Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
The Guild of Outsider Writers - Todd Moore's Outlaw Blues
I've been spending some time over at Outsider Writers, my home away from home, but now that our birth pains are over I can really concentrate on stuff having to do with The Whirligig.
I'm finalizing things for the summer release of The Whirligigzine, but am still not happy that it is largely a testosterone fest, with not a single lady in evidence among the completely fine contributors. For some reason none of them heard my calls for submissions. Perhaps I wasn't loud enough? The mystery remains, though there will be changes in issue 2, which will benefit from a woman's touch.
I just posted the above mentioned "rant" at OW in the Naked Opinion column that I edit and will be interested to see what sort of feedback we get on it.
I've been spending some time over at Outsider Writers, my home away from home, but now that our birth pains are over I can really concentrate on stuff having to do with The Whirligig.
I'm finalizing things for the summer release of The Whirligigzine, but am still not happy that it is largely a testosterone fest, with not a single lady in evidence among the completely fine contributors. For some reason none of them heard my calls for submissions. Perhaps I wasn't loud enough? The mystery remains, though there will be changes in issue 2, which will benefit from a woman's touch.
I just posted the above mentioned "rant" at OW in the Naked Opinion column that I edit and will be interested to see what sort of feedback we get on it.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Friday, April 06, 2007
H.P. Lovecraft in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith
"My own rule is that no weird story can truly produce terror unless it is devised with all the care and verisimilitude of an actual hoax. The author must forget all about "short story technique" and build up a stark simple account, full of homely corroborative details, just as if he were actually trying to "put across" a deception in real life...as carefully as a crooked witness prepares a line of testimony with cross-examining lawyers in his mind. I take the place of the lawyers now and then-finding false spots in the original testimony, and thereupon rearranging details and motivations with a greater care for probability."
A bit of twisting of Aristotle's Poetics, but what the hell, the Greeks didn't have zombies so I suppose it all evens out somehow. (JDF)
"My own rule is that no weird story can truly produce terror unless it is devised with all the care and verisimilitude of an actual hoax. The author must forget all about "short story technique" and build up a stark simple account, full of homely corroborative details, just as if he were actually trying to "put across" a deception in real life...as carefully as a crooked witness prepares a line of testimony with cross-examining lawyers in his mind. I take the place of the lawyers now and then-finding false spots in the original testimony, and thereupon rearranging details and motivations with a greater care for probability."
A bit of twisting of Aristotle's Poetics, but what the hell, the Greeks didn't have zombies so I suppose it all evens out somehow. (JDF)
Sunday, March 25, 2007
New York Times Says "Now Easier Being A Geek"
March 18, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
It’s All Geek to Me
By NEAL STEPHENSON
Seattle
A WEEK ago Friday, moments before an opening-day showing of the movie “300” at Seattle’s Cinerama, a 20-something moviegoer rushed to the front of the theater, dropped his shoulders, curled his arms into a mock-Schwarzenegger pose and bellowed out a timeless remark of King Leonidas of Sparta that has in the last week become the catchphrase of the year: “Spartans! Tonight we dine in hell!”
Groans, roars, macho hooting noises and sardonic applause rained down on him. The audience had been standing in line for an hour. Only a few of them were dressed as Greek hoplites. They were much better balanced between men and women than I’d expected and, racially, looked like a fair cross section of Seattle’s populace. Over the next couple of hours, they enjoyed “300” with roughly the same level of energy and audience participation as one would expect in an N.C.A.A. Final Four game.
The film contains a lot of over-the-top material, reflecting its origin in a graphic novel. As often as not, when I found myself rolling my eyes at something particularly mortifying (the tactical corpse-pile avalanche, the Persian executioner with serrated fins for arms), the crowd reacted much as I did, some even hurling catcalls from the balcony or blurting their own lines of dialogue. It was all pretty festive for a movie about ancient history in which almost all of the characters end up dead.
This, apparently, was no anomaly. Though it opened on a relatively small number of screens, “300” made money far beyond the most optimistic projections of its producers, racking up the third-best opening weekend ever for an R-rated movie.
The critics, however, were mostly hostile, and frequently venomous. Many reviews made the same points:
• “300” is not sufficiently ironic. It takes its themes (duty, loyalty, sacrifice, the preservation of Western civilization against enormous odds) too seriously to, well, be taken seriously.
• “300” is campy — meaning that many things about it can be read as sexual double entendres — yet the filmmakers don’t show sufficient awareness of this.
• All of the good guys are white people and many of the bad guys are brown. (How this could have been avoided in a film about Spartans versus Persians is never explained; the distinctly non-Greek viewers at my showing seemed to have no trouble placing themselves in the sandals of ancient Spartans.)
But such criticisms aren’t really worth arguing with, because they are not serious in the first place — and that is their whole point. Many critics dislike “300” so intensely that they refused to do it the honor of criticizing it as if it were a real movie. Critics at a festival in Berlin walked out, and accused its director of being on the Bush payroll.
Thermopylae is a wedge issue!
Lefties can’t abide lionizing a bunch of militaristic slave-owners (even if they did happen to be long-haired supporters of women’s rights). So you might think that righties would love the film. But they’re nervous that Emperor Xerxes of Persia, not the freedom-loving Leonidas, might be George Bush.
Our so-called conservatives, who have cut all ties to their own intellectual moorings, now espouse policies and personalities that would get them laughed out of Periclean Athens. The few conservatives still able to hold up one end of a Socratic dialogue are those in the ostracized libertarian wing — interestingly enough, a group with a disproportionately high representation among fans of speculative fiction.
The less politicized majority, who perhaps would like to draw inspiration from this story without glossing over the crazy and defective aspects of Spartan society, have turned, in droves, to a film from the alternative cultural universe of fantasy and science fiction. Styled and informed by pulp novels, comic books, video games and Asian martial arts flicks, science fiction eats this kind of material up, and expresses it in ways that look impossibly weird to people who aren’t used to it.
Lack of critical respect means nothing to sci-fi’s creators and fans. They made peace with their own dorkiness long ago. Oh, there was momentary discomfort around the time of William Shatner’s 1987 “Saturday Night Live” sketch, in which he exhorted Trekkies to “get a life.” But this had been fully resolved by 2000, when sci-fi fans voted to give the Hugo Award for best movie to “Galaxy Quest,” a film that revolves around making fun of sci-fi fans.
The growing popularity of science fiction, the rise of graphic novels, anime and video games, and the fact that geeks can make lots of money now, have given creators and fans of this kind of art a confidence, even a swagger, that — hard as it is for some of us to believe — is kind of cool now.
Video games have turned everyone under the age of 20 into experts on military history and tactics; 12-year-olds on school buses argue about the right way to deploy onagers and cataphracts while outflanking a Roman triplex acies formation. The near exhaustion of Asian martial arts themes has led a small but growing number to begin reconstructing, or imagining, the forgotten martial arts of the West. And science fiction, by its nature, has had to equip itself with a full toolkit for dealing with alien cultures, mindsets and landscapes.
Which is exactly how the creators of “300” approach the Spartans and the Persians. The only people in the film who don’t seem as if they came from another planet are the Arcadians (non-Spartan Greeks), who turn tail once the battle becomes hopeless.
Classics-based sci-fi is nothing new. To name the most recent of many examples, the novelist Dan Simmons published “Ilium” and “Olympos,” science-fictional takes on Homer. When science fiction tackles classical themes, the results may look a bit odd to some, but the audience — which is increasingly the mainstream audience — is sufficiently hungry for this kind of material (and, perhaps, suspicious of anything that’s overly polished) that it is willing to overlook the occasional mistake, or make up for it by shouting hilarious things from the balcony. These people don’t need irony or campiness self-consciously pointed out to them, any more than they need a laugh track to enjoy “The Simpsons.”
The Spartan phalanx presents itself to foes as a wall of shields, bristling with spears, its members squatting behind their defenses, anonymous and unknowable, until they break formation and stand out alone, practically naked, soft, exposed and recognizable as individuals.
The audience members watching them play the same game: media-weary, hunkered down behind thick irony, flinging verbal jabs at the screen — until they see something that moves them. Then they’ll come out and feel. But at the first hint of politics, they’ll jump back behind their shield-wall, just like the Spartans when millions of Persian arrows blot out the sun, and wait until the noise stops.
Neal Stephenson is the author, most recently, of “The System of the World,” the last book of “The Baroque Cycle” trilogy.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
March 18, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
It’s All Geek to Me
By NEAL STEPHENSON
Seattle
A WEEK ago Friday, moments before an opening-day showing of the movie “300” at Seattle’s Cinerama, a 20-something moviegoer rushed to the front of the theater, dropped his shoulders, curled his arms into a mock-Schwarzenegger pose and bellowed out a timeless remark of King Leonidas of Sparta that has in the last week become the catchphrase of the year: “Spartans! Tonight we dine in hell!”
Groans, roars, macho hooting noises and sardonic applause rained down on him. The audience had been standing in line for an hour. Only a few of them were dressed as Greek hoplites. They were much better balanced between men and women than I’d expected and, racially, looked like a fair cross section of Seattle’s populace. Over the next couple of hours, they enjoyed “300” with roughly the same level of energy and audience participation as one would expect in an N.C.A.A. Final Four game.
The film contains a lot of over-the-top material, reflecting its origin in a graphic novel. As often as not, when I found myself rolling my eyes at something particularly mortifying (the tactical corpse-pile avalanche, the Persian executioner with serrated fins for arms), the crowd reacted much as I did, some even hurling catcalls from the balcony or blurting their own lines of dialogue. It was all pretty festive for a movie about ancient history in which almost all of the characters end up dead.
This, apparently, was no anomaly. Though it opened on a relatively small number of screens, “300” made money far beyond the most optimistic projections of its producers, racking up the third-best opening weekend ever for an R-rated movie.
The critics, however, were mostly hostile, and frequently venomous. Many reviews made the same points:
• “300” is not sufficiently ironic. It takes its themes (duty, loyalty, sacrifice, the preservation of Western civilization against enormous odds) too seriously to, well, be taken seriously.
• “300” is campy — meaning that many things about it can be read as sexual double entendres — yet the filmmakers don’t show sufficient awareness of this.
• All of the good guys are white people and many of the bad guys are brown. (How this could have been avoided in a film about Spartans versus Persians is never explained; the distinctly non-Greek viewers at my showing seemed to have no trouble placing themselves in the sandals of ancient Spartans.)
But such criticisms aren’t really worth arguing with, because they are not serious in the first place — and that is their whole point. Many critics dislike “300” so intensely that they refused to do it the honor of criticizing it as if it were a real movie. Critics at a festival in Berlin walked out, and accused its director of being on the Bush payroll.
Thermopylae is a wedge issue!
Lefties can’t abide lionizing a bunch of militaristic slave-owners (even if they did happen to be long-haired supporters of women’s rights). So you might think that righties would love the film. But they’re nervous that Emperor Xerxes of Persia, not the freedom-loving Leonidas, might be George Bush.
Our so-called conservatives, who have cut all ties to their own intellectual moorings, now espouse policies and personalities that would get them laughed out of Periclean Athens. The few conservatives still able to hold up one end of a Socratic dialogue are those in the ostracized libertarian wing — interestingly enough, a group with a disproportionately high representation among fans of speculative fiction.
The less politicized majority, who perhaps would like to draw inspiration from this story without glossing over the crazy and defective aspects of Spartan society, have turned, in droves, to a film from the alternative cultural universe of fantasy and science fiction. Styled and informed by pulp novels, comic books, video games and Asian martial arts flicks, science fiction eats this kind of material up, and expresses it in ways that look impossibly weird to people who aren’t used to it.
Lack of critical respect means nothing to sci-fi’s creators and fans. They made peace with their own dorkiness long ago. Oh, there was momentary discomfort around the time of William Shatner’s 1987 “Saturday Night Live” sketch, in which he exhorted Trekkies to “get a life.” But this had been fully resolved by 2000, when sci-fi fans voted to give the Hugo Award for best movie to “Galaxy Quest,” a film that revolves around making fun of sci-fi fans.
The growing popularity of science fiction, the rise of graphic novels, anime and video games, and the fact that geeks can make lots of money now, have given creators and fans of this kind of art a confidence, even a swagger, that — hard as it is for some of us to believe — is kind of cool now.
Video games have turned everyone under the age of 20 into experts on military history and tactics; 12-year-olds on school buses argue about the right way to deploy onagers and cataphracts while outflanking a Roman triplex acies formation. The near exhaustion of Asian martial arts themes has led a small but growing number to begin reconstructing, or imagining, the forgotten martial arts of the West. And science fiction, by its nature, has had to equip itself with a full toolkit for dealing with alien cultures, mindsets and landscapes.
Which is exactly how the creators of “300” approach the Spartans and the Persians. The only people in the film who don’t seem as if they came from another planet are the Arcadians (non-Spartan Greeks), who turn tail once the battle becomes hopeless.
Classics-based sci-fi is nothing new. To name the most recent of many examples, the novelist Dan Simmons published “Ilium” and “Olympos,” science-fictional takes on Homer. When science fiction tackles classical themes, the results may look a bit odd to some, but the audience — which is increasingly the mainstream audience — is sufficiently hungry for this kind of material (and, perhaps, suspicious of anything that’s overly polished) that it is willing to overlook the occasional mistake, or make up for it by shouting hilarious things from the balcony. These people don’t need irony or campiness self-consciously pointed out to them, any more than they need a laugh track to enjoy “The Simpsons.”
The Spartan phalanx presents itself to foes as a wall of shields, bristling with spears, its members squatting behind their defenses, anonymous and unknowable, until they break formation and stand out alone, practically naked, soft, exposed and recognizable as individuals.
The audience members watching them play the same game: media-weary, hunkered down behind thick irony, flinging verbal jabs at the screen — until they see something that moves them. Then they’ll come out and feel. But at the first hint of politics, they’ll jump back behind their shield-wall, just like the Spartans when millions of Persian arrows blot out the sun, and wait until the noise stops.
Neal Stephenson is the author, most recently, of “The System of the World,” the last book of “The Baroque Cycle” trilogy.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Zinesters and Underground Writers Take Note --
There's no reason why The Whirliblog shouldn't be all about underground writers. How many blogs cover this area? Desperately few.
That is what TW will be dedicated to. If you have any info about yourself, authors you know and like, or if you are a small publisher with any info about underground writers, send it my way. (Big publishers need not apply.)
The Whirliblog is also a part of the The Guild Of Outsider Writers, and will highlight the actions of that group, of which I am a founding member.
So send me any news you may have of undergrounders, but remember: I'm not looking for glitzy gossip items, to turn this into another frothy litblog, beholden to corporate publishers and making a big deal about yet another interview with already overexposed writers. News, entertainment and support for underground writers is the goal.
Friday, March 16, 2007
We'll Be Open All Night For Your Pleasure
The Guild of Outsider Writers will soon be with you to change the way you think about underground writers and writing. Our edge won't make you bleed, but will give you a chance to sharpen your own. What you do from there is up to you.
The Guild of Outsider Writers will soon be with you to change the way you think about underground writers and writing. Our edge won't make you bleed, but will give you a chance to sharpen your own. What you do from there is up to you.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Saturday, September 16, 2006
FORMER PROFESSIONAL LITERARY AGENT FOUND IN LOVE NEST WITH "WRITER"! SHOCKINGLY ARE SAME PERSON!
The Areas Of My Expertise by John Hodgman
A Book Review by J.D. Finch
Mr. Hodgman, with this item, has produced what he chooses to call a "book" and has finally cleared the air about the hightop waders that I and other sportsman like to don to go perambulating through crystal clear streams where we pull our near brainless scaley dinners-to-be out with line and pole.
While this "fishing" is "a good thing to do" as a much better writer than Mr. Hodgman, Ernest Hemingway...Ernest-O to his strapping Cuban pool boy...said in so many exotic and accented words so the lad could understand, we should not expect the quality of writing of EH from the nonbooted Hodgman, since, as legend has it, he is more a former lit agent than a writer in the mold of writers. (As Ms. Stein would surely say if she were here, on what is loosely referred to as "The Earth" in Mr. Hodgman's "book.")
Even though for a time Mr. Hodgman and I traveled in the same literary circles, I never laid eyes on the guy and fully believe that he was avoiding me and the inevitable question that writers of Mr. Hodgman's stripe dread, ie, "So what's on the back burner?" ("Bigger" writers than Mr. Hodgman, like David Foster Wallace, might have a $8.00 per pound crustacean happily (or not) boiling away on that burner, while the humble Mr. Hodman might be found frying up a perch or even a "crappy.") Hopefully Mr. Hodgman will cover this question in his follow-up to TAOME.
True, he nearly answers this traffic-stopping question in TAOME when he lays out his expertised skivvies and grabs the bull by the horns, giving us all a good view of what he considers both "areas" and "expertise" as they appear in the title, and offered to his grateful readers -- it is said -- by way of his expert brain. But surely here he is actually dealing with "front-burner" material.
But I fear some folks who were taken in by Mr. Hodgman's sometimes "Aw shucks," at others "F*** you" humor, expected a gay excursion along a Robert Benchleyesque Roundtable of hot wit and incisive bon mots, which in fact, paradoxically, is exactly what we get. And as advertised.
JDF
(NB All the above was just an aside -- as isn't most knowledge just that on your trip to becoming whatever your calling (be it high-falutin' expert like Mr. Hodgman or low laborer, like someone called "Ace" or something) is? Or as the blue collared "Aces" among us would have it, "life's a bitch, then you die." But then again, anyone reading this is a more advanced reader than that -- or so would say Mr. Hodgman, who happily or sadly -- weather permitting -- considers himself an expert on such things.)
The Areas Of My Expertise by John Hodgman
A Book Review by J.D. Finch
Mr. Hodgman, with this item, has produced what he chooses to call a "book" and has finally cleared the air about the hightop waders that I and other sportsman like to don to go perambulating through crystal clear streams where we pull our near brainless scaley dinners-to-be out with line and pole.
While this "fishing" is "a good thing to do" as a much better writer than Mr. Hodgman, Ernest Hemingway...Ernest-O to his strapping Cuban pool boy...said in so many exotic and accented words so the lad could understand, we should not expect the quality of writing of EH from the nonbooted Hodgman, since, as legend has it, he is more a former lit agent than a writer in the mold of writers. (As Ms. Stein would surely say if she were here, on what is loosely referred to as "The Earth" in Mr. Hodgman's "book.")
Even though for a time Mr. Hodgman and I traveled in the same literary circles, I never laid eyes on the guy and fully believe that he was avoiding me and the inevitable question that writers of Mr. Hodgman's stripe dread, ie, "So what's on the back burner?" ("Bigger" writers than Mr. Hodgman, like David Foster Wallace, might have a $8.00 per pound crustacean happily (or not) boiling away on that burner, while the humble Mr. Hodman might be found frying up a perch or even a "crappy.") Hopefully Mr. Hodgman will cover this question in his follow-up to TAOME.
True, he nearly answers this traffic-stopping question in TAOME when he lays out his expertised skivvies and grabs the bull by the horns, giving us all a good view of what he considers both "areas" and "expertise" as they appear in the title, and offered to his grateful readers -- it is said -- by way of his expert brain. But surely here he is actually dealing with "front-burner" material.
But I fear some folks who were taken in by Mr. Hodgman's sometimes "Aw shucks," at others "F*** you" humor, expected a gay excursion along a Robert Benchleyesque Roundtable of hot wit and incisive bon mots, which in fact, paradoxically, is exactly what we get. And as advertised.
JDF
(NB All the above was just an aside -- as isn't most knowledge just that on your trip to becoming whatever your calling (be it high-falutin' expert like Mr. Hodgman or low laborer, like someone called "Ace" or something) is? Or as the blue collared "Aces" among us would have it, "life's a bitch, then you die." But then again, anyone reading this is a more advanced reader than that -- or so would say Mr. Hodgman, who happily or sadly -- weather permitting -- considers himself an expert on such things.)
Thursday, August 24, 2006
www.whirligigzine.com Coming Soon!
And there will not only be literature there, but cool stories about literature.
In case you don’t know, literature is not something that you earn, or work for.
Literature is something that you have to do, so you do it.
Are you a good enough writer to produce literature? I won’t dignify that rhetorical question with a response. (Right there are two sentences, that, while attaining a tone of irony together, may create an effect that might be construed as merely stupid by those not ironically attuned. I don't really know.)
I’m sure there is a difference between literature and writing, but since I am a writer, I don’t know exactly what it is. Perhaps if I were a "literati" I could be of more assistance in this area. (But I still might not tell you if I did know.)
Anyway. There will be writing presented. If you think it is literature, well that's fine.
If you have some writing that you have produced and would like to try to have it appear on one of the Whirligig sites, or in the print edition, you can send it to me. If you're not sure if your writing is actual literature, well, join the club.
And remember that in this case I am the club's president.
And there will not only be literature there, but cool stories about literature.
In case you don’t know, literature is not something that you earn, or work for.
Literature is something that you have to do, so you do it.
Are you a good enough writer to produce literature? I won’t dignify that rhetorical question with a response. (Right there are two sentences, that, while attaining a tone of irony together, may create an effect that might be construed as merely stupid by those not ironically attuned. I don't really know.)
I’m sure there is a difference between literature and writing, but since I am a writer, I don’t know exactly what it is. Perhaps if I were a "literati" I could be of more assistance in this area. (But I still might not tell you if I did know.)
Anyway. There will be writing presented. If you think it is literature, well that's fine.
If you have some writing that you have produced and would like to try to have it appear on one of the Whirligig sites, or in the print edition, you can send it to me. If you're not sure if your writing is actual literature, well, join the club.
And remember that in this case I am the club's president.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Musical Notes From Underground
While the zine incarnation of The Whirligig is dedicated to fiction and poetry, here at the blog there is no reason why we can't cover anything in the arts and present it in essays, reviews, blurbs or any other form as the mood strikes.
So in that spirit, here is a review of Next, a music CD by Hunkasaurus and His Pet Dog Guitar (www.hunkasaurus.com) aka Tom Hendricks of long-running zine Musea (www.musea.us), of which Next is a CD version. (TH = a composition by Tom.)
Songs 1-3 (Anytime at All, For Pete's Sake and How Do You Do It) Homages to a watershed period in pop music, the British Invasion of the early 60's. Tom does this stuff well.
Song 4 (Fully Automated TH) Nice short interlude instrumental. Somehow reminded me of Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive".
Song 5 (Not Fade Away) I would have preferred a bit more grit in the performance, but there's a nice twist in his "come-on/come-on" as the guitar seems to make a move of its own -- with a mind of its own.
Song 6 (Lovin' You) A Presley chestnut that didn't do too much for me here.
Song 7 (That Means A Lot) Tom has a good feel for Beatlesesque pop and as this was written by Lennon/McCartney he's on firm ground. Enjoyable.
Song 8 (Modern Art TH) Bert Jansch type melodic acoustic guitar song.
Song 9 (Secret Agent Man) Cleverly adds the James Bond guitar riff; but what happened to the third verse?
Song 10 (140 MPH TH) Simply a well-crafted pop song. Like the songs from the group America (Ventura Highway, Sister Goldenhair, etc.) that you liked in spite of yourself, it just has something.
Song 11 (I'm Alive TH) Simple in all ways: Lyric, melody and arrangement all serve the purpose of the song. Referencing Thoreau, it makes the most basic statement of existence: I'm alive.
Song 12 (Sleepwalk) With Kazoo!
Song 13 (Windy) Serviceable rendition, but I'm not a fan of the song.
Song 14 (I Will) Interesting/different arrangment of this song from "The White Album". Good double tracked vocal.
Song 15 (Grand Sweep TH) Another good change-up piece that moves things along nicely. If this CD were Sgt. Pepper's this song would be Fixing A Hole.
Song 16 (Shake, Shout, and Go TH) Good boogie based riff. This song is the definition of "catchy" and seems happy to exist just for that.
Song 17 (Harmonics TH) Tom says goodbye with a little acoustic music of the spheres.
While the zine incarnation of The Whirligig is dedicated to fiction and poetry, here at the blog there is no reason why we can't cover anything in the arts and present it in essays, reviews, blurbs or any other form as the mood strikes.
So in that spirit, here is a review of Next, a music CD by Hunkasaurus and His Pet Dog Guitar (www.hunkasaurus.com) aka Tom Hendricks of long-running zine Musea (www.musea.us), of which Next is a CD version. (TH = a composition by Tom.)
Songs 1-3 (Anytime at All, For Pete's Sake and How Do You Do It) Homages to a watershed period in pop music, the British Invasion of the early 60's. Tom does this stuff well.
Song 4 (Fully Automated TH) Nice short interlude instrumental. Somehow reminded me of Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive".
Song 5 (Not Fade Away) I would have preferred a bit more grit in the performance, but there's a nice twist in his "come-on/come-on" as the guitar seems to make a move of its own -- with a mind of its own.
Song 6 (Lovin' You) A Presley chestnut that didn't do too much for me here.
Song 7 (That Means A Lot) Tom has a good feel for Beatlesesque pop and as this was written by Lennon/McCartney he's on firm ground. Enjoyable.
Song 8 (Modern Art TH) Bert Jansch type melodic acoustic guitar song.
Song 9 (Secret Agent Man) Cleverly adds the James Bond guitar riff; but what happened to the third verse?
Song 10 (140 MPH TH) Simply a well-crafted pop song. Like the songs from the group America (Ventura Highway, Sister Goldenhair, etc.) that you liked in spite of yourself, it just has something.
Song 11 (I'm Alive TH) Simple in all ways: Lyric, melody and arrangement all serve the purpose of the song. Referencing Thoreau, it makes the most basic statement of existence: I'm alive.
Song 12 (Sleepwalk) With Kazoo!
Song 13 (Windy) Serviceable rendition, but I'm not a fan of the song.
Song 14 (I Will) Interesting/different arrangment of this song from "The White Album". Good double tracked vocal.
Song 15 (Grand Sweep TH) Another good change-up piece that moves things along nicely. If this CD were Sgt. Pepper's this song would be Fixing A Hole.
Song 16 (Shake, Shout, and Go TH) Good boogie based riff. This song is the definition of "catchy" and seems happy to exist just for that.
Song 17 (Harmonics TH) Tom says goodbye with a little acoustic music of the spheres.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
FILF
The reborn print version of The Whirligig, the much beloved litzine ("For all its modest, zeeny presentation, THE WHIRLIGIG is one of the most important lit journals being produced in this country." King Wenclas) will make its re-appearance at Wred Fright's F Independent Literary Festival (FILF), presented by The Underground Literary Alliance in Cleveland this July. If you can't make it and want a copy, full of great stuff from Wred, poet Frank Walsh, Canadian novelist Leopold McGinnis and others, you know who to call. (jdfin2@hotmail.com)
The reborn print version of The Whirligig, the much beloved litzine ("For all its modest, zeeny presentation, THE WHIRLIGIG is one of the most important lit journals being produced in this country." King Wenclas) will make its re-appearance at Wred Fright's F Independent Literary Festival (FILF), presented by The Underground Literary Alliance in Cleveland this July. If you can't make it and want a copy, full of great stuff from Wred, poet Frank Walsh, Canadian novelist Leopold McGinnis and others, you know who to call. (jdfin2@hotmail.com)
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