Brian Murphy's Blog, page 40

Heavy metal party and The Priest, part 2

The Quilt, made of Judas Priest concert TsMurph's 6th annual Metal Party is back, and this one goes to 11! The can't-miss metal event of year will feature the live music of The Priest, New England's premier Judas Priest tribute band. Wear your faded concert t-shirts and denim jackets and strap your leather cod pieces on tight. Prepare for yet another round of "classick" metal trivia, bad late night videos, and oft-told, slightly exaggerated stories of metal concerts from decades past. Metal rules, my friends, so "head out to the highway" to celebrate.

Food, some booze, and locale provided, but bring your own favorite drinks and apps or desserts welcomed. Hat will be passed around to defray some costs of band.

--Description from the Facebook page of Murph’s Metal Party, 6th annual

I knew I was in trouble when Tom, aka, KK Downing, pulled into my driveway with a minivan LOADED with equipment. I mean, this thing was jammed floor to ceiling with amplifiers, sound board, wires, guitars, god knows what.

“Holy shit, you guys brought a lot of equipment,” I said, bug-eyed as I stared at the pile of noise generating electronics that would soon be making its way into my living room.

“Oh no, that’s just mine,” Tom replied. His face was utterly dead pan and humorless.

Oh shit, I thought.

Tom “KK Downing” was the first to show up on July 30. He was there EARLY, before even my friends. But I had no idea how much setup was required. My friends began to trickle in, and we stared in awe as the great room filled up.

We watched them do some sound-checks in shorts and t-shirts, including a brief bit of “Breaking the Law.” We’d hear the full version later. We were in awe, just of the equipment.

It was AWESOME. There was so much anticipation and energy in the air, as the band members mingled for a while and had a few drinks. During this time I busted out trivia. Later the band made their way downstairs to change into full leather, wigs, arm bands, and other paraphernalia circa early 80s Priest. I walked downstairs to grab a beer and caught a couple of them in mid-change, awkwardly throwing up my hand to avert the sight. Fortunately (to quote Nigel Tufnel) they were only “semi-nude.”

Then it was time.

We started the chant, me and a couple friends. Eventually the whole crowd of party-goers, some 25-30 strong, all got in.

“Priest! Priest! Priest!”

One by one, each band member came up from the basement and made their way through a cheering crowd, in MY FUCKING HOUSE (did I mention this), and took their place at their respective instrument. Tom aka, “KK Downing,” Bryan aka, “Glenn Tipton,” Everett aka, “Scott Travis,” Dave aka, “Ian Hill” and of course, Ron Finn aka. “Rob Halford.”

At this point I’m going to let the pictures, and videos, speak for themselves. Anyone who has ever captured concert footage on a crappy cell phone knows that the post-video does zero justice to hearing it live, and the same goes with these clips. But they’re not bad for all that. Give them a listen.

During the show my brother in law opened up a few windows strategically to make sure the sound could escape, or something. Maybe he was accommodating a few of my neighbors who had showed up to watch the show from outside. It was loud enough for them to hear it, and the light towers flashing purple and blue and red through my great room window made for a hell of a visual.

In case you’re wondering, yes, I sang Turbo Lover with the band playing.

No, you cannot hear a clip of this J

The Priest took a well-deserved intermission during which I delivered my annual metal speech. I barely remember delivering it, so I’m including the full transcript below.

It was three hours of sheer fucking volume and power and awesomeness. I should add that not everyone who came liked metal, or perhaps liked only the likes of Bon Jovi or Poison. They left impressed.

I think I made a couple new Judas Priest fans.

The band did play until just after midnight, so technically we were “Living After Midnight.” Breaking down and carrying out took a lot less time. Afterwards they hung out with me and a few die-hards. I stayed up until almost 3 a.m. with my brother-in-law, Ron, Dave the bassist, and Bryan/Glenn Tipton, sitting around a fire and shooting the shit about life and metal.

What is best in life? That experience. It was so worth it. A peak, top 10 memory for me.

There is a Part 3 to this story… more madness, and the end of the Metal Party? Stay tuned.

 

My speech

So who here is a Defender of the Faith?

Donald Trump wants to make America great again, we are here to make metal great again.

I’ve been a fan of the genre the whole of my adult life. KISS was my first love and while they are hard rock for the most part, not metal, they were a gateway to the harder stuff. Soon I was listening to bands like Iron Maiden, Metallica, and eventually Judas-fucking Priest!

It was the late 80s! I was thin and had most of my hair, was 30 pounds thinner and better-looking, and life was good.

But times change, and fast. Metal fell into steep decline starting around 1992. Within a couple years Bruce Dickinson left Iron Maiden, Rob Halford left Judas Priest, and Metallica cut their hair. Immortal acts like Hootie and the Blowfish and the Spin Doctors ruled the airwaves, and Pearl Jam was being declared the next Beatles. And I started a slow decline into the sad mass of flesh you see before you now.

It was dark times for my favorite genre, and for me. I still listened to metal in my dorm room, shivering under a crusty blanket while strains of Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” echoed down the hall, but there were no Dio posters to be found, no Exodus t-shirts, no denim jackets with Manowar back patches. My favorite bands were gone underground or on life support.

It was my first realization that, to quote Axl Rose, Nothing lasts forever.

But neither do the hard times, or the cold November Rain. People got sick of flannel and hackey sacks, and songs about teen angst and how bad the world sucks. Soon grunge was happily becoming passe. And by 2000 or so, metal was back. You can’t keep a good thing down. The music, as it turns out, was pretty damned good after all.

And I’m proud to say I never left it. I stayed a Defender of the Metal faith through the dark times, and I still am. But that experience made me realize how fragile this all is.

And so I got tired of waiting for the party I always wanted to attend. And I threw the one I always wanted tonight!

I learned something in this process: Get rid of your restraint. Do the big, grand, over the top gesture. Do what you love to do, as long as you don’t hurt anyone else.

Recently I’ve finally come to the realization about who I am.

I’m a Rocker, and no one can take that away.

So let’s raise a glass to metal! And please keep that glass raised for a second toast for someone special—my wife, for putting up with this nonsense. She’s the best, and even though she’s not a heavy metal fan she’s metal in her own way. She’s made this party rock 10 times harder.

Let’s move on to the main event.

Judas Priest would make most self-respecting metal fans top three heavy metal bands of all time. They are not the first heavy metal band of all time—that was Black Sabbath, by most counts—but they were the ones who created the template for metal as most of us know it today. Twin guitars, operatic vocals, a sound of clean steel, divorced from the blues. A sound like roaring motorbikes and lyrics about Sentinels from some distant apocalyptic future. Also revolutionary was their leather and studs look.

If you want to understand what metal is all about, start with Judas Priest.

We first saw Hell Bent for Judas a couple years ago playing the Chit Chat Lounge in Haverhill. I remember being very impressed with how tight they were. Since then they’ve added a new lead singer and renamed themselves The Priest. I called Ron Finn back in April to ask if he’d play a private event, Tom and I worked out the details, and here we are. He’s awesome, they all are.

At the 6th annual metal party we’ve turned it up to fucking ELEVEN.

So let’s head on out to the highway! What do you say? Are you ready for some Judas Priest style heavy metal? I give you The Priest!!

 

Heavy metal party and The Priest, Part 1

For five years, from 2011-2015, I hosted an annual heavy metal themed party. And had a blast. Ultimately it grew into something much more. Here’s the story…

It started out modest, a gathering of 8-9 buddies. My wife and daughters were out of state visiting my sister-in-law, a girls’ weekend. To celebrate my short-term bachelorhood I decided what I needed was a guy’s weekend, a gathering to drink beer and listen to heavy metal with some dudes. No more no less. We’ve all been there.

That first year we drank too much beer and ate ribs off the smoker. My old man did the cooking and stuck around for a few cold ones. I threw a few bags of chips on the table. We may or may not have ended up at a gentlemen’s club late night. No different than your average guy’s hangout. If there was one underlying commonality an outsider to the gathering might have noticed, it was the soundtrack and the garb: We listened exclusively to heavy metal, and many of us were wearing metal t-shirts.

A theme began to coalesce.

I think it was my friend Scott who eventually dubbed the gathering “the metal party” because of the music, the general crude nature of the affair, and the scarcity of women (metal concerts are largely sausage fests). The name stuck, and an informal guy’s hangout became something more.

You bent over, baby, and let me be the driver 

(KISS. Yes, they wrote this little bit of brilliance for a song called “Burn Bitch Burn.”)

 I’m like a pounding hammer and I wish you were the nail

Girl you’re not 18, but they can’t put my mind in jail

 (Fiction—I made this one up. And am immensely proud of myself for doing so)

Aside: I am a huge KISS fan and think they are the best at what they do, which is theatrics, spectacle, and writing fun, entertaining rock songs. But if you can’t laugh at some of the nonsense they’ve put out over the years, you’re doing it wrong.

Rosie (left) was a good sport with "KISS or fiction"

We continued to layer on the fun over the next two years, adding a karaoke machine one year and belting out our favorite songs in my living room. The list of attendees began to grow, including our friends Janet and Allen, who drove down from New Hampshire and brought with them a Judas Priest tapestry, made by hand from dozens of concert t-shirts. We had a grand unveiling and worshipped its magnificence. We did Jello shots, stuffed a bathroom, someone brought metal-themed cookies. I started doing a rambling kickoff speech, celebrating friendship, and heavy metal, roasting various attendees with embarrassing anecdotes from our past, and in general making an ass of myself.

In I believe 2014 my friend Vin showed up in his tricked out Chevy Tahoe, basically a stereo on wheels. I have no idea what type of equipment he hooked up in this rig, but I can tell you there was no room for groceries—because the entire storage compartment was jammed full of speakers. Recently I asked him to confirm the technical specs, and here’s what he said:

Dual batteries, Dual alternators, 2/0 ga power cable, 300A main fuse, Orion HCCA sub amp pushing 4 precision power PRO12 4 ohm carbon fiber flat piston subs wired in paralled 1ohm and 1200 watts bridged.

The sub box was 6 cubic feet, had 6 gallons of fiberglass body filler and weighed over 300 pounds. Vin needed to run air shocks in the back for support, and it needed a second battery and alternator to run the stereo and the car at the same time.

It put out 3000 watts of power.

For the record I have no idea what most of this means—only that it was REALLY FUCKING LOUD. We opened up the back, rolled down the windows, and cranked songs like “Raining Blood” and “Revolution Calling” loud enough to rattle teeth. The appearance of the Tahoe and our gatherings in the driveway quickly became a highlight.

In short, the metal party was rocking, hard. But changes were afoot. 

I’ve always been a big concert goer and in October 2014 Janet made my year when she got me a pair of tickets to a backstage meet-and-greet with Judas Priest. That’s a story that will have to wait another day, as it’s too good to tell here. I’ve always loved Priest, but this singular event kicked up my appreciation of these metal gods to new levels.

A couple weeks after that, Chris alerted me that a Judas Priest cover band called Hell Bent for Judas was playing over at the Chit-Chat Lounge in Haverhill, barely 15 minutes away. Priest being in my top three favorite bands of all time, and flush off the high of the Lowell show, I didn’t want to miss the occasion.

Hell Bent did not disappoint. As my buddy Chris and I left the club, ears ringing and a shit-eating grin on our faces, he turned to me and said, “the metal party is always fun, but I’m starting to think it’s a little stale and needs something else. Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a live band?”

Brilliant, I thought. “Yeah, that would be awesome,” I replied. “I bet these tribute bands do private gigs.”

A seed was planted. I found Hell Bent for Judas’ Facebook page and followed and liked them.

In 2015 the lead singer of Hell Bent for Judas (a nice bloke, but an average talent at best) left the band and/or was booted out, and replaced by a more talented singer. He too left, within a few short months (this band was going through lead singers like Spinal Tap goes through drummers), replaced by a third dude named Ron Finn. Ron is a local legend, a hugely talented singer perhaps best known as the frontman of Wildside, a fun and talented party band known for 70-80s covers, mainly hair metal and classic hard rock like AC/DC. Ron also recorded a few albums with his band Easy Rider, and experienced some moderate fame and following over in Europe. Ron has one of those voices with huge power and range and sustain. I’ve heard him crush everything from Whitesnake to Quiet Riot to Rainbow. The guy can sing.

Redubbed as The Priest, these guys tore the roof off another semi-shady but fun local venue, Uncle Eddies on Salisbury Beach, that we attended in June of 2015. I was blown away watching them play classic Judas Priest hits like “Desert Plains” and “Devils’ Child.” I was mesmermized and screamed along with the crowd as Ron nailed Rob Halford’s high-pitched scream at the end of “Victim of Changes” (you know the one). I remembered Chris’ words from the Chit-Chat, and during intermission of the show we revived the conversation.

“I’m going to do it man, I’m going to see if I can get these guys to play the metal party,” I said. “This is who I would want to play. The Priest!”

Fast forward a few months later. Sitting in the calm of my living room, my finger hovered over the “contact the band” button on their website.

I’ll just ask some questions, satisfy my curiosity, I mused.

Press.

The metal party was about to go to 11.

Heavy metal. It's coming.

 I've got a hell of a story to tell, that I'm working on for the blog. Will be a few more days. Stay tuned.

Farewell to Charles Saunders

Word spread on Facebook last night that Charles Saunders, author of Imaro, has passed away. It is being reported he died in May. Odd that an obituary search turns up empty. 

Let's hope it may be a rumor, but it does not appear that way. Author Milton Davis, who continued in Saunders' "Sword-and-Soul" tradition, broke the news, and many authors, friends, and peers have chimed in since.

Imaro and its subsequent volumes deserves a longer post than I have time for at the moment, but I consider these terrific works of sword-and-sorcery. If not at the level of Howard/Leiber/Moorcock/Anderson, they rank up there with Henry Kuttner, Karl Edward Wagner, David Drake, and many other fine authors. 

I regret not contacting Saunders when I had the chance to let him know how much I enjoyed his work. Nyumbani, Saunders' fantastic parallel of Africa, is a rich and sharply realized setting worth exploring, and Imaro is a memorable character with a dark past whose relentless search turned inward, far more than most sword-and-sorcery heroes. As a black author working in a largely white field, Saunders was a pioneer and penned many thoughtful essays on his complex relationship with fantasy fiction and sword-and-sorcery ("Die Black Dog!" is worth seeking out). His stuff absolutely deserves a bigger following. The late Steve Tompkins of The Cimmerian website was one of Saunders' biggest champions and found a rich, mythic layer to the Imaro cycle.

Rest in peace.

Masculinity in S&S? It’s complicated

Sword and sorcery is strongly masculine and appeals to men. We can see this same ethos in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies of the 1980s and early 90s. Take a look at this scene from Predatorand ask yourself what it plays to.

The most manly handshake ever, bar none.

And then ask yourself, is this cool? Is it OK to like this? My answer is an emphatic hell yes. Men who read S&S tend to like fictional depictions of violence and strength. As I’ve said elsewhere, dynamism, power, and muscular strength are among the elements that draw me to the work of Frank Frazetta, for example.

Make no mistake: I love this stuff. I was drawn to it as a kid, and inspired to pick up weights to try to look like my heroes of the comics and silver screen. Today I continue to champion and defend it. I push back, hard, against censorious critics who want this type of fiction memory-holed. You can pry my sword-and-sorcery from my cold, dead fingers. There’s a reason I and if I daresay the broader “we” are drawn to tales featuring swordplay, bloodletting, and fast-paced action. These stories tap into the same psychological wellsprings and biological impulses that help explain our love for professional football, boxing, and strongman sports.

Sword-and-sorcery is loaded with beefcake and masculine heroes. Here is a typical description of Conan, from “The Devil in Iron”:

As the first tinge of dawn reddened the sea, a small boat with a solitary occupant approached the cliffs. The man in the boat was a picturesque figure. A crimson scarf was knotted about his head; his wide silk breeches, of flaming hue, were upheld by a broad sash which likewise supported a scimitar in a shagreen scabbard. His gilt-worked leather boots suggested the horseman rather than the seaman, but he handled his boat with skill. Through his widely open silk shirt showed his broad muscular breast, burned brown by the sun.

The muscles of his heavy bronzed arms rippled as he pulled the oars with an almost feline ease of motion. A fierce vitality that was evident in each feature and motion set him apart from common men; yet his expression was neither savage nor somber; though the smoldering blue eyes hinted at ferocity easily wakened.

I’ll stick my neck out a bit, risk the critical axe of politically correct criticism, and say that as a result of its emphasis on violence and power, sword-and-sorcery appeals to boys and men, in far larger quantities than women.

But like life, art, and politics, even sword-and-sorcery is not this simple.

The hyper-masculine, ass-grabbing sword-and-sorcery hero is a crude trope perpetuated by some of the most derivative writers of the genre. Lin Carter’s Thongor is the poster-boy for this type of S&S hero; dumb, cloddish, prone to hack his way out of every situation. This type of hero, while a fun read that I continue to enjoy (just as I adore ridiculous over the top films like Commando, and still cheer when Sully gets dropped off the cliff), helped contribute to the genre’s downfall in the 1980s. If you believe Brak and Thongor and Kothar are the height of S&S and superior to the likes of “Ill Met in Lankhmar” or “Beyond the Black River,” more power to you, art is subjective.  I happen to disagree.

S&S has a much broader tradition than mere brawn and brawling. It contains multitudes. Weird decadent races like the Melniboneans. Dark sorcerers like Ningauble and Sheelba, who pull the heroes’ strings and manipulate their destinies, subtly. Lost cities, demon-summoning sorceries. All of these elements attract readers to the genre too, arguably as much as manly action and brawn.

It can be dark and fatalistic. Consider the sword-and-sorcery of Clark Ashton Smith. Is Satampra Zeiros a masculine bad-ass? How does the hyper-macho-ness of Lord Ralibar Vooz of “The Seven Geases” avail him in the end?

I like the underlying bleakness and darkness of S&S, and I think, if you look close enough at the best stories, you will find commentary on the limitations of unchecked ambition, and its blind spots. Consider Kane in Bloodstone. Dude is too drunk on power and out of control technology, and gets reined in hard. The unrestrained man, who would take all due to some inherent natural right, broader society and consequence be damned, is a problem. If you think the likes of Mark Zuckerberg are beyond reproach as paragons of the free market, I can’t help you.

Or consider Fritz Leiber’s “The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar.” At the conclusion of the story Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser—whom we naturally assume are the “two best thieves” in the city—are outwitted by a pair of the actual best thieves, who happen to be a pair of women. Oops.

Moorcock’s stories of Elric contain a not-so-subtle warning shot across the bow of imperialism and unchecked power. There is a balance that must be maintained.

Even old Conan is headed down the path of oblivion. Old age is coming, and eventually, a great cataclysm is coming.

Rather than a refuge of hyper-masculinity, I prefer to think of sword-and-sorcery as a subgenre that celebrates strength and autonomy. C.L. Moore proved in the nascent days of S&S that the genre was not the sole province of men or male heroes. Many subsequent female sword-and-sorcery authors added their own verses to the genre in the late 70s and early 80s. See Jessica Amanda Salmonson’s Amazonsand Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress.

The best sword and sorcery portrays women as complex, three dimensional, with elements of the masculine and feminine. Take a look at this depiction of Valeria from “Red Nails,” and note some striking similarities with Howard’s depiction of Conan, above:

She was tall, full-bosomed and large-limbed, with compact shoulders. Her whole figure reflected an unusual strength, without detracting from the femininity of her appearance. She was all woman, in spite of her bearing and her garments. The latter were incongruous, in view of her present environs. Instead of a skirt she wore short, wide-legged silk breeches, which ceased a hand's breadth short of her knees, and were upheld by a wide silken sash worn as a girdle. Flaring-topped boots of soft leather came almost to her knees, and a low-necked, wide-collared, wide-sleeved silk shirt completed her costume. On one shapely hip she wore a straight double-edged sword, and on the other a long dirk. Her unruly golden hair, cut square at her shoulders, was confined by a band of crimson satin.

Against the background of somber, primitive forest she posed with an unconscious picturesqueness, bizarre and out of place. She should have been posed against a background of sea-clouds, painted masts and wheeling gulls. There was the color of the sea in her wide eyes. And that was as it should have been, because this was Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, whose deeds are celebrated in song and ballad wherever seafarers gather.

Let’s circle back and wrap this up.

I push back against cries of helplessness and victimhood. I embrace the Extreme Ownership of Jocko Willink, the hyper-masculine navy seal whose work has dramatically changed my life for the better. I believe there is deep, abiding truth in the theory and works of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, and their “heroes’ journey” of brave self-discovery and self-transmogrification, today championed by Jordan Peterson. I wish more people would stop thinking of themselves as powerless, in need of handouts, and instead take the necessary and hard steps to live a better life. In short, leading the life of a sword-and-sorcery hero—if not literally, at least figuratively.

I love sword-and-sorcery imagery. I like the bad S&S films of the 80s, at least in an ironic MST3K way. I embrace the genre for what it is, warts and all. But I refuse to pigeonhole sword-and-sorcery as a refuge for macho buff dudes. Masculinity is an incomplete piece of the whole, emphasized in certain works and de-emphasized in others.

Sword-and-sorcery has recurring motifs, and boundaries, but if it does not offer infinite possibilities, it offers far more to the careful and close reader, and far more thematic diversity, than its adherents (and detractors) realize. Real men recognize the limits of power and ambition. Like Conan in “The Phoenix on the Sword” they understand the power of the pen, and the need to negotiate alliances.

To sum up: Please don’t hijack my favorite genre as masculine beefcake only. You’re doing it an injustice and moreover, painting a limited and partial picture of its diverse and complex tradition and influences. 

Postscript: Some might interpret this post as wanting to have my cake and eat it too. In full disclosure I’m a political moderate and recoil from dogmatism.

The best heavy metal guitar solo ever

I'm not qualified to render this judgement. I've got the time in to make an educated guess, as I've been listening to heavy metal since the mid-1980s, some 35 years I'd guess. But what I lack is the required breadth. I'm not a big fan of death metal, or black metal, or doom, or some of the other peripheral subgenres, and so can't speak to any solos that might exist in these far-flung corners of metal. Nor was I ever a fan of the true guitar virtuosos. I admire and respect the craft of the Steve Vais, Yngwie Malmsteins, and Joe Satrianis of the world, and admit they are probably the most talented guitarists to come out of metal, but I find I lack an emotional attachment to their music that keeps me from being a fan.

Most damning of all I don't play guitar. I cannot tell you what makes one solo better from another from a learned musician's perspective, and I lack the technical vocabulary to analyze music properly.

So to make a long story short your mileage may very well differ.

But for me, my favorite heavy metal guitar solo and the one that continues to leave me speechless with wonder is Marty Friedman's solo in "Tornado of Souls." I appreciate guitar solos that don't insist upon themselves. I love it when they fit the song, take off from a logical place and return to the rhythm. Friedman's solo almost breaks that spell, but does not.

I recommend not jumping immediately to 2:10 where the madness starts to build, or 3:09 where it becomes a solo proper, 3:28 where it blasts straight up into the stratosphere and parts beyond, or 3:48 where you're like, "what the fuck?" Do it if you must, but realize that this solo works best as the orgasmic culmination of an awesome song. It's worth the 5 minute investment. His skill and artistry and sound are evident right from the electric shocks of the opening notes.

If you're a metal fan and somehow have missed this one, I beg you to rectify that right now. For non-metal fans who appreciate great guitar work, I realize that Dave Mustaine's voice can be off-putting, but don't let that stop you. Just listen.

A Canticle for Leibowitz, a review

A nuclear firestorm has caused the downfall of civilization, followed by a wave of benighted barbarism and book-burning. But the wake of the holocaust sees a slow unearthing from oblivion. Monks transcribe the literature of a lost age of mankind over centuries, cloistered in monasteries in the arid landscapes of the Southwestern United States.

This is the world of Walter M. Miller Jr.’s wonderful A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) which I recently had the pleasure of re-reading after a span of many years.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a fragmented read, consisting of three discrete stories separated by centuries of time. Each were short stories originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. As a novel this stitched-together structure helps to reinforce one of Miller’s central messages: The painstaking, fragmentary, and precarious state of knowledge transmission and preservation.

At its heart Miller’s book is a re-imagining of what the medieval monks did with classical Greek and Roman literature, transcribing it laboriously and preserving the flame of past knowledge until it could be used in a more enlightened age. While historical monks survived barbarian predation and Viking raids, in Miller’s novel nuclear war and predatory radiation-scarred scavengers are the equivalent of barbarian invasions circa 476 AD. The survivors of the nuclear exchange are subject to a brutal period called the “Simplification,” where mobs of bitter, vengeful survivors attempt to eliminate any trace of the science that led them down the path to oblivion. Books and men that dare to read them are burned and destroyed.

This scenario is played out again in A Canticle for Leibowitz, with the monks of Albertian Order of Leibowitz carefully preserving the old scientific literature, resurrecting an arc lamp from old electrical blueprints. By the second and third act technology has again risen from the ashes.

But Miller’s book is dark. History is cyclical, and so as in the works of Robert E. Howard apocalypse and barbaric overthrow will ultimately triumph. Man is fallen, and fallible. At the end of the book (unknown date but I believe the late third millennium AD), nuclear annihilation again envelops the earth, and mankind’s priceless artifacts and knowledge survive only by being taken to another planet, where starship pilgrims attempt to give civilization another shot.

Throughout the book Miller drops many wisdom bombs worthy of pondering. For example, the only way that we as a species can truly evolve, and stop endless cycles of war, is to “give up the bitterness.” It’s a Christian concept, turning the other cheek. This is of course easy in principle but extraordinarily hard in practice, as old grudges, distrust (leading to the need to strike first in a nuclear war), make this almost impossible to achieve in practice. See the Israelis and Palestinians. We fail because the evil we succumb to is not suffering, but the unreasoning fear of suffering. Nature has given us all the tools we need to live and die with grace, but our craving for worldly security is the root of evil. From the book: “To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.”

The book presents a dark vision of humanity. And we are seeing its vision play out today with our unbridled pursuit of technology and political utopias while abandoning the meaningful conversations: What is it all this for, what should a just society look like, what is our ultimate end and purpose? Our species is unwilling to accept responsibility, which starts by looking at oneself. We’d rather find enemies to blame, and start the war, then do the painful work of self-introspection. Again from the book: “The trouble with the world is me—No ‘worldly evil’ except that which is introduced into the world by Man—me thee Adam us—with a little help from the father of lies. Blame anything, blame God even, but oh don’t blame me.” Our species has to “forgive God for allowing pain, for if he didn’t allow it, human courage, bravery, nobility, and self-sacrifice would all be meaningless things.”

Miller portrays the peace-loving and preservationist Monks sympathetically but not uncritically. A visiting atheist scientist chastises them for not doing anything with the knowledge they preserve. It’s not enough to mindlessly copy it and embellish it with art around the edges and seal it in tombs, the scientist says, but it should be used to improve humanity. But here the scientists errs, because he fails to temper his desire for progress with wisdom. Technology must be balanced and kept in check with our higher order principles—wisdom, charity, mercy. Because life here on earth will never be Eden. We have eaten of the fruit of knowledge, the serpent is among us and within us.

After a limited nuclear exchange scientists round up the most grievously wounded and hopelessly sick from radiation exposure and admit them to a camp, where they can end their pain with assisted suicide. The monks protest with homemade signs that evoke Auschwitz: Not work will set you free, but Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

At the end of the book the Abbot Zerchi (the A-Z is interesting, the monk’s alphabet has reached its end) encounters an old tomato farmer who lives around the periphery of the chapel. She has been deformed by radiation and has a “twin” growing out of her shoulder, a small, dormant second head which she calls Rachel. With Zerchi pinned under the wreckage of a blast, his life blood draining away, he sees the woman, whose Rachel head has awakened with eyes of pure innocence—a new Eve in this hellish garden. Rachel refuses Zerchi’s formal blessing of the cross on her forehead. Perhaps she represents humanity starting over again, this time without the old prior hurts and wounds, religious and scientific baggage that prevents us from advancing to a higher stage of development. Or perhaps Rachel is the promise of resurrection, the image of Jesus and his (possible) return for which we have been waiting for millennia.

Postscript: This re-read of A Canticle for Leibowitz was prompted by the Online Great Books Podcast, one of my favorite podcasts. I highly recommend checking it out. The hosts are entertaining, bright, forthright, and not plagued by political correctness. They always plug the next book they plan to read on the prior show, and when I heard they were going to do A Canticle for Leibowitz I wanted to read the book in advance and “participate” in the conversation.

Checking in with Tom Barber

Tom outside his home.
This past week I had the privilege of dropping in for a visit with the great Tom Barber. As followers of this blog might know, Tom was a prolific fantasy and science fiction illustrator in the 70s and early 80s, with credits on a wide range of paperback titles and magazines like Galileo, Heavy Metal and Amazing Science Fiction. He did that wonderful skull with the rat that we all love, adorning the cover of the Lin Carter paperback revival of Weird Tales(he was never paid for this piece by the way, thanks to a shady agent).

You can find a couple write-ups of my previous meet-ups with Tom here:

https://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2019/08/a-meeting-with-tom-barber-sword-and.html

https://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2019/09/a-meeting-with-tom-barber-part-2.html

Tom dropped out of painting for a few years while battling alcohol addiction, but has since returned with a vengeance, getting some steady work from Bob McLain over at Pulp Hero Press. One of his recent projects was the cover of Flame and Crimson. I was incredibly honored to have someone of Tom’s caliber on the book.

Tom is a fun, interesting dude. We talked for a couple hours about some experiences he had meeting the likes of Harlan Ellison and Andrew J. Offutt at conventions (Ellison purchased one of Tom’s paintings at WorldCon in Phoenix), meditation and Zen states and humanity stuck in cycles of violence, checks bouncing for work he sold to Amazing Science Fiction, and the tension artists face trying to reconcile illustrating for money vs. pursuing their true muse. All while outside on his front lawn, socially distanced of course, and enjoying the sunny 80 degree weather.

The coolest bit to come out of our meet-up is the news that Tom is working on a short memoir of his own for Pulp Hero Press, one that will focus on his addiction years (his “drinking years”) and eventual recovery. The working title is Artists, Outlaws, and Old Timers. As befits the author it will be illustrated throughout with Tom’s own artwork. Tom is still writing the manuscript but is nearing completion. It will contain some amusing scenes from his early days in the late 1960s attending art school and breaking into commercial work, convention life, crazy bohemian days in Arizona, and recovery and lessons learned.

Train to Nowhere
Tom also gave me a look at some of his recent pieces, scanned onto his PC. These include the cover for an upcoming novel by Adrian Cole (a piece called Train to Nowhere; I’m not sure if this will be for a reprint of Cole’s previously published short story or a collection).

My Father, The Pornographer: A Memoir

Andrew J. Offutt was a complex, deeply flawed man. A resident of rural Kansas, Offutt was a husband and a father who supported his family with a successful insurance business, a job which he did not love and ultimately abandoned to make the bold leap into full-time writing. He was at one time a promising science fiction writer. He also subjected his children to emotional neglect, held baseless grudges against various personages, lacked a full emotional maturity and cohesive personality, and held a life-long obsession with pornography.

His son, author Chris Offutt, tells his father’s story with incredible bravery and honesty and a raw, pull no punches style in My Father the Pornographer: A Memoir (2016). I found this book to be absolutely fascinating and extraordinarily well-written, and burned through it in a matter of two days.

Andrew J. Offutt was “controlling, pretentious, crude, and overbearing” and spent most of his hours “in the immense isolation of his mind,” according to Chris. He demanded dead silence in the house while he hammered away in his office at this typewriter, churning out content. Chris often took to the woods to escape a stifling home existence.

When he died in 2013 Chris went through his father’s voluminous effects and eventually brought with him back home to Mississippi more than 1800 pounds of paper, his father’s life work, which formed the basis for this memoir. Chris meticulously reconstructs the father he never had, after his death. This includes both Offutt the man and his considerable bibliography of fantasy, science fiction, and pornography, which is included in full in an appendix to the book.

Offutt wrote and published more than 400 books under 18 different names. This included six science fiction novels, 24 fantasies, and one thriller. The rest was pornography. Offutt worked like a fiend. At the height of his writing intensity he once turned out 96 pages of content in two days. Porn paid the bills for the Offutt household, and it was a source of both outward pride and hidden obsession for Andrew. He assumed pen names with pride, becoming the character of “John Cleve” and boasting of his accomplishments in porn at conventions. But he also wrote and illustrated troubling sex-torture comic books on his spare time, never intended for publication, but rather to satisfy deep and dark needs of his own. “He didn’t collect these books, he made them. Here was the world he carried inside himself at all times—filled with pain and suffering. I had no idea how miserable he had truly been,” Chris writes. This internal vs. external dichotomy created deep and unseen emotional rifts in his family life. Andrew loved his wife and never struck her or his children, but they “feared his anger, his belittling comments and inflictions of guilt.” Andrew Offutt could not bear disagreements or being perceived as wrong on any point, and structured his life to avoid conflicts, ruthlessly cutting out anyone who he perceived to have slighted him.

Your heart aches for Chris, who despite all this saw his father as a deeply fractured but three-dimensional human being. The book describes for example how the two passed one pleasant Saturday afternoon turning two empty cardboard boxes into castles. My eyes stung with tears during a scene where Chris weeps for the talent his father once had, pre-porn. Andrew had some early artistic successes, including an appearance in the anthology World’s Best Science Fiction for his story “Population Implosion,” which led to an invitation to attend the World Science Fiction Convention of 1969. In 1972 he had a story published in the Harlan Ellison anthology Again, Dangerous Visions, a highly anticipated sequel to the wildly popular Dangerous Visions. In 1974 Offutt presided over the Hugo awards at World Con, but a minor run-in with Ellison (a minor episode blown way out of proportion by Offutt, leading to a lifelong grudge by the latter) made it his last national convention.

Fans of sword-and-sorcery get a few glimpses of that side of Offutt—a glimpse of his fantasy-bedecked office and its effects, including a poster for the movie Barbarian Queen hung over his work desk, medieval weapons adorning the walls including a broadsword, battle-ax, knives, dagger, and a dirk, and his collection of adventure novels by the likes of Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Alexander Dumas. Chris and his siblings were often dragged along to various local conventions by his father and mother, and the book paints a simultaneously charming and dark picture of early 1970s convention life, wonderful and strange and sad. Offutt and his wife swapped partners at times. Chris grew up with a deep misunderstanding of sex and relationships, and himself suffered child abuse at the hands of “the fatman,” a transient predator.

The dead no longer speak and I hold no grudges toward Offutt the man, and will continue to read and enjoy the likes of Swords Against Darkness and The Tower of Death. He was, in the end, a man cursed with many flaws, but that same epitaph can be written on the gravestones of an uncountable string of deceased before and after him. And I recommend My Father, The Pornographer to anyone who appreciates honest writing or a well-crafted memoir.

The "later Leiber"

Recently I re-read The Second Book of Lankhmar (pictured, right), the 24th entry in the Millennium/Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks, a series that boldly declared itself comprised of "some of the greatest, most original, and most influential fantasy ever written." And, as I am wont to do, began taking a few notes on a piece of scrap paper, that quickly became a flood, then a formal review. Which I planned to post here.

Yech... fugly, bland cover.The review got so long and detailed that I split it into two, then offered it up to the honorable Dave Ritzlin of DMR Books. If you haven't been checking out the excellent works Dave has been pumping out, you're missing out. Follow their blog here.
I am told that the posts will appear on DMR Blog on Monday and Tuesday.
The Second Book of Lankhmar includes the later works of Fritz Leiber, including The Swords of Lankhmar (1968), Swords and Ice Magic (1977), and The Knight and Knave of Swords (1988). These latter two in particular are not among Leiber's more popular or well-regarded Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories at least among S&S fans. They are certainly far removed from Leiber's pulp roots and his days writing for the likes of Unknown, and are in my opinion only loosely sword-and-sorcery/heroic fantasy. There is little to no swordplay, they meander, and the adventures are more inward than outward facing. 
But I think they are interesting, and well worth reading at least once. And thinking about. Enriching my reading was Bruce Byfield's Witches of the Mind, which makes a clear-cut case for the considerable influence of Carl Jung on Leiber's stories, particularly after 1960.