Year Of The Monkey - Patti Smith

YEAR OF THE MONKEY – PATTI SMITH

How strange it must be living Patti Smith's life. Just a thought that occurred whilst reading Year Of The Monkey. At the start of the book Patti mentions she's just finished the last of three nights in a row performing at the Filmore, in San Francisco. Can you imagine? Three nights of ecstatic, classic rock'n'roll that for some would probably be as near to a religious experience they will ever get, and that quite possibly includes Patti herself.

Patti, however, just casually mentions it almost as a 'by the way', as though it was no big deal. What is more significant to her is some guy with a greasy ponytail leaning over and puking on her boots on the last night and whether this is a good or a bad sign to end the year on? 'Well, considering the state of the world,' she surmises 'who could tell the difference?'

Patti wanders into a thrift store and buys an old Grateful Dead tie-dye T-shirt with Jerry Garcia's face on it. It's an impulsive buy, she says. She later hitches a ride to San Diego with a couple who ask for eighty-five dollars advance payment for gasoline. At a truck stop she gets out to go to the bathroom and on her return she sees the car speeding off into the distance, leaving her there stranded. Meanwhile, Patti's friend for over forty years, record producer extraordinaire Sandy Pearlman, is lying in a coma in a hospital.

All these things and more are fused together like fragments of a dream to create an encompassing dream-like experience but rather than the fragments it's the dream in totality that Patti is more interested in, and it's this that she writes about.

It's unlikely that Patti's a rich person at all but at the same time she's not going to be poverty-stricken, so if need be she's going to be able to afford new clothes if required. It's interesting then that she would instead buy an old, second-hand tie-dye T-shirt peeled from the body of some old Deadhead. It's interesting that rather than catching a coach or even a taxi, she would instead hitch a ride with a couple of potential psycho killers. Rather than staying at a Hilton hotel she chooses instead to stay at some rickety, old motel called the Dream Inn.

All things, however, are connected and nothing is coincidental so perhaps all things are meant to be? 'I was dreaming in my dreaming', as Patti sings on People Have The Power though that could easily be changed by dropping just one letter to 'I was dreaming in my dreamin' but in the book she fails to make that connection for some reason. Dreamin'? Dream Inn? Dreaming in my Dream Inn? It's like an exercise in Carl Gustav Jung's theory of synchronicity.

Throughout Year Of The Monkey there is a continuous sense of mortality as Patti marks the passing of time and the passing of life as she approaches her seventieth birthday. Her friends and those she admires fall and pass away continuously: Muhammad Ali, Sandy Pearlman, Fidel Castro, Carrie Fisher, Sam Shepherd. 'This is what I know.' she writes 'Sam is dead. My brother is dead. My father is dead. My mother is dead. My husband is dead.'. It's like an echo of Jack Kerouac's lament at the end of The Dharma Bums where he asks: 'Are we fallen angels who didn't want to believe that nothing is nothing and so were born to lose our loved ones and dear friends one by one and finally our own life, to see it proved?'

All is dream. The dream of life. Dream for free because if nothing else we're free to dream. Is there, however, such a thing as the end of dream and if so where might that be? And if there is an end of dream would it not follow that there is also a birth of dream? Subsequently, might there be an afterbirth of dream? Come the end of Year Of The Monkey, Donald Trump is elected as the next President of the United States so yes, perhaps there is an afterbirth of dream and he's the full, dayglo embodiment of it?

'Yet still I keep thinking that something wonderful is about to happen.' Patti writes 'Maybe tomorrow. A tomorrow following a whole succession of tomorrows.' She concludes, however, that 'The trouble with dreaming is that we eventually wake up'...

John Serpico

Rethinking Camelot - Noam Chomsky

RETHINKING CAMELOT – NOAM CHOMSKY

The world is indeed a wonderful place as Louis Armstrong once advised, though made horrible by people, particularly those with a hard-on for power. Of course, that's not how Noam Chomsky would ever describe it but that's the gist of it. According to the economist philosopher Adam Smith, every age of human history reveals the workings of 'the vile maxim of the masters of mankind: All for ourselves, and nothing for other people', which according to Chomsky still stands to this day.

To this Chomsky also adds that throughout history the rabble (meaning you and me) have sought more freedom and justice, and have often won improved conditions of life. The 'men of best quality', however, have been less than delighted with these developments. There has been broad agreement among them that the rabble should not be permitted to interfere in the management of public affairs and should instead be mere spectators, not participants, as modern democratic theory holds. Kept in line with 'necessary illusions' and 'emotionally potent oversimplifications'. And if this fails there is always State violence and State control to fall back on in the form of truncheons and other assorted armoury. This is the Western model designed to protect Western values so as to protect the Western economy designed to favour the rich and the powerful.

As historians recognise, the Cold war began in 1917 not 1945, and in its earlier years Russia was never regarded as a military threat though it was always viewed as a virus that had to be contained if not destroyed. Arguably, Russia's expansionist plans were always a Western construct based on such suggestions as the Russians not having entirely proven they were without such expansionist ambitions. Which leads us directly (or in a roundabout way, at least) to the Vietnam War and Rethinking Camelot by Noam Chomsky.

'What were you doing when Kennedy died?' as the question goes but for Chomsky this is irrelevant. Instead, what is of more concern to him is Kennedy's legacy and how it's been manipulated to suggest that Kennedy was a dove rather than the actual hawk that he was – and which Chomsky sets out to prove.

On taking office in 1961, Kennedy immediately escalated US military support for its client regime in South Vietnam and then soon after escalated it further before then also authorising the use of napalm. The reason given for such concern over Vietnam was that if it fell under the Communist control of Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong, it wouldn't be too long before the whole of Southeast Asia went the same way and this was just a stake too high to afford to lose.

Chomsky points out, however, that it was actually Ho Chi Minh's ultra-nationalism that made him unacceptable, not his services to the 'Kremlin conspiracy' or 'Soviet expansion' – which means everything you have been told about the Vietnam War is a lie. Equally, JFK's deification by liberals, based on his supposed intention before being assassinated of withdrawing from Vietnam without victory is also wrong.

As might be expected, Chomsky is meticulous with his study and when he says there is 'no hint of any intention by JFK to withdraw without victory – quite the contrary', then you'd better believe it. Thousands of of government documents and reports have now been released for the period covering the Vietnam War and Chomsky seems to have trawled through them all.

There are, of course, insights aplenty regarding the political so-called 'planning' of the war, not least the incomprehension as to how the Viet Cong were able to draw their fellow countrymen onto their side but the Americans were not. The Viet Cong 'have an amazing ability to maintain morale' and are able 'continuously to rebuild their units and to make good their losses', exhibiting 'the recuperative powers of the phoenix'. This is 'one of the mysteries of this guerilla war', JFK's specialist on political warfare lamented, adding that 'we still find no plausible explanation for it'.

With this kind of absolute perplexity going on, America's war in Vietnam was doomed to failure, really. So much so that as Chomsky points out, it would be comical if the consequences for the victims were not so disastrous.

Interestingly and rather encouragingly, Chomsky also pulls out some choice insights regarding the effect of the war at home in the USA. Apparently, in considering further troop deployments to Vietnam, the government's chief advisors wanted to ensure that 'sufficient forces would still be available for civil disorder control', fearing that an escalation of the war might lead to 'increased defiance of the draft and growing unrest in the cities', running the risk of 'provoking a domestic crisis of unprecedented proportions'.

Rethinking Camelot is yet another valuable book in Noam Chomsky's canon, shedding a light upon a period in America's history that has always previously been obscured by propaganda and diversionary tangents. It's an illuminating exercise that cannot fail to leave the reader wondering how such a war as the one in Vietnam was ever allowed to happen and how any similar war must never be allowed to happen again. I wonder if Trump has ever read Chomsky? Indeed, I wonder if very many people at all have actually read him?

John Serpico

London Noir - Capital Crime Fiction - Edited by Cathi Unsworth

LONDON NOIR – CAPITAL CRIME FICTION 

- EDITED BY CATHI UNSWORTH

I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff. Collections of short stories edited by some writer or other where invariably eight out of ten stories are rubbish or mediocre at best and two are good though not brilliant. I should have learned my lesson by now and know not to waste my time with such books but like a moth drawn to a flame I'm back here again but only because of whom London Noir has been edited by. That being ex-Melody Maker and Sounds music scribe, novelist and officially one of the most beautiful women in the world, Cathi Unsworth. Last seen on a book signing tour with prime mover punkerella icon, Jordan.

So what have we got? Well, first off there's Cathi Unsworth's introduction which is a really good piece of writing in itself, laying down the gauntlet for the standard of writing that needs to be matched. There are seventeen stories in total by seventeen different authors which unwittingly tests how well-read you are by seeing how many of them you know. I know eight of them but that includes Stewart Home who everyone knows, along with Cathi Unsworth herself.

Stewart Home's piece is surprisingly good but that's only because he drops the Richard Allen shtick and delivers instead a straightforward story about corrupt police and dead junkies. Barry Adamson's piece is an exercise in rubbing your face in the dirt but has a very good twist as in who the narrator is. As to be hoped for from being edited by an ex-music journalist there are plenty of music references throughout, most notably in Max Decharne's piece set around the 1977 London punk scene where bodies start turning up with notes pinned to them quoting lyrics from X-Ray Spex songs. Max Decharne for those unaware is the lead vocalist of the Flaming Stars.

So too in Cathi Unsworth's offering where Lola by The Kinks is the key, and in John Williams' offering, New Rose, which is obviously a nod to The Damned. And then there is Sic Transit Gloria Mundi written by Joolz Denby (partner in crime of Justin Sullivan, singer with New Model Army) that stabs a knitting needle into the myth of London being the place to go for a band to 'make it' and pops its fascination. Then for good measure stabs it again, just to make sure.

Seven stories in and it's here we hit the obstacle that all similar books of short stories seem to hit. Park Rites, written by Daniel Bennett, is the tale of a teenager planning to expose himself to a woman jogger in a park. His plan is foiled so he instead stabs a deer, a kind of explanation for all this being given in the fact that the boy in some earlier time had been raped by a man in the same park. No-one would deny that such things happen but art created in the form of a short story from such things does not great art make. It's not exactly Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea, is it?

The worst submission, however, is Love, by Martyn Waites, and this is due to the shockingly awful stereotyping of the white English working class. There's nothing revelatory in his piece at all, nor humour or anything of the slightest interest; just class prejudice on a stick. No matter if he's working class himself or not, it's just an exercise in Daily Mail hate-speak washed through with a splash of middle class liberalism.

On the other hand, the best submission out of all the stories is Penguin Island by Jerry Sykes because the crime (and the violence) he depicts is casual, malevolent, heartless and very real, so is therefore very believable and actually very touching.

What strange influence London exerts. All those names, all those places, all those landmarks embedded and marked indelibly into us. Names of roads we are all familiar with as the names of our friends without even having been down most of them. We all know these places. They're part of our make-up, our imagination and our collective consciousness. But how? Drawn into us like an osmosis process. Photo-synthesised into our very being.

Perhaps London is just too big and diverse for it to be captured successfully through seventeen short stories without the diversity causing a jarring, clanging sense of disparity in the quality of the writing? Or maybe it is simply the case of some writers just being better than others? If the stories were set in Exmouth, for example, would the book as a whole be better? Maybe. But then probably not.

Exmouth Noir. Now there's a thought.

John Serpico

William Blake - William Vaughan

WILLIAM BLAKE - WILLIAM VAUGHAN

There's William Blake... and all the rest is propaganda.

John Serpico

All Saints - East Budleigh

ALL SAINTS - EAST BUDLEIGH

Am I a geek? Sure, we all like to throw bricks at coppers and burn down the suburbs with a half-closed eye but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. As they say. So, in my more contemplative moments I sometimes like to stroll down to the beach and just sit and watch the waves roll in as the ships go by on the horizon. On other occasions I like to take a look at the local churches, not to pray or any such reckless if not ridiculous thing as that but to simply have a mooch around. They're beautiful, ancient, old buildings and I appreciate them – it's as simple as that. If you ask politely and there isn't a health and safety issue, it's surprising how easy it is to even get up to the top of the steeple and look out at the view. It's always worth it.

The church in the village of East Budleigh, in Devon, goes back to before 1420, so it's an old one. Developed and built up a bit since then, of course, there's a lot of history to it not least it being where Walter Raleigh used to go as a child due to his father being the churchwarden. Another famous churchwarden there was Ambrose Stapleton who during his tenure involved almost the whole of the village in smuggling, an activity that was once rife along the nearby coastline and which he apparently organised with great skill.

Within a secret drawer of a communion table, a collection of ancient books were once discovered including bibles dating back to 1634 and a Book of Martyrs describing trials and hideous punishments meted out in that same century to local parishioners.

On all of the bench ends there are wood carvings of various past residents of the village dating back again to the early sixteenth century, along with carvings of coats of arms and angels. There is also a carving of a native American Indian in full headdress. Why? What's he doing there?

Meanwhile out in the churchyard, for such an old church there are surprisingly very few tombstones there. This is simply due, however, to burying past graves under ten feet of mud and starting anew with fresh graves being dug into the newly created mound. Like a high-rise cemetery.

How do I know all this stuff, you might wonder? Well, I've just read the booklet entitled All Saints – East Budleigh, written by Lilian Sheppard, which is basically a guide to the church. Published in 1978, it's probably now long out of print and only available from the dusty bookshelves of second hand shops along the East Coast of Devon. Ignored and not given a second glance apart from people like me.

Am I a geek?

John Serpico

Being There - Jerzy Kosinski

BEING THERE – JERZY KOSINSKI

On the surface, Being There by Jerzy Kosinski seems to be a fairly straightforward story of an idiot savant whose utterings are taken as pearls of wisdom but beneath the surface – like fish seen under the ice – there's something else going on. The story centres upon a gardener by the name of Chance who has spent his whole life living in seclusion, tending the garden of his employer and living in a room in the home of that same employer. Never having ventured beyond the garden's walls he has instead spent his time when not working just watching television, the only people him having any contact with being 'the Old Man' who employs him and the maid. When the Old Man suddenly dies at the start of the book, Chance leaves the house and for the very first time steps out into the wider world.

The house where he has spent his life is in New York and as soon as he walks into the city he is driven into by a chauffeur-driven car. The passenger in the car turns out to be the young wife of an elderly gentleman called Rand, who turns out to be the chairman of the board of the First American Financial Corporation, an elite group of businessmen whose mission is to 'assist American businesses that have been harassed by inflation, excessive taxation, riots, and other indecencies'.

They take Chance into their home so that he may recover from the car accident and it is there that Rand becomes immediately enthralled by Chance's simple, homespun observations wrought from his knowledge of gardening that Rand interprets as uniquely expressed insights into economics and business.

So impressed is he with Chance that Rand introduces him to 'a good friend' who just happens to be the President of the United States of America who subsequently quotes Chance during a speech at a TV press conference. The President name-checks Chance causing immediate interest in this hitherto unknown economics adviser and overnight he becomes a media sensation feted by news pundits, ambassadors of foreign nations and members of the American political and business class.

It quickly becomes apparent, however, particularly to the security services that Chance is a man with no history and no traceable background. There are simply no records at all of him having ever existed before, which then leads them to question as to whether this is a good or a bad thing?

Chance is an innocent abroad, sucked in and swept up by events and circumstances he has little understanding of. But if that's him then who is everyone else? Are all the people Chance encounters simply clutching at straws and searching for meaning when there really isn't any? Including even the President? Is Chance just a blank slate on which everyone hangs their own meaning upon? Their own hopes? Their own needs? Interpreting what Chance says to fit their own personal salvation? Has Jerzy Kosinski written his main character in such a way as to suggest that Chance is indeed a messiah figure?

At the start of the book there is a prominent disclaimer that states 'Any similarity to past or present characters or events is purely accidental, and no identification with any character or event is intended'. The copyright date of the book is 1970 so clearly the President though unnamed is going to be Richard Nixon. The chairman of the First American Financial Corporation is named Rand which is clearly an allusion to Ayn Rand – it's too much of a coincidence for it not to be. The TV talk show host with his audience of millions could well be William F Buckley? Who, however, is Jerzy Kosinski? Well, there's been some debate about that.

At the end of Being There there's an anonymously written synopsis entitled 'On Kosinski' that outlines the author's life and it reads like a piece of magical realism. If only half of it is true then Kosinski has led a charmed and picaresque life through 'some of the strongest direct experience that this century has had to offer'. From poverty in Eastern Europe, war and oppression to wealth, fame and the American liberal elite, he's been through it all apparently. Or has he?

'As I have no children, no family, no relatives, no business or estate to speak of, my books are my only spiritual accomplishment,' he's quoted as saying. Rather like his Chance character in Being There? If Chance is a blank slate, is Kosinski a construct? Which then begs the question, is Being There itself a blank slate without any actual meaning upon which the reader hangs their own meaning? Much like the Chance character himself? Is Being There a very clever book or can cleverness be hung upon it to make it appear clever when it actually isn't clever at all? Is there more to Being There than meets the eye?

I would say 'yes' but like fish seen under the ice it's unclear what it is exactly that's swimming about there beneath its surface. Which all makes for an enjoyable, multi-layered, multi-faceted and very interesting book, to say the least.

John Serpico

Guilty Pleasures (Part 19)

GUILTY PLEASURES (Part 19)

I wonder what a Roxy Music audience looks like? Would it include anyone under the age of forty or might it be solely an over-fifties thing? Might a proportion be lisping, middle-aged homosexuals or balding, pot-bellied ex-lotharios? Would it be a men only thing or would women be equally represented? Who might the men be as in what kind of work might they do as a living? Brick layers, carpenters and navvies or office middle-management and shopkeepers? Who might the women be? Housewives, divorcees, and the kind who work behind the perfume counters at John Lewis and Debenhams? Who knows?

A few of the early Sex Pistols followers were Roxy Music fans – Siouxsie Sioux and the Bromley contingent et al, so there's obviously pedigree there. David Bowie was a fan. Roxy Music always straddled the lines between glam rock kitsch and art school weird with a layer of sexual ambiguity slapped all over them. Brian Eno was always an alien, Andy Mackay was a porn film extra and Bryan Ferry was a lounge lizard. The other two were just Sixties throwbacks painted with a sprinkle of glitter. Though what kind of name is 'Brian' for a pop star? What kind of name is 'Bryan' for an oily, sexually perverted, cocktail bar crooner?

Is it fair to suggest Roxy Music were one of the most interesting yet largely unacknowledged bands of that whole 1970s Top Of The Pops era? Is it fair to suggest that not Virginia Plain, not Street Life, or not any of their hits but a song called If There Was Something from their debut album is one of the greatest songs ever?

There's only one way to find out, I suppose. So see you at the Exmouth Pavilion in January, windowlickers, where an approximation of Roxy Music will be trying to seduce, bugger and abandon a selection of sexually ambivalent farmers and fishermen (along with their fishwives?) from various towns and villages dotted along the East Devon coast. It's going to be the first gig of the year and probably the best gig of the year also...