The Stooges: Head On - A Journey Through The Michigan Underground - Brett Callwood

THE STOOGES: HEAD ON -

A JOURNEY THROUGH THE MICHIGAN UNDERGROUND -

BRETT CALLWOOD

The Stooges, baby! Anyone who likes a bit of rock'n'roll always likes to get down and dirty with The Stooges but do they like to read books about them? I suspect not too many but that's alright because that's why I'm here. To do it for you. To read it on your behalf. To take one for the team. So to The Stooges: Head On - A Journey Through The Michigan Underground written by Brett Callwood that I at first mistakenly thought was a recently-written book but that on closer inspection can see it was actually published in 2011. What was clear, however, was that the subject matter was The Stooges as a whole - as a band - because if it was mostly about Iggy Pop then his name would surely be on the cover - and it's not. Iggy is in there, of course, because in a book about The Stooges how could he not be? It's just that he's not the main focus. If it's anyone, in fact, that the main focus is upon then it's Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton who passed away just before publication and just before The Stooges were inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame.

Like the Velvet Underground's debut album, even though it wasn't a big commercial success, The Stooges debut had a very deep cultural impact particularly upon the original punk generation of '76 and '77. The Sex Pistols covering No Fun is the obvious influence but by no means the only one. There's the influence upon The Clash, for example, and them naming a song '1977' like The Stooges did with '1969'. A single line from a Stooges song such as 'so messed-up' from Now I Wanna Be Your Dog being turned into a whole song by The Damned. More importantly, however, there's the influence in attitude where The Stooges proved by example and particularly through the guitar playing of Ron Asheton that to be in a band there was no need to be a stellar musician playing radio-friendly tunes. Instead, simply learn to play three chords and have an exhibitionist out-front on vocals and you're good to go - if not practically made it to fame and fortune already. This was the real power and influence of The Stooges and their debut album and in this the case can be made for them being the true godfathers of punk.

According to Iggy, Ron Asheton was a 'genuine, unique talent' and that his big contribution to The Stooges was in coming up with two 'world-class eternal riffs in No Fun and Now I Wanna Be Your Dog'. In a review of the debut album in Creem magazine, very presciently it was written 'This is probably the guitar style of the future'. And that's the nub of it. By coming up with these riffs, Ron Asheton was securing his place in Heaven where on entering the pearly gates he'd be met by Archangel Gabriel himself and shown straight to the VIP lounge. 'There's Jimi over there' Gabriel would say 'And there's Janis, and there's Mr Cohen talking to the Drake boy. And there's Elvis over there on his throne of course, and Hank and Buddy, and there's Brian by the swimming pool, obvs. Take your place, Ron. Pull up a chair and make yourself at home, man. The drugs are over there. There's no limit to them and they're all free. Welcome to Heaven'.

Brett Callwood's book is a labour of love, forged from countless sources and personal interviews. A labour of love to such an extent, in fact, that come the end of the book he informs us he's made the decision to permanently move to The Stooges hometown of Detroit because after researching The Stooges, their city and its surrounding area, it's all had such an impact upon him that he can't think of anywhere else he'd rather be. There have been plenty of books written about Iggy Pop over the years but none as far as I know about The Stooges, so there's really no other book to compare it to. Which means that if you like a bit of Stooges, Callwood's book is an essential purchase. Moreover, whilst writing about The Stooges, Callwood also enters into the subject of Ron Asheton's other bands, Destroy All Monsters and Dark Carnival both featuring the semi-legendary Niagra on vocals, with both bands never really achieving a lot of recognition or acclaim during their time and so probably deserving now of a reappraisal?

John Serpico

Victoria - Knut Hamsun

 VICTORIA - KNUT HAMSUN

Who makes the Nazis? What turns a man to Fascist? No-one is born that way because Fascism is not a natural human condition so what's the trigger - the spark - that leads to the burning down of one's own house and everything and everyone in it? Fascism as an ideology can unquestionably be described as evil because what Fascism leads to is certainly evil, as history has shown. There's no debate to be had. Evil begets evil - it's as simple as that.

During the Nuremberg trials, a US Army psychologist by the the name of G M Gilbert was assigned to watch the defendants and during the course of his work it became clear to him that the one characteristic that connected them all was the incapacity to feel anything toward their fellow men. Gilbert came to define the nature of evil as 'a lack of empathy' or in his exact words 'Evil is the absence of empathy'.

It's a point of view I agree with and as a guideline it's a useful tool to assess the state of play when it comes to individuals within your own personal life as well as institutions of power.

What then explains Knut Hamsun, the man who Charles Bukowski once described as being one of the greatest writers ever? What explains his collaborating with the Nazis during World War Two, becoming so close to them that he was even able to engender a meeting with Hitler himself? How can a man who is able to write what Arthur Koestler described as being one of the greatest love stories of world literature end up as a supporter and enabler of Fascism?

The book to which Koestler was referring to is Victoria, written by Knut Hamsun in 1898. Whether or not it is as Koestler proclaimed is for the individual reader to decide but it is absolutely a love story of great intensity, employing methods of post-modernism long before the term had even been invented. A story of unrequited love, thwarted not only by class and social mores but by life itself.  

To be able to write such a story the writer would need to know something of love and compassion, and even to have experienced both. To be able to write in such a way that Victoria is written, utilising streams of consciousness and deep insights into the thoughts and emotions of the characters, the writer would need to be able to empathise. 

It's very clear from reading Victoria that Knut Hamsun possessed these qualities at the time of writing it, so what happened to him? How did he end up as an ardent supporter of Hitler? How did he end up on the side of evil?

Does empathy wane over time? Can empathy be eclipsed by political naivety, denial, propaganda, stupidity and national pride? It would seem so. Which means that while Victoria is a lesson in love, the story behind it regarding its author is a lesson from history needing to be learned.

John Serpico

Astragal - Albertine Sarrazin

 ASTRAGAL - ALBERTINE SARRAZIN

Like a lot of other people, I first came upon Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin through Patti Smith's endorsement of it. Patti had written an essay about the book and it was a glowing one, singling it out from all the many other books she was fond of. Like David Bowie was, Patti Smith is a big reader and the list she composed some years ago of her favourite books is an exemplary one. So, for her to heap praise upon one book in particular was something to be noted.

Astragal is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Sarrazin whilst she was in prison. It starts with her escaping from a prison by jumping from a 30-feet high wall and ends with her arrest, presumably to be returned to the same prison? In jumping from the wall, however, she breaks a bone in her ankle and is rendered immobile, leaving her able only to drag herself to the nearby road where she is picked up by a passing traveller by the name of Julien. Sarrazin's flight for freedom lasts all of the few seconds from her jumping and her landing on the ground below. Unable to move, stuck out in the cold and the wet, she has simply exchanged one form of incapacitation for another. Hope, however, arrives in the form of Julien, an ex-con himself who rescues Sarrazin and deposits her in a series of safe-houses whilst her ankle heals and she's able to walk again.

The premise of Astragal is a promising one, with suggested shades of Jean-Luc Godard's 'Breathless', Jean Genet's 'The Thief's Journal', and even Bonnie And Clyde, the film version starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. What we get, unfortunately, is something completely different with two thirds of the book comprised of Sarrazin laid-up in bed ruminating over her broken bone.

It's all very well written but the actual subject matter and the non-stop internalising doesn't really make for an exhilarating read. Once her ankle is healed and she's able to walk again we're into the last third of the book and it's here that things start to liven up a bit.

Sarrazin is in Paris but still an absconder and there's no way to gain lawful employment so she turns to prostitution. She's very much in love with Julien - her guardian angel - but he's not exactly ideal boyfriend material due to him vanishing for weeks on end pursuing his own criminal career involving it seems a lot of petty burglary.

Finally, Julien is away for a lot longer than usual and in a bid to track him down Sarrazin discovers he's been arrested. On his release they meet each other and decide to spend the rest of their lives together in fugitive bliss but then Sarrazin herself is re-arrested and their dream thwarted.

Astragal obviously spoke to Patti Smith and touched her in a way some books are able to but very few do. Something about Astragal chimed with Patti but clearly on a very personal level. Was it something to do with chasing a fugitive vision of freedom? Chasing a fugitive vision of fugitive love?

The circumstances of Patti discovering Astragal are very similar to her first discovering of Seasons In Hell by Arthur Rimbaud. Desperately poor whilst living in New York, she found both books on two different occasions at a second-hand bookshop in the East Village. On both occasions she was attracted initially by the pictures of the authors on the covers; Rimbaud and that classic portrait of him as a boy, Sarrazin and her 'striking, remote face - rendered violet on black - on a dust jacket proclaiming its author a 'female Genet''.

Apart from both being of French origin, the two books couldn't, however, be more different. Whilst Rimbaud is poetry of a boy-genius able to tear away the veil and blow holes in the fabric of imagination, Sarrazin is feistiness disabled and reduced to helpless navel-gazing. Sarrazin is teenage rebellion curtailed and reduced to being a package moved from one 'safe-house' to another. Julien - her rescuer - her seducer, her co-dependent in captivity.

Astragal is ultimately an empty promise. A book and a story to inspire but paradoxically only through its failure to inspire. Its strength but also its weakness is in its lack of sensationalism though in this it's arguably very true to life. There's no-one wielding guns here, for example. What we have instead is a wrought, somewhat complicated affair. Astragal is a lesson in potential unfulfilled, both as a book and as the story of Albertine Sarrazin's  life.

John Serpico

Hell Is Round The Corner - Tricky

 HELL IS ROUND THE CORNER - TRICKY

The interesting thing to me about Adrian Thaws, AKA Tricky, is that he's from a once white, solidly-working class area of Bristol called Knowle West. Such a thing is of little consideration to most of Tricky's audience, of course, who view him as simply being from Bristol but I believe geography is important when it comes to art of any kind, and that the devil is always in the detail.

Knowle West is very much like any other working class council estate and is very much like the one that I grew up on, called Southmead, but on the other side of Bristol. Interestingly, Tricky describes Knowle West in his autobiography Hell Is Round The Corner as a 'white ghetto' which is a term that isn't often used to describe a council estate such as Knowle West. What is also interesting is that Tricky isn't describing it in this way for effect or for credibility but that he's being quite genuine in his choice of words.

When I think of the word 'ghetto' I immediately think of slums the like of which was once found in places like New York or Detroit. More locally, if anywhere in Bristol might be classed as 'ghetto' it would be St Paul's where the vast number of people of colour would always gravitate to live. Over time, the word 'ghetto' has become associated with coolness and street-wise edge but also danger. St Paul's was once in a lot of people's eyes a 'black ghetto' so when Tricky says his area of birth - Knowle West - was a 'white ghetto', it's to be noted.

Knowle West has always been deprived and populated by a lot of low-income families and has always been viewed as a 'dangerous' area through simply being poor, white and working class. There's never been a 'coolness' about it though, or ever had a 'street-wise edge' about it in the same way St Paul's has. It would seem, then, that there are different shades of 'ghetto'.

In his book, Tricky describes being born into a family of gangsters and on reading about his uncles it's obvious they were engaged in that world, particularly in their dealings when up in Manchester. Back in Bristol, every estate was known to have families who were notorious for being fighters, criminals or both. Where I grew up there were certainly some well-known families whose reputations went before them.

Certain members of these families were in the scheme of things pretty dangerous people who invariably would end up in Horfield prison alongside their like from other areas of the city. And so it goes. Whether or not Tricky's family - the Godfrey's - were at one time the hardest in Bristol is debatable though I concur, it's quite feasible they were. Reputation in such matters is all.

I was aware of who Tricky was from his early association with Wild Bunch and Massive Attack. I knew him by sight though not to talk to. To be honest, I was a little wary of him as he always looked to me as being volatile and of potentially being able to kick-off at the drop of a hat. Knowing that he was from Knowle West added another layer of caution as I knew what kids from my own estate could be like when it came to violence and Tricky fitted the part. From reading Hell Is Round The Corner, however, it seems I was totally mistaken and in actual fact Tricky was a shy kid who liked nothing more than having a good smoke and listening to music. Tricky, in fact, could have been the perfect friend.

I've always liked Massive Attack and so too Portishead and Smith & Mighty but to me, Tricky has always been the most interesting both musically and as a person. The reason for this is because I recognize where he's from and it's a place that has always been written-off, rejected, kept at bay and denounced as having nothing good or of any value coming from it ever.

Tricky is not only a riposte to this so-called rule but a total destroyer of it. The strangeness of Tricky's art, the innovation of his music - the uniqueness of it - is all very natural. Tricky is an autodidact, his only university being that of the street - or rather, to be more precise: the university of the council estate.

You can take the boy out of the council estate but you can't take the council estate out of the boy, and it's this quality that separates Tricky from most others. It's what separated Tricky from the other members of Massive Attack. It's a quality that may not equip you with confidence in the way a private school education will but it enables you to be upfront and very truthful in your opinions. A quality that does away with etiquette and middle class mores and enables you to walk straight up and cut to the chase. In Hell Is Round The Corner, it's this same quality - this aspect of the book - that makes it a good one.

For example, there's almost an orthodoxy when it comes to the mythology of the Dug Out club in Bristol and its importance to Bristol's musical culture, elevating it to the level of the Cavern in Liverpool, the 100 Club in London, and CBGBs in New York. I used to go now and again to the Dug Out myself and I was never impressed; its main attraction being that it was a late night place to go that would let you in without having to sport a stupid moustache, sensible shoes and a tie. I've always contended that there were other places in Bristol that were better and culturally just as significant: The Old England pub, the Moon Club, the Star & Garter, The Granary and the Locarno, even.

Tricky, it seems, is in agreement: 'The Dug Out has gone down in history as this legendary place where the so-called Bristol scene started, but I never saw that. For us, it was just a hangout place. It was a really grimy place - not ghetto grimy, because it wasn't ghetto people in there. Just a grimy basement club.'

And that's how I remember it: Full of students, an ultra- sticky carpet, and a screen on the wall showing Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' video.

When it comes to the 'Bristol scene' and 'trip hop' in particular, again Tricky cuts to the quick and is able to see through all the hype.

'Who likes trip hop?' he asks the audience at his big Shepherd's Bush show in London to which the audience cheer and shout 'Yeah!'

'Well, fuck off home then!' Tricky tells them.

Backstage he's got David Bowie, Kylie Minogue, Naomi Campbell and Nicole Kidman all wanting to meet him. Tricky's audience has exploded beyond all expectations and he's captured what Julian Palmer of Island Records describes as 'coffee-table listeners, the middle classes, chin-waggers at dinner parties'. It's an audience that anyone from a working class council estate is going to have a natural antipathy toward because among many other things it's an audience that brings with it suffocation, recuperation, and significantly to Bristol as a city - gentrification.

It's not Tricky's fault, of course. He never asked for his audience or went chasing them. They came to him. And then they came to Bristol. Obviously, not just on the back of Tricky's music or that of Massive attack's and Portishead's but it was a contributing factor without any doubt. The gentrification of Bristol has been rising ever since.

For all that, Tricky to this day has remained an interesting and innovative figure and much to his credit has never forgotten his roots: 'I've always been proud of coming from Knowle West' he writes 'I always thought it made me who I am. Knowle Westers are individuals, and the place has many fond memories for me.'

Tricky is a Bristolian. He's a son of Bristol who for better or for worse has helped to make Bristol one of the most coolest cities in the UK. More importantly, Tricky is a Knowle Wester. He's a son of Bristol's mighty, working class council estates where very few students and gentrifiers still dare not venture. And like practically everything else that Tricky has ever produced, his book Hell Is Round The Corner is a very good one.

John Serpico

Novelets Of Science Fiction - Edited by Ivan Howard

NOVELETS OF SCIENCE FICTION

As we all know, a qualifying factor for choosing to buy a science fiction book - or any book, really - is the cover design. When it comes to science fiction, in fact, it's the cover art that can add to its collectability, meaning people often buy science fiction books just for the cover art alone and not to actually read. And that's fair enough. I say this because the cover art was the reason for me picking up a copy of Novelets Of Science Fiction, it being a collection of eight short stories that according to the blurb on the back are 'superlative' and the writers all 'modern masters of science fiction'.

No aficionado of the genre I, but the names are recognizable: Blish, Simak, Anderson, Arthur C Clarke, etc. All writers I'm familiar with though not au fait. So, a good place to start with them, I guess? First published in 1951 but this particular paperback copy published in 1954, and 'The Book Of The Year' according to the blurb on the back cover again though somehow I doubt that's actually true.

On Googling the title, there are images available of the cover from being on sale on AbeBooks and eBay but no actual reviews so here's a world first, or Internet first at least.

Eight short stories by eight different writers so let's go through them one by one shall we, and let's take no prisoners:

Ultrasonic God by L Sprague de Camp. A good title but it reads like something written by a 12 year-old for 12 year-olds and to be honest, not worth the paper it's written on.

The Chapter Ends by Poul Anderson. Nicely written, imaginative and concise, being about the evacuation of Earth before it being taken over by an alien race in some grand cosmic deal. 

A Is For Android by Milton Lesser. Passable. Narrated in a private detective/Humphrey Bogart fashion, being about an alien android take-over by stealth.

And The Truth Shall Make You Free by Clifford S Simak. This is a good one. Succinct and to the point, dealing with the questions of Ultimate Truths. The punchlines being 'The universe has no purpose. The universe just happened. Life has no significance. Life is an accident'. It's the kind of stuff I want from science fiction and based on this short story I'll be seeking out other books by Simak.

Night Fear by Frank Belknap Long. Just five pages long but for all that it has a nice twist, even if it's a very simple one. The twist being all.

I Am Tomorrow by Lester del Ray. The longest story in the book, clocking in at forty-six pages but what it's actually about is anyone's guess. I gave up half-way through from boredom.

Testament Of Andros by James Blish. This one's excellent. All about the end of the world by solar flare, and if this is an example of Blish's writing then like Simak I'll be seeking out other books written by him.

And then finally The Possessed by Arthur C Clarke. It being about an alien 'swarm' seeking out planets in a bid to find suitable hosts to possess through genetic coding. It's pretty good and if only all Arthur C Clarke stories were this short.

The problem I see with short story collections is that a lot of writers bang them out as if they were but scribbles on a doctor's doodle pad with little consideration for quality or precise mechanics. I suspect it's probably easier for some to write a sprawling 600-page book that's average than to write a 30-page story that is brilliant. Do the research, I say. It's not hard to read a substantial variety of short stories that will give a reader a good schooling in the art - and yes, it is an art. Writing a good short story is a skill not an exercise. In fact, I'm not one to give advice on such things but read The Dead by James Joyce in his short story collection, The Dubliners, and right there is all you will ever need to know about short story writing. It being - in my opinion, of course - a thing of beauty and the greatest short story ever written where Joyce zooms into the detail of the finite then out to the infinite; weaving time, heartache, exaltation and memory into a seamless narrative. 

Novelets Of Science Fiction isn't bad but it's not brilliant either. I expect and I want better.

John Serpico

The Wind Whales Of Ishmael - Philip Jose Farmer

 THE WIND WHALES OF ISHMAEL -

PHILIP JOSE FARMER

One minute you're in one of the greatest books ever written chasing a whale named Moby Dick in which the author of that book, Herman Melville, has called the obsessed captain of the ship you're on Ahab and given you the name Ishmael.

'Call me Ishmael,' you're quoted as saying at the start of the book.

The next minute, the ship you're sailing on has been destroyed by Moby Dick and Ahab has been tangled up in a harpoon line and dragged away by the stricken whale. You're the only survivor but by some miracle the empty coffin that had been built for one of your shipmates but never used has bobbed up from under the surface of the sea and you're clinging to it for dear life. 

For a day and a night you float upon the coffin-buoy before being rescued by another whaling ship. You're taken on board and to earn your keep on this new ship you're told to keep watch up on one of he masts and it's there you begin to wonder if the events that have led you to being rescued from a watery grave have caused disorders of your brain?

First there are the St Elmo's fires that you spy before the sea turns into a writhing mass of black tentacles. Next there is sudden and total silence as all becomes strangeness and horror. Night is replaced by day and suddenly the ship you're on is falling through air. The sea has vanished and you're being catapulted through miles of atmosphere to finally crash-land into another sea but one that is deader than the Dead Sea of Palestine or the Great Salt Lake of Utah. 

There you float only to be saved once again by the reappearance of the same coffin-buoy that you once again cling to. The sea's slight current carries you to a shoreline and it's there that you try to understand what has happened and where you are.

You're on a jungle island where vines attach themselves to you and gently, almost lovingly suck your blood. Where under a blood red sun the sky is inhabited by colossal whales that feed on huge clouds of red brit who in turn are hunted not only by flying sharks but by wonderfully strange whaling boats that cruise through the air.

Time has evaporated and whether you're still on Earth or on some distant star, whether you've somehow been flung into the far future or if you're in the throes of a fever dream - it matters not. You're here and that's all there is to it.

The Wind Whales Of Ishmael by Philip Jose Farmer is a leap of imagination on a par with William Burroughs at his drug-fueled best. At times it's particularly reminiscent of Cities Of The Red Night by Burroughs, especially in regard to the boy pirates falling through time. On top of this, Farmer's book is really well-written, so much so that as you're reading it, it's a joy to re-read some of the sentences he composes. The major if not fatal flaw in it, however, is that Farmer veers off the rails half-way through and we end up in a jumble of a Robert E Howard's Conan The Barbarian adventure and Jason And The Argonauts complete with Ray Harryhausen stop-motion film effects.

It's a shame because this abrupt shift of tone and story-line alters the book irrevocably and reduces it to pulp fiction of the swashbuckling kind lacking any kind of substance. All is not lost though in the fact that the first half leaves you with a taste of something quite special going on with Farmer's style of writing and imagination unbound, leaving you wanting to explore more of his canon to see what else he's done.

John Serpico

101 Cult Movies You Must See Before You Die

 101 CULT MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE

The problem and the river to cross when it comes to calling a book 101 Cult Movies You Must See Before You Die is the defining of what constitutes a 'cult' movie. Who decides if a movie is a cult one or not? It's all subjective, of course, but ultimately it's the audience that creates that definition around a film rather than it being simply a label to apply. The one person excluded from the process is the director who on completion and delivery of a film can only wait and see what becomes of it. No director can intentionally set out to create a cult movie, no matter if the theme or the subject matter is obscure or the budget threadbare. If a movie does indeed fall within these parameters it doesn't automatically mean that it's cult. Just as easily it could mean it's simply puerile rubbish or indeed even brilliant - but never cult. 

The word 'cult' is mostly used as an accolade and imbues the thing on which the word is placed with a value beyond any established values of the mainstream. When it comes to movies, success is typically measured monetarily as in numbers at the box-office or increasingly nowadays the amount streamed. When a film becomes cult it means it's moved beyond financial considerations and is now being viewed from a different and somewhat more passionate perspective. A perspective though not necessarily of more value but arguably much longer lasting.

101 Cult Movies You Must See Before You Die certainly contains a good selection of classic films though whether they could be called 'cult' is debatable. What is clear, however, is that it contains no surprises. Moreover, there are many films and some directors of films that are noticeably absent. Where, for instance, is Silent Running, the 1970s eco-sci-fi film featuring Bruce Dern? Point Blank featuring Lee Marvin? The Friends Of Eddie Coyle starring Robert Mitchum? Where is there mention of Bruce Lee and any of his films, or any of the many spaghetti cowboy films of the 60s and 70s? And if we're talking 'cult', where is Debbie Does Dallas or Deep Throat, even? Or are these not cult films as such?

It's apparent that when compiling this book there was an eye on its saleability and what would make it appealing to a wide readership. Who would want to buy it (apart from me, maybe?) if it was just full of art house movies like Andy Warhol's Blow Job, or Chris Marker's La Jetee? And are art house movies even cult movies anyway? Maybe it's just best not to ask too many questions and to just enjoy 101 Cult Movies You Must See Before You Die for what it is? That being, essentially, a mini-coffee table-type book that's nice to read and pleasing to the eye. Nothing more and nothing less.

John Serpico