it was here that I finally found a group of misfits to belong with. There was Dave, the super smart kid who sat in almost every class with us despite being two years younger (he took 9th grade math, he was 10).   Ryan lived with his mom who taught ballet, he was able to talk her in to buying him a ninja suit. Erik was the son of a cab driver who wrote Role Playing Games on the side. Mike, lived with his dad in a shady part of town while his mother lived in the ritzy suburbs of the D. Then there was Jake. He was into all the same stuff we were, pulp novels, Role Playing Games, and of course Comic Books.

Jake was owner of the book The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 and spent most of 7th reading and re-reading it. Somewhere along the way it vanished, and even though we all recalled the title the book was gone. I don't really recall being aware of it's having vanished, and it wasn't until years later that I found the true story behind where it had gone.

My Jr. High internment lasted all of two years and I and my group of friends bolted for the safety of Ann Arbor's Community High School. CHS was free of the gangs that ruled the Junior High School, now more preppies, no more jocks, just a collection of misfits, brainiacs, art fags and the assorted weirdos that a town like Ann Arbor produces. All but one of my group of friends went to CHS and as soon as we reached safety things started to fragment. Jake was the first to go. His older brother was a senior and had a number of friends and contact, and Jake was quick to abandon us for them. The drama club and it's little family pulled away another group member and by the time we were seniors there were only three of the original group of MYA refugees that still hung out.

It was during this last year of High School, while at the home of one of the other guys that he pulled out the copy of The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 and presented me with it. I was stunned to be standing there in his bed room holding that book. Looking at that cover and recalling how far we had all come in the last 5 years. Why? was my question to him, why take the book? Honestly I don't recall what his answer was. Then he gave me the book and I have held onto it all these years.

Like a lot of teenage friends we all drifted out separate ways. Dave, tours the world and has been on This American Life and the David Letterman show. Erik, the son of the RPG writer? He works in quality control for Yahoo out west. Ryan, the only guy I ever knew who really had a ninja suit? I have no idea where he is. Mike? He lives a town over from me, we have coffee once or twice a year. Jake? I have no idea where he ended up. I know he's on facebook, and I
have considered sending him a message simply reading "I have your copy
of The Texas-Israeli War: 1999."

The end of the world came, just not the way we were expecting it to. The cold war ended, the fear of nuclear annihilation has lifted for now. The world changed and all that was true and expected in the mid 80s has mostly been supplanted by new fears, and new threats.

Thoughts, Comments, anyone know where I got the Runaway Comet bit?

Eilen Jewell: Sea of Tears

Eilen Jewell: Sea of Tears

Do you know those opening dirge like moments of the song Endless Sleep by Jody Reynolds? If you don't it's a dark mix of rockabilly balladry and sparse shadowy twang. Most of the album Sea of Tears by Eilen Jewell has that feel, and from the moment I heard the title track I had to hear it all.
That first listen came as part of the No Depression podcast # 8 which featured selections from the top albums of the year as voted on my the No Depression community. Of course leave it to me to find the album almost a year after it's April 2009 release, but it's taken me longer to find much older albums. I checked the CD out of my local library and gave it a spin. The title track was as good as the first time I heard it and the rest of the album having that same feel has become one of my current faves to put on.

The track Sea of Tears then popped up on a Roots Rock Radio Podcast I had sitting in my queue for the last month or so-- just to give me that extra kick in the pants to write something about it. Something that had been brewing for a long time, something about a tune from the world of Folk, Country and Roots Rock that I believed would appeal to people who spend their listening hours with the screaming sounds of the mix of punk, power pop, hard rock, psychedelic, soul, surf and rockabilly that has most recently fallen under the heading of Garage Punk.

Rock and Roll for me has always been about the energy. Elvis, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, Bo Diddley, The Animals, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, BOC, The Ramones, The Damned, The Misfits, The Screaming Trees, Turbonegro, The Hellacopters and on and on and on-- they all have one thing in common in their best moments-- Energy.

Eilen Jewell has that energy, that passion and that edge of relish in her delivery of the songs on the album Sea of Tears. It's as if she can't figure out if she is really sad, or happy that her heart is broken. There is that tension of joy and sorrow carrying the songs along. I like the dark early rock rumble of the music as much as the almost amused passion of the vocals. Her voice has weight to it, it's got soul and it's got a little bit of depth. It's the kind of voice that should age nicely and I hope is still wailing when it's 70.

So, all you garage punkers out there, you need something to fill the void of that collection of Estrus CDs gathering dust in the attic of your youth, this might just be it.

Amazon

Youtube:

Thoughts, Comments, recommendations?