Jesse Sublett's Blog, page 16
November 26, 2012
Digging deeper & deeper
Photo Ricardo Acevedo
UPDATE AT 10 PM Monday: GRAVE DIGGER BLUES, the upgraded Kindle edition, is now live on Amazon. That means you can read it and look at 100+ groovy pictures on your Kindle, iPhone, etc. Click here to order. It’s not your average eBook with eText and an eGeneric plot. Here’s a couple of screen shots. (The other screen shots on this post are from the iPad edition, which also has music and some video.)
From the Kindle edition.
From the Kindle edition.
The Blues Cat has women trouble, Kindle edition on the iPhone.
Grave Digger Blues calling on my iPhone.
It started with an idea. A phrase, actually: “The last detective at the end of the world.” So, I had a title, and some images. That was back in January, when I did a reading at the quarterly art event known as Tertulia, held at the Continental Club Gallery, hosted by Gretchen Harries Graham, Robert Asher Kraft, and Kellie Sansome. The theme was “The End of the World (As We Know It).” I wrote a 1400 word short story for the gig, narrated from the point of view of Hank Zzybnx, a damaged vet from the last war in Afghanistan (or, as they commonly refer to it in the near future, Murderstan).
Hank Zzybnx, The Last Detective at the End of the World
Hank returns to civilian life troubled not so much by his memories of killing and destruction, but by the huge gaps in his memory–gaps that were put there by the same men who trained him to do his job. Hank was in psy-ops, a specialized assassin, programmed to kill in close quarters, black ops, grim chores assigned to a special section of the military known as “the messenger service.” When one of these guys has a message for you, you don’t want to be home, see? So now Hank is back in civilian life, in the last weeks before the planet implodes and sinks into its own rotting juices.
A scene from “Heartbreaker” in Grave Digger Blues. Bob the Barber’s “Things to do” list goes up in flames.
Nothing works. The power grid is shot. Digital technology is useless because of the high radiation. The only paying gigs left for private detectives are murder for hire and worse things. Hank works a lot. Sleeps rarely, and never dreams. He’s haunted by the benevolent ghost of Marilyn Monroe. A surrealist artist who goes by a different name every day of the week is his assistant. To keep things simple, Hank calls him Alias.
The author is not The Blues Cat. But The Blues Cat is on his speed dial.
Those are a few details about our hero, Hank Zzybnx. The other protagonist of the book is a doomed jazz musician they call The Blues Cat. He plays a different dive every night of the week, 365 days a year. A 300 pound thug named The Muffin Man follows him wherever he goes. The Cat is rarely without a female admirer in tow, but there have been at least nine attempts on his life by ex-lovers, and at least twice that many by the embittered spouses of some of those lovers. This is one musician who never runs short of reasons to sing the blues.
Grave Digger Blues will hot-wire your iPad, see??
The FIRST surrealist/blues/pulpfiction iPad novella.
AND NEXT, the KINDLE version with 100 + photos, drawings, crazy visuals, representing the monumental contributions of leading Austin avant garde photographers/models Mona Pitts and Ricardo Acevedo. (Author photo by Todd V. Wolfson). We are lucky to be so successful in our commitment to weirdness. When these friends of mine got involved in project, that’s when it really started to get real. Working with their images (and have I mentioned this? The book has over 100 photos, drawings, collages and other media), helped push the project forward, turning a dream into a crazy dreamlike state of reality. In other words, one story followed the other, and it became a serial novel.
Today, Monday, November 26, 2012, I finished formatting these 102 complex and strange small masterpieces by these artists (as well as a few modest scribblings by My Terrible Self, and some of my iPhone shots and collages), and delivered same to the Amazon Kindle store. So, with any luck, by Tuesday, November 27, say noonish, you should be able to drive down to your Amazon Kindle Drive-In Liquor Store & XXL Condom Dispensary (OK, or just open it on your digital device) download a version for only $4.99 that is digestible on your Kindle, Kindle Fire (color photos will be in glorious and gory COLOR), iPhone, iPad, whatever. The iPad version with its 30 minutes of original scary blues songs and 30 minutes of audio chapters (with soundtrack collaboration between My Terrible Self and Johnny Reno) is live and moving products at your local iTunes Warehouse and Rogue Elephant Sanctuary.
Suzee the Madam is based on someone I used to know.
“Grave Digger Blues is a dark fever dream that’s part noir, part stand-up. Sublett’s writing is as apt to scare the hell out of you as it is to make you die laughing.” –REED FARREL COLEMAN, three-time Shamus Award-winning author of Gun Church
Surrealism = what she says when you say, “Penny for your thoughts, Hank?”
To wrap up, it’s a dangerous world we live in, and you can either pull the covers over your head and cry about it, or you can get out there and put a smile on your face and charge forward and keep the rotten, greedy villains from taking over, mulching paradise and grinding up the last good things on the planet just so they can have a few more zillion dollars to spend.
Casper Gutman, a k a, The Fat Man, as inhabited by Sydney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon. More sophisticated than Mitt Romney, but less cutthroat and monomaniacal.
Yes, it’s a scary world–we just had an election where the choice was either the good guy or some stalk of overcooked brussel sprouts with the personality of a wet Kleenex and the moral spine of … well, no spine at all, just money, stuffed into overseas accounts. Is that noir enough for you? The other bad guys were a bunch of stooges from Central Casting, and if brains and soul sold for fifty cents a pound these guys couldn’t pitch enough pennies together to buy a bag of Doritos.
In the future, the old GOP inner circle has fallen on hard times. Weird quirks of personality, previously hidden, emerge in a rather gaudy fashion.
These people would drill for oil in their own grandma’s kitchen or her lap if there was a barrel of oil to be harvested. They’d promise you any war any time, as long as they or their kids didn’t have to go risk their asses in it. Is that noir enough for you? Lots more where that came from.
Newt Gingrich was one of the right wingers left out in the cold after the great Republican coup, now working as a security guard for WalMart and strangling puppies in the circus.
Recently some follower on Twitter responded to one of my political tweets saying, “Oh, dude, chill out. Don’t go there. The election is over. Republicans buy books and music, too.” I replied, “Hey man, I’m ALWAYS there. I was born chill. I don’t care if Republicans buy my art or not. I kiss ass to nobody.”
At JesseSublett.com, we work 24/7 to keep it surreal.
More Grave Digger Blues updates coming. Stay tuned, download, remain cool, dig the blues.
November 21, 2012
DIG THIS GRAVE DIGGER BLUES
GRAVE DIGGER BLUES out now for iPad also Kindle, iPhone, etc.
UPDATE FROM THE ROAD:
“Grave Digger Blues is a dark fever dream that’s part noir, part stand-up. Sublett’s writing is as apt to scare the hell out of you as it is to make you die laughing.”
Reed Farrel Coleman, three-time Shamus Award-winning author of Gun Church
Grave Digger Blues, my new noir novella, is now available as an iBook for the Apple iPad–with original music video, graphics–and also available in eBook form (text only) for Kindle, iPhone, etc. You can download the iPad version from iTunes for $6.99 or the Kindle version from Amazon (text only) for $4.99.
I’ve created a new page for Grave Digger Blues, here, with more details, including a whole bunch of the great, supercool images by ace Austin art photographers Mona Pitts and Ricardo Acevedo, like these two below:
screen shot of Grave Digger Blues, photo by Mona Pitts
Grave Digger Blues, photo by Ricardo Acevedo
So I hope you will check it out and dig it. I’ve recorded a little video clip especially for the occasion of the book going live on iTunes, and as time allows, I hope to plan some special events, like gigs, etc., to help spread the word.
CLICK BELOW to hear “Grave Digger Blues”, the theme of this novella.
CLICK HERE: Grave Digger Blues, the song, my personal Grave Digger Blues message to you.
De official photo of de author, Jesse Sublett, by Todd V. Wolfson
November 18, 2012
BOOK EXPLODES KILLS FIVE
Jack Black, burglar, opium addict, grifter, professional crook, convict, and a helluva memoirist.
I wrote a short story called Johnny Heartbreak for my pal, the publisher Dennis McMillan, specifically for his anthology Measures of Poison commemorating his 20th year in publishing. I met Dennis for the first time in 1992 or so, in Vagabond Books in Los Angeles, and we started talking about Charles Willeford. Two hours later we were still talking.
As it says on Amazon, “a hefty collection”…
Dennis and I became friends and he loaned me some of Willeford’s unpublished manuscripts and I ended up discovering Willeford’s great “lost” masterpiece, Deliver Me From Dallas (one of those “unpublished” manuscripts), had actually been published in 1961 by Fawcett Gold Medal as a paperback original under the name of Willeford’s old USAF pal, W. Franklin Sanders, with the title The Whip Hand. I was collecting PBs in those days, sometimes buying 30 or so a week. Anyway, nobody knew the book had been published — not, that is, Willeford or his widow, Betsy Willeford, or Dennis… It was a cool, cool, cool discovery. [Click here to read the account I wrote for the Austin Chronicle, which I expanded for the new publication of the book, under the real title, which Dennis published a few years later. Here it is on Amazon.] Here’s a review of The Whip Hand by Ed Lynskey. Thanks, Ed.
Johnny Heartbreak Blues."
I just recorded this little video clip of the song as an intro to my next iBook, Grave Digger Blues. More on that later in the week.
CLICK on the link below to play the video of “Johnny Heartbreak Blues”
Don’t we love ABE.com? I wonder sometimes how many thousands of dollars I’ve spent ordering books from there in the last ten years. Probably good not to know. Their newsletter, The Avid Reader, makes for fun online window shopping. The latest one, Great Gumshoes, is a subjective survey of classic detective novels. Naturally, it’s a magnet for comments, e.g, “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOUR LIST DID NOT INCLUDE [name of your favorite private eye here].” Actually the editorial comment on these is secondary to the visuals. It’s really fun to look at the cool cover art, and THEN you can click on the image and find out how many times you’d have to mortgage your house to buy a first edition of, say, The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep, etc. (If those aren’t among your favorites, don’t hold your breath, I’m not mentioning any others.) Anyway, I like these blogs. A few months ago there was one on woodcut books, really great looking stuff. Did you know that the art of woodcut printing is called xylography? Look it up on wiki if you don’t believe me. I always thought xlography was a memoir by a xylophonist, but what do I know?
ABE.com listing of “Classic Gumshoes”. Too bad your favorite 6’2″ music/author isn’t listed here.
Who do I have to bribe to get this image added?
It would cost you a lot of dough to buy all these first editions.
Sarah Cortez, one helluva cop-poet-author-lady.
Last Tuesday the latest edition of Noir at the Bar: Austin hosted Sarah Cortez, poet, crime fiction writer, Houston policewoman, and all-around lovely gal, and I’ve been devouring her How To Undress a Cop collection of gritty and beautiful poetry. She was here at the Texas Book Festival promoting her most recent book, Walking Home: Growing Up Hispanic in Houston. And let’s not forget that Reed Farrel Coleman was our other big star that night, and just this Sunday Morning his new novel, Gun Church, got the big wet kiss of approval from Marilyn Stasio in NYTBR. Cool, daddy-o. Coleman gave a great reading from that book Tuesday night and I look forward to reading more by him.
A great collection of interviews with professional criminals, authors, filmmakers, victims of crime, actors who have portrayed notorious criminals, etc.
W.K. Stratton’s great new biography of this heavyweight champ.
I’m also really enjoying reading Floyd Patterson: The Fighting Life of Boxing’s Invisible Champion, by my pal W. K. “Kip” Stratton. In previous books Stratton has written about rodeo, football and Sam Peckinpah, and although he always writes well, I think this may be his most powerful and compelling narrative yet. When I think about that era, the fifties and sixties, I guess I’ve always been a much bigger fan of Muhammed Ali and Sonny Liston, Archie Moore, Marciano, etc., but Patterson, like most boxers, had to claw his way up from nothing to become the champ, and that always makes for a compelling story. Plus you get the story of his manager, Cus D’Amato, whose own story is so compelling and weird that at times you can feel Stratton holding back a big so that D’Amato’s own story doesn’t overshadow his shy, unusually sensitive champ.
Darwyn Cooke’s graphic novel adaptation of “The Score” by Richard Stark
“The Score,” by Richard Stark, the paperback original edition.
One of my favorite books of the year has got to be Darwyn Cooke’s new, graphic novel adaptation of The Score, by Richard Stark. As you may know, Stark was the pen name of Donald Westlake for the brilliant series of crime caper novels, starring the professional thief, Parker. These books represent a kind of penultimate achievement, a kind of perfect art form, always balancing thrills and suspense and humor and a sort of good-spirited-mean-streak, if you know what I mean. This is the third graphic novel adaptation by Cooke and these are just superb, awesome, fantastic. The action and mood and suspense just seem to explode off the page. I read this in two sittings, and I immediately started over on it again. I interviewed Westlake a couple of years before he died, and it was a great pleasure. A real gentleman, humble, funny, gracious. As you may know, sometimes actually meeting your heroes can be disappointing, disillusioning, but this experience was at the opposite end of the spectrum.
And speaking of crime capers, another of my favorite reads of the summer was You Can’t Win, a true crime memoir by Jack Black, no, not the actor, but a professional thief/grifter/slacker from the early decades of the 20th century. Soon to be a motion picture starring Michael Pitt, that studly thug from Boardwalk Empire. Jack Black rode the rails with the hobos, was a burglar, convict, opium addict, and let’s not forget, a big influence on William Burroughs. It’s a little tough to find the edition of the book with the foreward by Burroughs, so for all you Beat people out there, I have scanned the foreward from my copy and posted it here.
Also, you may note that the art on the front and back cover of this edition depicts an incident depicted in the book. Jack was in a hobo camp where everyone was getting blown out on Mulligan stew with his traveling companion and sometime partner in crime, Foot-and-a-Half George, when a con man named Gold Tooth came back to camp and told a story about rumpus he and his pals had gotten into with a brothel-keeper named Salt Chunk Mary, and suddenly Foot-and-a-Half George yells at him.
“Hey you,” said George from across the fire. “You’re a liar.” His little dead blue eyes were blazing like a wounded wild boar’s. “You was a good bum but you’re dog meat now!” A gun flashed from beneath his coat, and he fired into Gold Tooth twice. Six feet away, I could feel the slugs hit him. His head fell forward and both hands went to his chest, where he was hit. He turned around, like a dog getting ready to lie down and fell on his face. His hat rolled into the fire. His hands were clawing a the red-hot coals.
Wow!
Late night update: Just found this link to the old LA Times review of Rock Critic Murders from 1989, byline Charles Champlin. Interesting things happen to insomniacs.
And just because:
November 11, 2012
AUSTIN NOIR
EVENT: NOIR AT THE BAR
TIME: 7 PM – 9 PM, Tues. Nov. 13, 2012
WHERE: Opal Divine Freehouse, 700 West Sixth Street, Austin, TX
WHAT: Tough but pretty crime writers read from their work; murder ballads performed live, booze flows like a .44 magnum to the carotid artery, aficionados buy books & get ‘em signed, everybody is cool & has a cool time.
Johnny Heartbreak Blues, by Jesse Sublett(Click to play)
Sarah Cortez was absolutely one of the highlights of the 2012 Texas Book Festival.
Reed Farrel Coleman, author of GUN CHURCH
Come to Noir at the Bar & let us entertain you.
Sarah Cortez is a cop, a poet, a crime writer, creative writing teacher and a whole bunch of other things besides being a real cool person. The next edition of Noir at the Bar/Austin is positively psyched to welcome her town on Tuesday Nov. 13.
She’ll be reading from How to Undress a Cop and her new memoir, Walking Home Latino, and probably some other works. Sarah will be joined by Reed Farrel Coleman, a hard-charging noir author, reading from his new novel, Gun Church, and maybe Hurt Machine and who knows what else. Coleman has a stellar rep in the hardboiled crowd and this is a great pairing, because he, too, has been called “a poet of the hardboiled” and in fact, is a published poet. He’s got a list of awards and nominations as long as a purse-snatcher’s right arm. Check them out below, and view some highlights of his output at ReedColeman.com. I’ll be present, reading/performing from my soon to be published on iPad Grave Digger Blues, and a special song, just for Sarah, I’ll be singing my bilingual version of the Federico Garcia Lorca poem, Unfaithful Wife (La Casada Infiel), which is pretty damn cool. For more info on Sarah Cortez, visit her at poetacortez.com and view this Houston Chronicle story.
Noir at the Bar is hosted as usual by MysteryPeople, the crime fiction store within a store at BookPeople, presented to you by the inimitable Scott Montgomery, so please check out his blog here.
I’m sort of a poet myself, having written a few hundred songs + actual poems, but one important thing all three of us have in common is that we’ve all been contributors to Akashic Books‘ (and what a fine publisher they are) noir series. Coleman has been collected in the Long Island Noir anthology and Sarah and I can be found in the Lone Star Noir anthology.
As promised, here’s that bullet list of Reed Farrel Coleman accolades. (Sheesh, I almost hate the guy–I never win anything!)
Hurt Machine
nominated for the Barry Award for best novel
Tower (with Ken Bruen)
winner of Macavity – best novel
Anthony – best original paperback
Spinetingler Magazine Best Novel – Legends
Book of the Year – Foreward Reviews
Crimespree Magazine – Best Novel of 2009
Empty Ever After
winner of Shamus – best hardcover
Soul Patch
winner of Shamus – best hardcover
also nominated for:
Edgar – best novel
Barry – best novel
Macavity – best novel
The James Deans
winner of Shamus – best paperback original
winner of Barry – best paperback
winner of Anthony – best paperback original
also nominated for:
Edgar – best paperback original
Gumshoe – best mystery
Macavity – best novel
Please come join us, have a drink, listen to stories, buy some books. If you don’t end up having a helluva time, I’ll pick up your bar tab.
Cheers,
Jesse
PS: All my early crime novels (Rock Critic Murders, Tough Baby, Boiled in Concrete) are now available for Kindle / iPhone / whatever on the Amazon Kindle page. My hardboiled memoir of music, murder and near death, Never the Same Again, is there also. Grave Digger Blues will be released in the iTunes / iBookstore in about 2 weeks, and to Kindle a bit later. Read free samples of Grave Digger Blues here: STARS IN HER HAIR and here: THE LAST DETECTIVE AT THE END OF THE WORLD.
She had the sweetest lips. I could kiss her all night. I think maybe she sucked my brains out of my skull. [Photo: Mona Pitts]
THE LAST DETECTIVE 2, AUDIO VERSIONFollow Mona Pitts, photographer / model extraordinaire, femme fatale of the world of Grave Digger Blues.
Follow the awesome Todd V. Wolfson, who shoots stars in Austin.
Follow Ricardo Acevedo, photographer/artist/poet, dangerously talented, floats like a butterfly stings like a bee.
November 7, 2012
Q. HOW TO TELL IF YOUR MOM IS ON CRACK
A. Because she’s upset about the presidential election.
A great day in the USA. I’m even tempted to say “It’s morning in America…” but that one ended badly.
You’d never think that bullshit could be stacked so high. Anyway, gravity eventually did the trick.
Yes, it’s a great day in America. President Barack Obama, a great man and a tested leader, who has led our nation through the past years of economic turmoil and international danger, has been reelected. The people have spoken. Democracy is good. We can all stand some improvement and the reasonable among us are praying for a sense of sanity, logic and compromise to return to some of those who can only hate and obstruct.
Meanwhile, we realize it’s a hard time for some of you, so we have loaned out our bulletin board to help the most troubled of you get together and console each other.
This generous spirit even extends to those strange people whom I do not know, who somehow felt motivated to post obscene and outlandish, even racist comments on my Facebook page.
Even had I known these people and, having accidentally found them, and learned that they supported Mitt Romney, a person I despise, I would not have felt moved to post my own opinion on their page. It’s rather inappropriate and obnoxious. I suppose they’re trying to save us infidels. Or something.
October 31, 2012
TELL YOU WHAT
DEAR JOHN, or whatever your name is, you are about to get some real bad news. … “Dear John” is the theme of Tertulia night at the Continental Club Gallery (Upstairs), 7 PM Thursday November 1, 2012.
Dear John Deer, When Opposites are Tractors
I got a whole encyclopedia of broken hearts.
With a raft of stellar writers, musicians, artists and professional slackers, this Tertulia promises to be one of the best yet. What IS Tertulia? It’s a live, up close presentation of art: readings, musical performances, visual art, and sometimes, some unclassifiable “other.”
I have no idea what anyone else will be doing, but I’ll be reading my short story “Stars in Her Hair,” which you may have already read here on THIS BLOG. But Thursday I’ll be doing a special edit.
That was the day the space shuttle exploded. Every night he would look up at the sky and say, Hey baby, how’s it going up there? [Photo: Mona Pitts]
Presenters on this cool evening will be:
Artists
Valerie Fowler
Bale Allen
Heidi Stanfield
Kathie Sever
William Burkhardt
Theresa DiMenno
George Hampton
Amy Simon
Lindsay Greene
David Thornberry
Kathy McCarty
Musicians
James McMurtry
Jon Dee Graham
Sarah Sharp
Simon Wallace
David Pulkingham
Writers
Liz Scanlon
Bernadette Noll
Kellie Salome
Nathan Brown
Jena Kirkpatrick
GHG
Spike Gillespie
Robert Kraft
Jesse Sublett
Bale Allen
Performance Art
William Graham
“Dear John, …”
Doors at 7:00 for the Art Opening
Performances begin at 7:30
By Iberian tradition, Tertulias are free
ACCORDING TO WIKIPEDIA:
While the exact origins of the phrase are unknown, it is commonly believed to have been coined by Americans during World War II. Large numbers of American troops were stationed overseas for many months or years, and as time passed many of their wives or girlfriends decided to begin a relationship with a new man rather than wait for the original one to return.
As letters to servicemen from wives or girlfriends back home would typically contain affectionate language (such as “Dear Johnny”, “My dearest John”, or simply “Darling”), a serviceman receiving a note beginning with a curt “Dear John” would instantly be aware of the letter’s purpose.
A writer in the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester, NY, summed it up in August 1945:
“Dear John,” the letter began. “I have found someone else whom I think the world of. I think the only way out is for us to get a divorce,” it said. They usually began like that, those letters that told of infidelity on the part of the wives of servicemen… The men called them “Dear Johns”.
An early reference to Dear John letters was made in a United Press article of March 21, 1944.[1]
Here is that article:
An early mention of the “Dear John” thing during World War II.
And this is kinda weird: John Mayer comments on Taylor Swift song, “Dear John,” which “humiliated” him, he says. But it’s really hard to get worked up about either one of them having emotional turmoil. Not exactly inspiration for a new blues song for me, anyway.
But if you live in South Austin, this Dear John story is pretty sad: John Mueller of Mueller’s barbeque trailer on South First, being kicked out of the biz by his sister. Damn. They have some drama in that family, like so many of the barbecue families, but they sure do know how to grill meat.
This is a good one, too, for all you illiterate people. The period you misplace could cost you your babe.
One more thing, and really, I hate to seem negative, because I’m a pretty positive person, I think, but I have to say, this really can’t be a good movie. I haven’t seen anything associated with Nicholas Sparks, the novelist, that wasn’t a sappy piece of lite crap. But here it is, they made a movie out of another one of this guy’s novels. This is the same guy who wrote Message in a Bottle, which, despite having that great actor, Kevin Costner (great, compared to, say, a bowl of plastic fruit), managed to disappoint my sleeping cats. Anyway, here it is, the movie called Dear John, based on the novel titled… ‘scuse me, I can’t seem to stay awake long enough to finish this sentence….
October 30, 2012
VAMPS & CRAMPS TRUMP CHUMPS
Lydia Callas, ASL interpreter on left, unknown dude at podium on right.
UPDATE: 7:40 PM, Tues. PM.I can’t stop watching Lydia Callis’ sign language translation of NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s press conference on Hurricane Sandy. She’s mesmerizing! She’s a virtuoso, a sexpot, the Jimi Hendrix of sign language, awesome, magnetic, charismatic! For years I had a friend who was 90 % deaf and ended up being fairly functional in signing, and during that time I learned how cool and even sexy sign language can be. My friend, Robert Wise, was a very funny, witty guy, and I learned that a lot of jokes and other forms of communication don’t necessarily translate to regular verbal language. But Lydia’s awesome, sexy command of body language and facial expressions is so beautiful.
CLICK to watch Lydia Callis’ sign language translation of Mayor Bloomberg if you haven’t already.
What a media star. NPR calls her “a bright light during dark days.”
Over on BoingBoing.net, Sam Ley compared her to Shakespearean actors!
“Interpreting does require a bit of exaggeration in order to communicate visually over a medium without a lot of pixels. Similar to how Shakespearean performers have to develop a highly exaggerated speech pattern in order to be clearly understood as ‘whispering’ even though they are really shouting to a large crowd. It can be a bit goofy at times, and people emulate Patrick Stewart’s voice all the time in cheerful parody, but they notice it because it works.”
More on tumblr.com here and here’s a cine for you
Created with cinemagr.am
.
Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!
End of update. now, back to our regular programming:
Children of the night, what music they make… And if you can do a passing imitation of Bela Lugosi, go ahead, say it out loud. Bela is such a reassuring presence in these scary times.
The inimitable Cramps. I miss Lux.
I got an email from Peter Mongillo at the Statesman, asking for tips on compiling a list of cool Halloween songs. No problem, I said. The article is pasted below. Happy to oblige. I gave him probably ten times more material than he needed, starting off with my favorite original spooky songs, some of which I’m doing currently, along with songs like “Death Letter” and “St. James Infirmary Blues,” and also songs from my past, like “Something About You Scares Me” from the Skunks in 1978, and then I also sent several follow-up answers, including a number of Roky Erickson’s best solo tunes (some of which made the top ten), plus a comment about the Cramps, and he wrote back that “there’s always a thing up here, every Halloween, a ‘Misfits vs. the Cramps’ debate.” I’m down with the Cramps, not so much the Misfits. Lux Interior wanted to beat me up once. I think I mentioned this in my memoir, Never the Same Again. Funny story. I talked him out of it. Here’s the Halloween Top Ten piece from the Statesman. (the online edition has a photo of Roky Erickson and also an unintentionally scary one of me, my terrible self.)
Updated: 6:35 p.m. Monday, Oct. 29, 2012 | Posted: 6:35 p.m. Monday, Oct. 29, 2012
Music Source: Try ‘Threepenny Opera,’ and other recommendations for a spooky Halloween playlist
By Peter Mongillo
American-Statesman Staff
“I think about this stuff a lot,” musician and author Jesse Sublett said last week in an email. The subject? Halloween music, or at least music that matches the mood of the holiday.
“The truly scary songs are the ones that are very ambiguous,” he said. “They’re not necessarily overt about the actual event, the violence, or whatever, but the combination of words and melody truly haunt the listener. Johnny Cash, for example, will use lyrics that sketch in just a few details, but the sparse instrumentation and knowing voice combine for a knock-out punch. ‘Cocaine Blues’ and ‘Delia’s Gone’ are good examples.”
As for what might be among the scariest songs of all time, Sublett named the “The Cannon Song” from “The Threepenny Opera” — a gang of underworld characters singing about chopping up their enemies for steak tartare. Mmmm.
Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg also named “Threepenny Opera.” He chose “Pirate Jenny,” specifically the version from legendary singer Nina Simone. “Then one night there’s a scream in the night and you wonder who could that have been?” Simone sings. “And you see me kind of grinnin’ while I’m scrubbing, and you say, what’s she got to grin?”
I’ll add the “Ballad of Mack the Knife” and later versions by Louis Armstrong and Bobby Darin.
KUT assistant music director and DJ Matt Reilly offers a couple of classics: “Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris Pickett” and Roky Erickson’s “I Walked With a Zombie.” Reilly also recommended another song from an Austin group, “To All the Trick-or-Treaters” from Li’l Cap’n Travis.
Below, the full spooky Halloween playlist from people in Austin’s music world. Click here to listen to it on Spotify.
1.“Pirate Jenny,” sung by Nina Simone — Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater
2.“Devil’s Juicebox” by Some Say Leland — Dana Falconberry
3.“It’s Halloween” by the Shaggs and “Halloween” by Sonic Youth — Lauren Hess of Agent Ribbons
4.“Concubine Rice” by Lone Pigeon — Natalie Gordon of Agent Ribbons
5.“I Walked with a Zombie” by Roky Erickson; “Monster Mash” by Bobby ” Boris” Pickett; “To All The Trick-or-Treaters” by Li’l Cap’n Travis — Matt Reilly, KUT
6.“I Put A Spell On You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins; “Black No. 1” by Type O Negative — Aaron Behrens of Ghostland Observatory
7.“Under the House” by Public Image Ltd. — Shawn Carpetbagger of Love Collector and Lola Cola
8.“Jack The Ripper” by Screaming Lord Sutch; “You Should Have Never Opened That Door,” Ramones — Jon Chamberlain of Rubberneck magazine
9.“Haunted House” by Jumpin’ Gene Simmons; “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus — Thor Harris of Swans
“Black Box” by Jon Dee Graham; “Death Letter” by Son House; anything by the Cramps — Jesse Sublett
Here’s “Kanonensong from Threepenny Opera from Threepenny Opera, the original 1931 film version of the play. Skip to the END to see the fabulously gruesome lyrics of this song.
AND here’s Nina Simone, singing “Nina Simone sings "Pirate Jenny"” from the same play. Also quite scary, but then again, Nina Simone could be intimidating at just about anything.
BTW Nina Simone’s version of “Feelin’ Good” (written by Anthony Newley) is one of my favorite songs ever, and it’s one of those songs that neatly illustrates the point I underscored to him, that the scariest songs, or the songs with the most emotional power of any kind, are the ones in which the lyrics are pretty ambiguous, or at least skeletal, and it’s the melody, usually also comparatively unadorned, that puts the chill into the empty spaces. Here’s “Nina Simone sings "Feeling Good.".”
English Literal: “Cannons Song”.
from Bertelt Brecht’s “Three Penny Opera”.
Johnny and Jimmy were both on the scene
And George had his promotion order
For the Army doesn’t ask what a man has been:
They were all marching north to the border.
The Army’s story1
Is guns and glory
From the Cape to Cutch Behar.
When they are at a loss
And chance to come across
New and unruly races
With brown or yellow faces
They chop them into little bits of beefsteak tartare!
2
Warm whiskey went to Johnny’s head
And Jimmy was cold every night,
But George took them both by the arm and said:
The Army lasts forever, and might is right.
The Army’s story
Is guns and glory
From the Cape to Cutch Behar.
When they are at a loss
And chance to come across
New and unruly races
With brown or yellow faces
They chop them into little bits of beefsteak tartare!
3
Now Jim is missing and George is dead
And whiskey has sent Johnny barmy
But blood is blood and still runs red–
They’re recruiting again for the army!!
[they all sit there, marching with their feet]2
The Army’s story
Is guns and glory
From the Cape to Cutch Behar.
When they are at a loss
And chance to come across
New and unruly races
With brown or yellow faces
They chop them into little bits of beefsteak tartare!
(Three Penny Opera, 1928)
October 26, 2012
GIG
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Life is hard, streets are mean
No beast so fierce as a human being
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
UPDATE *** SUNDAY MORNING***
SARAH CORTEZ & GWENDOLYN ZEPEDA were killin’ em at their panel Saturday afternoon. These Latina authors are smart, sexy, exciting, invigorating… They ought to take this show on the road. Diane Hernandez did a swell job moderating and blurbing the cooler events of the weekend. See the links to these authors below, which will give you some bio info and links to buy their books, which you should probably do right now.
Also, I got there late but just in time to witness the levitation of the capitol grounds by the throbbing conjunto of Joel Guzman & Sarah Fox. Great music on a beautiful day.
Instead of complaining here about TBF’s almost complete snubbing of crime fiction authors (WTF, anyway?) I will mention that one highlight every year is getting to hang out a bit with my pals Bobby Byrd, Lee Merrill Byrd & Johnny Byrd, the brains and braun behind the mighty Cinco Puntos Press. At the authors party, there was an overflow of cool writer pals to clink glasses with and share really bad jokes (the higher the IQ, the lower the bar for humor) so I won’t mention any, except for Kip Stratton, Sarah Bird, Robert Draper, Skip Hollandsworth, Robert Caro, Joe Nick Patoski, Sarah Cortez, Helen Knode, Carol Dawson and Steven Saylor. That’s it, that’s final. But I had a moment with Robert Caro in which I got to congratulate him on getting something perfectly right in his latest LBJ bio volume, which is: How mean people in Johnson City were to the Johnson family when Lyndon was growing up, which inspired LBJ to greatness, because of his incredible empathy for the poor and downtrodden and his terrible fear of failure and humiliation, which he experienced in the presence of those weird mean people in his old home town. I said to Mr. Caro: “They’re still like that!” and he said, “Yes, I’m so glad you shared that with me. I found them that way myself.” And with that, the great author (talking about Robert Caro here), who is at least a foot shorter than me, went off to another party. Probably the NPR dinner, which is, as Joe Nick Patoski said, probably a pretty good place to sell your books. Not having one of my own to pimp on this evening, Lois and I rolled down the Avenue to Enoteca, for another great meal. We barely recognized the place, as we had not been there all week.
YES, at 3 PM in the Music Tent, SUNDAY, I’ll be performing THE LAST DETECTIVE AT THE END OF THE WORLD, with soundtrack by Johnny Reno, as part of my musical set. There are many best selling authors in town this weekend, plus a few actors and supermodels who have books that were actually ghostwritten by actual writers (which is great, because the rest of us have to eat, you know) but believe me, none of them has a story quite like THE LAST DETECTIVE AT THE END OF THE WORLD. That’s all I’m gonna say.
Check TBF schedule for other musical performances this weekend and oh yeah, also, your favorite authors. A few of mine are listed here.
Robert Caro, Robert Draper, Kip Stratton, Jan Reid, Suzy Spencer, Douglas Brinkley, Joe Nick Patoski, Joe Lansdale, and Sarah Cortez, the sexiest cop in Texas, and a damn good writer.
Also be sure to catch Sarah Fox, Joel Guzman & Glen Fukanaga in the music tent 1-2PM Saturday.
PS: Check out my eBooks at the Amazon Kindle store here, check out my books for the iPad at iTunes here. NEW FREE SHORT FICTION BY MY TERRIBLE SELF- THE LAST DETECTIVE AT THE END OF THE WORLD and STARS IN HER HAIR.
