unpopular

Meet Me At The Morgue

I’m always torn between marking email from Amazon as ‘junk’ and not. Most of the time the recommendations are wide of the mark, but occasionally something sneaks through that really hits the sweet spot. Today it is a nod from the American branch of the business that tells me I might be interested in the imminent publication of Ross Macdonald’s ‘The Ferguson Affair’. Well, gee, let me think now... That would be a ‘yes’!

It is some years since I embarked on a ferocious Macdonald reading spree, but really, those Lew Archer stories remain way up top of my ranking of the greats. If it weren’t for the stacks of Max Allan Collins’ ‘Quarry’ novels and the next batch of the re-issued Richard Stark ‘Parker’ stories in my ‘to be read’ pile, I would be sorely tempted to start the Archer series again from the start. Something for the depths of winter perhaps?

Now ‘The Ferguson Affair’ is not an Archer story, but by all accounts it might as well be, and that is a fine thing. Well, anything by Macdonald is going to be classy isn’t it? I notice that the publishers are also due to reprint his ‘Meet Me At The Morgue’ (due for December this year, so maybe my notion of having a wintery Macdonald spree is fitting). I picked up an old paperback copy of this on eBay back when I was in the depths of my addiction, and it’s a great read. And whilst the new Black Lizard series’ covers look very classy with their black and white photography and single colour splash, there is something about those old pulp covers that is impossible to beat.

Between Faulkner and Fitzgerald

I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to see this photo. I can die content now, for I have been sandwiched tightly between two giants of literature. An added bonus is that Ask The Dust and Bilgewater are also just a stone’s throw away. We won’t think about how my slim tome actually compares to those others, however. Don’t want to wreck the dream after all, do we?

I knew that my school was built on the site of an old POW camp, but did not know that part of the site was also used as a base for US army personnel during WW2. This makes me stupidly excited to wonder if it was the camp Salinger was based in; the one he (okay, the character he created) walked to town from in ‘For Esme, With Love & Squalor’. Isn’t it pretty to think so?

wrapped up in books

So what have you been reading? Me, I’ve been delving back into comics. Well, the old Powers trade paperbacks to be more precise. Blame the end of term cold, but all I wanted to do for a few days was catch up with something vaguely familiar; nothing too heavy but capable of keeping the hook dug deep. Plus I had volumes nine through eleven sitting unread in the summer pile, so it seemed sensible to go back to the very beginning.

It felt good to be reunited with the Powers universe. Like meeting some old friends after a few years away. It felt familiar, and yet there were new nuances to pick up on, new stories to tell under the old ones. It’s funny how you bring something new to the table when you revisit those old tales. They stay the same, but you don’t, so the experience is different each time. You cherish the old favourite moments, but at the same time different ones create themselves around a newly noted reference. Or something previously unseen chimes with a memory made since your last visit. It’s all good.

Now I think Brian Michael Bendis is a terrific storyteller. You all know this, no doubt. And Michael Avon Oeming is a genius artist. You know this too. It’s just nice to be reminded every so often. I do not think that I have never been a comics geek, but I do love following some of the trails. I was sitting nodding and grinning broadly when I was reading the Bendis interview where he was going on about discovering Noir, and all those great novels. That line about reading all of the Jim Thomson novels in a three-week period. Oh yes. I know all about that. C and I were talking about that kind of thing the other night. That period of devouring all the Noir and gritty crime novels we could find. Ross MacDonald, Chandler and Hammet, Charles Willeford, Block, James Crumleys and of course Pelecanos. Grand times. It’s so exciting when those things are fresh and new to you. But still there are things to discover of course. Threads to follow, connections to make.

So I love the Powers books. But truth be told, it was always the Noir part of the Noir/Superhero axis that meant the most. I still kind of struggle with the superheroes. Few of them mean much to me. Batman still, of course, and those old Silver Surfer stories were great. I am sure there are more. The stories of the great unknowns; the strained and strange outsiders. Those are the stories for me.

I am not sure if you could call Gervase Fen a great unknown or a strange outsider, but perhaps, perhaps. Those Edmund Crispin novels were unknown to me for so long. I had a suspicion of British crime fiction for such a long time. It remains somewhere inside, doubting always. But you think of Derek Raymond, Jake Arnott, David Peace, Gordon Burn. There is so much to love. And Edmund Crispin. Strange to put him on that list, for he is of a much older school, perhaps more in tune with G K Chesterton, and there is surely nothing wrong with that. For Chesterton is perhaps an unsung hero in some respects too. Certainly I had ignored him for too long, but after adoring the deliciously arch madcap rush of The Man Who Was Thursday and the glorious romp of The Napoleon of Notting Hill, I am poised to delve into his Father Brown stories. I am sure it is going to be a terrific journey.

But Edmund Crispin and Gervase Fen; one of those Donnish detectives. The murky appeal of 1940s England; a land full of poets, academics, church mice and brown suits. Marvellous stuff. Then there is the local appeal in Holy Disorders: a thinly disguised Teignbridge area being the setting for a tale of murder in the cathedral with a bunch of Nazi spies thrown in for good measure. It carries something of the flavour of those old Sherlock Holmes movies that adapted Conan Doyle’s stories for the wartime audiences, but at root it’s a locked room mystery, and none the worse for that. And how can you not love the bizarre buffoonery of the church music composer proposing marriage to the beauty of the village within forty-eight hours of meeting her? As I say, marvellous stuff.

I had hopes that Michael Chabon’s The Gentlemen of the Road would be marvellous stuff too, but those hopes quickly faded. It was all I could do to finish the book, which is a shame, for Chabon can write a great tale. Wonderboys, The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh and the rightly acclaimed Kavalier And Clay of course. His The Yiddish Policemen’s Union was a great read too; a brilliantly paced romp in the vein of James Crumley. It seems to me though that Chabon is like Jonathan Lethem in that perhaps he needs a stronger publisher or editor. Someone willing to stand up and say ‘nah, this one sucks’. But what do I know?

Now I mentioned Pelecanos earlier. Well I have not yet felt the need to delve back into those old novels of his, but one day, one day for sure. In the meantime we have been catching up very belatedly with The Wire TV show. It makes for compulsive viewing and you can see how the Pelecanos connection would have been made. It reminds me, I never did transcribe that interview I did with him way back in the day. When Serpents Tale had first published the Nick Stefanos trilogy, which had me totally hooked. I still have that interview on minidisc somewhere, though I think the disc may be waterlogged from inadvertently being put through the washing machine. I should check it out and see if anything can be salvaged. I recall feeling quite intimidated by his presence – I felt like a fanboy interloper, but it was a great experience. His mass-observation is still here. He was taken aback, as I remember, with the ‘what do you make’ question; interpreting it in that American way of ‘how much do you earn’. It was an awkward moment…

To get back to that idea of the outsiders though; what about John Carney’s unfolding series? Shameless self promotion, maybe, in that I’ve been doing the illustrations for it and putting together the website, but still, if I were not involved I would still be such a huge fan, and I look forward each week to reading about what escapades John’s glorious bande à part have been up to. My work colleague hit it right on the head when she said it was a great reflection of a time/some times. Maybe you had to be there and live through them too, I don’t know. But it hits the spot for me.

I was set to thinking about John’s series yesterday, actually, when I was drawing. I do not think it is giving away too much of the mystery to tell you about how these drawings take form, for like the best Pop Art they are at heart composites created from a host of reference points. The sources of the references are important, but perhaps only to me. The song titles sometimes give clues, but as often they do not; are simply red herrings, if you like. So the visual references, well, they so often come from postcards stuck on the wall, or from photography books that I pull from the shelves. It is a great way of re-acquainting oneself with old books, and as often as not I will get lost in the book and leave the drawing behind for a while. So it was yesterday when I was looking at Bruce Davidson’s Brooklyn Gangs. We really should revisit this book next summer, when the photographs will be fifty years old, but what the heck. These are some of my favourite photographs by anyone, anywhere. There is something so special in them. The faces, the moments in time; specifically that moment in time at the cusp of the decades. You can see something of the band of outsiders in those photographs. The link to the Outsiders of S.E. Hinton of course, and to the motorcycle outlaws of The Loveless perhaps.  And yes, to the jazz loving, Modernist troupe who were Outside Of Everything. There too is that link into the contemporary world of The Wire, perhaps, with the story of those teenage faces from the fifties bleeding into the sixties and the arrival of hard drugs and tragic stories. The beginnings of The Game, perhaps. Something like that. And Bengie’s story, printed in back of the Brooklyn Gangs book is one to make you cry for sure.

versus...

versus..., originally uploaded by unpop.

This is the big conflict in my life right now: do I go back and re-read those brilliant Noir comics books by Brian Michael Bendis, or do I start on the pile of novels I had earmarked for summer holiday reading? Decisions, decisions...

TOO COOL TO BE FORGOTTEN

Alex Robinson got inside my head, I swear. Here’s the blurb from Top Shelf about his new book:

One of the coolest books to hit this summer will be Alex Robinson's latest masterpiece, TOO COOL TO BE FORGOTTEN. Please visit the website and check out the awesome cover and the preview pages we have showcased there. Here are all the details:

TOO COOL TO BE FORGOTTEN by Alex Robinson

-- a 128-page HARDCOVER graphic novel, 5 1/2" x 7 1/2"
-- ISBN: 978-1-891830-98-3, $14.95

"This is Alex Robinson's best book, and one of the rare comics not written by Stan Lee to perfectly capture the tragedy and triumph of being a teenager. Totally recommended."
-- Brian K. Vaughan, author of Y: The Last Man, Pride of Baghdad, and Runaways

Andy Wicks is a forty-something father of two who's tried everything to quit smoking -- from going cold turkey, to the latest patches and nicotine chewing gums -- so he figures he'll give this hypnosis thing a try. What's the worst that could happen? Unfortunately, Andy gets dealt a fate worse than death -- high school! Transported back to 1985, Andy returns to his formative years as a gangly, awkward teenager. Is he doomed to relive the mistakes of his past, or has he been given a second chance to get things right? One thing's for sure: this time he's going to ask out that girl from math class...

I was just saying to Chris at Top Shelf how I’d been throwing around those kind of ideas for the past decade or more, from the Belle Lettres stories, through the ‘Talking To The Trees’ piece right up to last year’s summer sketches. I am envious therefore of Alex’s ability to bring his concept to fruition in a finished artifact, whilst all my ideas just continue to float around unconnected in the air. And excited to see what he’s made of it, of course.

Happy Birthday

A few people have been asking about how they can get hold of a copy of Young and Foolish. The book is ten years old this year, and I have to admit that my original stock of copies was used up a long time ago. In the past year or two I have been picking up second hand copies as a little stockpile for friends, but this has dried up somewhat recently. With a copy going for twenty quid recently on Amazon marketplace, I figured it was about time people were able to get hold of it without being ripped off, so I’ve just put together a PDF version, which you can download here. Thanks to Rupert and Stride Books for first of all publishing the thing at the time, and also for allowing me to make it available in this way now.

I am collectible. It’s official! Well, as official as the say-so of an Amazon market place seller. But I’ll take it.

It appears, however, if you shop around, you can still find it for more or less the cover price. From here, for example.

And for explanation, the only reason I stumbled on the Amazon ‘collectable’ was because I was quickly searching for Leigh, with whom I recorded the next Unpopular Tangents radio slot this morning. We had been talking about Animals That Swim, Harmony Grass and bubblegum Pop, and that had led me on to talking about Hugh Barker’s Faking It book and how that notion of authenticity in Pop culture was something I also touched on in Young and Foolish (and remains a fascination). Leigh was asking if Y&F was still available, hence my quick search. Honestly, I am not one of those people who is regularly Googling themselves. As it were…

It was 1973 or so…

Am I mad? In a coma? Or back in time?

We’ve been watching both series of Life On Mars recently. It was such a great show. Of course I am a sucker for that whole time-travel shtick, and there is something strangely appealing about the third world scenery of Britain in the early 1970s. Or at least in its recreation. Didn’t I once say something similar about the appeal of the early seasons of Kojak? Well it’s all there. The appeal of the point when the failure of Modernism began to creep in. The fallout from the ‘60s.

Speaking of 1973, and the fallout from the ‘60s, I finally watched Almost Famous. I had been put off for so long, though I am not sure why. Wasn’t it pitched as some kind of ‘groupie’ movie? I didn’t think it was anything of the sort. It reminded me of how much I love(d) Lester Bangs and the idea of being uncool and difficult. It made me want to write again.

Also set in 1973 is Cop Killer, the penultimate book in the Martin Beck series. It was in my pile of holiday reading books, and perhaps predictably was one of my favourites (alongside Barney Hoskyns’ Hotel California). It revisits the events of the opening novel in the series, which is quite a neat post-modern trick of course. And like Life On Mars it throws up questions about ‘progress’ and about the illusions of liberalism and ‘correctness’. It reminds me too of how the ‘crime genre’ can be such a great vehicle for exploring a multitude of themes. I have a mind to go back and explore those wonderful Ross Macdonald and Raymond Chandler novels again, and of course there is so much of that whole California / LA history in those books too.

Deja Vu

Lester Bangs changed my life. Well, he at least cemented certain things I’d been feeling for a while back when I was a youngster, rabidly devouring tracts of Pop culture. I can still remember so clearly picking up a copy of the first UK printing of the Psychotic Reactions book in the big Waterstones that was opposite Glasgow Central Station. It was a regular haunt in those days, and I would spend so long there looking through books as I whiled away the time whilst waiting for my trains home. In fact I spent more time there than in any of the record stores.

The Lester Bangs book really caught my attention. All of his words made so much sense. I thought it was like reading a massive fanzine, it was so excitable and wonderfully irrational. And at that time I was getting into a lot of the music he had written about too – I was bored of the ‘indie’ scene and was exploring more of the past. So all that stuff about the Count V was just so spot on. And the Velvets and Lou, of course. That article about Astral Weeks, well it just blew my mind. Even more so than the record, and that’s saying something. Then there was that awesome piece ‘James Taylor Marked For Death’ which was ostensibly ‘about’ The Troggs but was so much more. Didn’t he throw in references to Dharma Bums and Franny And Zoe? Those details were important, for those were things at the centre of my universe then.

More than anything though reading Lester Bangs made the boundaries between cultural choices so much stronger. ‘James Taylor Marked For Death’. That said it all. We really did hate all that stuff. All that late sixties and early seventies LA schmaltz. The sensitive singer-songwriter shtick. The Eagles. Crosby, Stills and Nash. Neil Young. Young and stupid, that was us, and proud of it.

Looking back now I wouldn’t have it any other way. You need to define boundaries when you are young. They mark who you are and more importantly who you are not.

What is most interesting as you get older, however, is not how those boundaries dissolve, but how the connections between what you love and what you once hated become clearer. Looking back now, for example, it seems inconceivable that I should have been so turned on to the sounds of Love and The Byrds and yet not seen the links out to the wider LA scene. Or rather, not so much them being invisible as my dismissing them as irrelevant and uninteresting. Then again, maybe I only see them as interesting now because I’m an old fart. It’s entirely possible.

Of course I started getting into the wider LA scene connections some time ago, when I started digging up all those Millennium records and following the links. Those were great times. That period of discovery was so enjoyable. I was answering some fanzine questions yesterday, and one of the questions was about my influences. My response was something along the lines of the appeal of the journey of discovery being the biggest influence. That and the connections made between and through books, records, films, art and most vitally, the people I’ve come across these past twenty or more years. It’s those little bursts of pursuance that really matter, when you and your friends find you’ve been digging the same things and you bounce references around, opening new avenues for each other.

You come to realise too that the content itself is a bonus. It’s the process of the journey that really matters the most. That, and the sharing of experience.

The content of my recent listening journey has been really great though. I never thought I would say that about something like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. For CSNY were one of those most despised of groups when I was younger – beloved of the long haired bores who valued musical aptitude above all else. There was a guy in the art school when I was young who loved CSNY. He was the same guy who poured scorn on my beloved Weekend records, saying they were not ‘real’ jazz. Missing the point. I always thought those kinds of musos were really good at missing the fucking point.

Of course a part of me hates the fact that I have been loving CSNY now. Yet there is something seductive in that whole Laurel Canyon scene of the late ‘60s and anyway, life is too short. Besides which, I realise I have loved so much of it for so many years. The Mamas & The Papas, John Phillips and Denny Doherty’s solo efforts, Arthur Lee, The Byrds and Gene Clark and Chris Hillman in particular, the connections out to Gram and the Burritos. The Turtles. And who knew that Mark Volman was in the Mothers Of Invention after the demise of The Turtles? Well, loads of people, obviously, but it was new to me. It still doesn’t make me want to listen to Zappa though. There are limits, after all.

I admit too that digging the likes of CSNY is not a terribly ‘indiepop’ thing to do, and therein lies a great deal of its appeal. I was listening back to a recording of the interview I did with Lawrence a few years ago, and there is a part where he is talking about the end of Felt and the start of Denim. He talks of how he had become a part of a scene by default, and that really he didn’t like it at all, didn’t feel a part of it. That’s what ‘I’m Against The Eighties’ was all about. I can understand that. It’s also tied up in the tension between wanting to belong to a scene and yet being determined to stay the outsider.

I like the idea, however, that there are nevertheless parallels between that whole singer-songwriter shtick and some of the indiepop groups. That whole introspection thing, the ‘sensitive’ song disguising an underlying thrust of sex and drugs. Because let’s face it, Pop is at its roots about sex; about being a conduit for social interaction where the primal urge is for forging relationships. The difference is that people like Dave Crosby and Neil Young never made any pretense about wanting to be enormously famous. As much as anything, it was about selling millions of records.

Of course not everyone sold millions of records, and if I am honest I have been digging a lot of the obscure material more than the million sellers. So yes, I have listened to the first Eagles records but have been more turned on by The Poor. And for sure, it is Bernie Leadon’s previous form in the Burritos that continues to appeal to me more than anything he did with Frey, Henley et al. And as much as I’ve been getting into the first Neil Young and Crazy Horse set, it’s the Rockets collection that has burned me more. Or what about the Horses’ eponymous 1969 album that Rev-Ola salvaged over four years ago? And that 1971 Joey Stec produced Twin Engine set? I had forgotten that Clarence White is on there, and it really is a glorious sound; a link between the country-folk-rock world and the power pop of the likes of Big Star and The Raspberries.

Anyway, that’s my guilty secret at the end of 2007; how I turned on to hippie sounds and loved what I once hated. I’d recommend it to anyone.