Remembering my friend, David Thompson

In the small world of independent bookstores that cater exclusively to mystery fiction, Houston has a jewel in Murder by the Book. For thirty years, the good folks at Murder by the Book have extolled the wonders and magic of mystery fiction. Every one of the folks who have worked at Murder by the Books loves the genre and can talk endlessly about their favorite book, author, or character. But I've never known anyone so exuberant about crime fiction than David Thompson.

What's great about the people who work at Murder by the Book is the diversity of opinion and interest amid the wide spectrum of mystery fiction. While David was a fan of just about any genre, he held a special place in his heart for old school hard-boiled stories. It's one of the reasons why the Hard Case Crime series is prominently displayed very close to the register. Over these past two years as I underwent my own personal education into hard-boiled fiction, David was a guide. He told me his favorites among the Hard Case Crime line and, sure enough, they are among the best of the bunch. More than once I'd stop in the store and ask his opinion about some new titles as well as get his input on older names I'd run across in my crime safari. Just talking with him, hearing him get excited at my journey, knowing that I was reading one of his favorites for the first time, you couldn't help but smile and get excited yourself. I couldn't wait to get home to start reading. His passion was infectious.

Most importantly is that he remembered me. He learned my name, knew my interests, and had suggestions whenever I went to the store. Every now and then, he'd drop me an e-mail or hold a collection of newly arrived used books, giving me first crack. He knew that I had a blog and took the time to read the posts and comment on them. In this modern world where most of us are nameless, walking into Murder by the Book and having David greet me by name meant something. On some days, it almost felt like he was my personal bookseller.

As the day progressed and my thoughts kept returning to David amid my day job deadlines, I grew troubled. I knew David only as a bookseller and fellow mystery book fan. We never went out to a bar after an author signing (although he invited me). We never exchanged Christmas gifts or wished each other well at the holidays. And, yet, the loss leaves a hole in my life. My loss is minuscule to that of his wife, McKenna, and the others in the Murder by the Book family. But it is a loss. I wondered if just being a fan of crime fiction was enough to constitute a friendship. Have I lost a friend?

Leave it to my wife to reveal the truth. When I called her this afternoon to let her know about David's passing, the first words out of her mouth was, "Isn't that your friend at the bookstore?"

Yes, David Thompson was my friend. And boy am I going to miss him.

Houston Texans Haiku: Week 1 vs. Colts

First drive, third quarter
got the monkey off our backs.
Can we keep it off?

Indianapolis Colts - 24
Houston Texans - 34

Can't say enough how much I was looking forward to Houston Texans football and this game. I know it's only one game, but boy! What a game!

Book Review Club: Dr. No by Ian Fleming

(This is the September 2010 contribution to Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For more great books, click the link at the bottom of this post.)

In a year where we should be looking forward to the new James Bond film, we have nothing. The next new James Bond novel--written by none other than Jeffrey Deaver--is almost a year away. If you wanted a Bond fix, you could easily break out a DVD or check cable TV but, perhaps, some of the films have staled after repeated viewings. Then I have the remedy for you: read one of Ian Fleming's original Bond novels.

With only fourteen published works, I try to pace my reading of the Fleming stories, not wanting them to end as I enjoy them so much. I've been reading them in published order and this summer, I got up to book #6, Dr. No. Interestingly, Dr. No is the first Bond film and I've seen it enough times to know the general story. What the movie lacks, however, is the uncertainty that permeates the beginning of the story.

The last book, From Russia With Love, ended with 007 getting himself poisoned by Rosa Klebb's hidden shoe blade. As Dr. No opens, Bond is given the "easy" task of investigating the seeming disappearance of the head of the Jamaica branch of the secret service, Strangways. Had you read the books in order, this is a reappearance for Strangways, having helped Bond in the second literary adventure, Live and Let Die. Bond's boss, M, frankly doesn't think Bond is ready and thinks this "rest case" will do 007 some good. No one expects what Bond uncovers.

Like the film, the literary version of Dr. No has a slower pace, not all action-packed like the later movies. Bond actually does some detective work and gets himself quite dirty, another fun trait of the literary incarnation. The novel, written in 1958, is full of the type of hard-boiled language and prose befitting a story of this era. It's a reminder of Bond's true pulp origins.

The movie has arguably the most iconic shot in all the Bond canon: that of Honey Ryder, as portrayed by Ursula Andress, rising from the beach, clad in a skin-tight bikini. Well, she's flat-out naked in the book. You can see why they could not do that scene in the 1962 film. Her backstory is fleshed out and, while its interesting, it isn't exactly fascinating. Bond's repeated reference to her as "girl"--she really is years younger than Bond's thirtysomething--puts a bit of distaste on the tongue. Yes, it's a book of its time, but it still grates.

The big finale in the book is nothing like the film. In fact, as Bond struggled through the Big Scenes in the novel, I kept waiting for the filmed version to show up. It never does, and that is one of the biggest treats about reading Fleming's original books. For every faithful version (From Russia With Love), there is a Dr. No or, more specifically, a Moonraker or Diamonds are Forever.

I can easily recommend any of the Bond books to any fan of 007 or the spy genre in particular. They are great fun and a nice peek in the origins of one of the most famous characters of the 20th Century.

Oh, and that reading pace I mentioned earlier? I enjoyed Dr. No so much that I chucked the one-book-a-year pace out the window and plunged directly into book #7, Goldfinger. But that's for another review...

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Forgotten Music: August 2010 - The Summary

Thanks to all who participated.

• Sean Coleman – Jack Bruce – Songs for a Tailor
• Bill Crider – Ral Donner
• Chad Eagleton – The Blasters
• Martin Edwards – Ask Yourself Why
  
• Randy Johnson – Quiet Riot: The Randy Rhodes Years
  
• George Kelley – Hit man by David Foster and Friends
  
• Evan Lewis – Uriah Heep
  
• Todd Mason – Blue Rose by Blue Rose; Life of the Party by Mary Fleener
  
• Scott D. Parker – Two Men and the Blues by Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis
  
• Perplexio – The Cruel Sea – The Honeymoon is Over
  
• Eric Peterson – The Groovie Ghoulies “World Contact Day”
  
• Charlie Ricci – Voice by Alison Moyet

Special Note: Today is twentieth anniversary of the death of Texas guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn. I first learned who he was in listening to David Bowie's 1983 album "Let's Dance." SRV's unique sound is what, to me, makes "China Girl" such a good song. Of all the musicians Texas has produced--country, rock, rap, swing, whatever--if I had to pick one artist and one sound to explain how Texas *sounded*, it would be SRV.

Until the next Forgotten Music Thursday on 30 September...

Forgotten Music: Two Men and the Blues by Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis

I know what you’re thinking? Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis? Together? I thought the same thing, too. Look, we're talking about Willie Nelson, the Texas troubadour who will duet with, well, just about anyone who asks. And then there’s Wynton Marsalis, the jazz purist—puritan?—who disdained even his brother, Branford, for touring with Sting back in the 1980s. How in the world did these two get together?

Upon closer inspection, the pairing is not as far from left field as you might think. Nelson has covered everything including reggae (yeah, really) but one of his biggest albums was Stardust (1978), an album of standards from the Great American Songbook, that helped to define what Nelson does best: blend many varied genres and elements to create something different, if not original. Marsalis, in the meantime, has spent the bulk of his career bringing back the prominence of acoustic jazz, the jazz before Miles Davis “corrupted” the genre by plugging in and going electric. And Marsalis succeeded, reminding folks (and record executives) that traditional jazz can be good and make money at the same time. The songs Marsalis used to usher in the Young Lions movement in jazz were those from The Great American Songbook.

Beyond the two men drinking from the same well of music, look at their backgrounds. They are both southerners, Nelson from Texas and Marsalis from New Orleans. Southern music is a smorgasbord of sounds and influences. Gospel, blues, jazz, bluegrass, folk, country, Texas swing, and more all can be found in almost any song by a southerner. So it was, two southerners and their band members went up to New York and recorded a concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

"Two Men and the Blues" is a live recording. It serves the music well because, I think, the perfection of a studio would have lessened the impact and spontaneity of the performance. You get the sense that these seven men are not on a stage at a prestigious concert hall but in the drummer’s garage. It’s a Saturday night, it’s hot, the door’s open, the beer getting warm in the ice chest full of melting ice, and these guys are just jammin’ for no other reason that they love music.

“Bright Lights Big City” kicks off the set. Wynton’s band—he brought himself on trumpet, Walter Blanding (sax), Carlos Henriquez (bass), Dan Nimmer (piano), and Ali Jackson (drums)—sets up the nice lilting shuffle feel. Mickey Raphael’s harmonica is also there, adding that certain flourish that only a harmonica can. All the instrumentalists take a turn at soloing, even Nelson on guitar. You know going into this recording that Wynton’s band is top notch. If you thought there might be a weak link, it was going to be Nelson’s guitar playing. I was interested in hearing if Nelson took a turn on soloing. He did, and, while it’s not superb, this is the type of song where fancy pyrotechnics are out of place. So Nelson did just fine.

The longer you listen to this recording, you realize how close the phrasing of Nelson’s vocals and his guitar really are. His Martin nylon-string guitar does not hold the sustain like a steel-string guitar. Nelson usually compensates by repeatedly striking whichever string he’s playing. But on this recording, he doesn’t do that a lot. He lets the struck string fade when it wants to, much like his voice. Nelson is not a singer who can hold a note for a long phrase. Where a singer like, say, Sinatra, would carry his phrasing past the four-measure break, Nelson breaks his vocal phrasing short. As a result, there are usually more silences in a Nelson tune. That’s his style and it really works in this set.

“Night Life” is one of those tracks where you imagine it being played in a late-night jazz club, after midnight but before closing time, the smoke hanging low from the ceiling, all but the die-hards have gone home. It’s the time of night for the faithful, the friends, and for the girls in the audience who want to date a jazz performer. Wynton’s trumpet shines here, opening the track with a long solo that sets the down tempo mood. But it’s his flutter sound during the chorus that really takes the roof off. Out of nowhere, it blasts above Nelson’s vocals. And Willie brings out a better solo on guitar, a nice, soft theme that put my worries about his abilities to rest. He also played a good melody on “Basin Street Blues.”

Since Stardust is still one of Nelson’s most famous records, you knew the band was going to cover some of those songs. They do the title track and, of course, “Georgia, On My Mind.” "Stardust" has a beautiful, lush tenor sax solo, the kind where you can hear the air passing over the reed in the lower register, a nuance that, for me, a sax player, I love. “Georgia” starts off showcasing Nelson’s vocals as the centerpiece but the soloist shine just as brightly. Marsalis’s wah-wah trumpet wails, Raphael’s harmonica sings, and Nimmer’s piano playing bring a new, but slower, energy to this song. If I had to pick a definitive version of this song as sung by Nelson, it would be this one.

When you listen to the record start to finish, it’s at this point where the audience and the band start to let loose. From the band side, this is the first tune where you can hear Nelson compliment his fellow players during the song. From the audience, they knew the song as it began and they cheered audibly at its conclusion. I could say the audience was polite but tepid in their applause at the beginning of the set. Perhaps they, like new listeners, don’t know what to make of this seemingly strange pairing. By the end of “Georgia,” they knew they were a part of something special. And they let the band know it. For the rest of the set, you can hear cat calls from the audience as they get into the spirit of the night.

An old Hank Williams tune, “My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It,” has the vibe of the New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band, complete with a squeaky clarinet and a drum solo, greeted with whistles and cheers of the audience. They cheer Nelson’s best guitar solo in Cole Porter’s “Ain’t Nobody’s Business. ” They laugh as Wynton brings his only vocal performance on this song, telling Nelson and the audience all the things he might do that are, you guessed it, nobody’s business. The set closes with “That’s All,” a fast blues shuffle where everybody has their last chance to shine. Amid the audience clapping along (wonder if they were standing?), you get a taste of the power of Wynton’s trumpet as he let’s loose with one of his famous long notes, high and a little dirty.

By the end, the band and the audience have relaxed and just let the night sweep them away. And we as listeners can get a taste of what it was like those two nights at Lincoln Center. When performances like this crop up, my immediate impulse is to want more of it. Sometimes, the sequel does not live up to the promise of the original. In this case, however, another CD would be more than welcome. And I’d love to see the band perform down in Austin at the South by Southwest or on Austin City Limits.

I love it when two musicians realize that there are more things that unite them in their approaches to music rather than things that divide them. It reminds you that music is universal and can bring just about anyone together. And, if the results of unique pairings are like that of this CD—where you can’t help but smile and tap your foot—it really is lightening in a bottle.

Forgotten Music: August 2010

Welcome to the August 2010 edition of the Forgotten Music Project. Inspired by Patti Abbott's Forgotten Book Friday series, here we examine music that has fallen off the public's radar or other music that never made a blip. We're doing this on a once-a-month basis, the last Thursday of every month. Aside from my own entry, here's today's line-up:

Sean Coleman
Bill Crider
Chad Eagleton
Martin Edwards
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Evan Lewis
Todd Mason
Perplexio
Eric Peterson
Charlie Ricci
Ray Foster

If I have missed your name or got the wrong address, let me know and I'll fix it here and for future months. Anyone can join: just let me know here in the comments section, by e-mail, or in the comments section of my entry that you'd like to join in next month and I'll add you to the list.

Forgotten Music: August 2010 - Call for Entries

Hello all. This Thursday, 26 August, is the August 2010 edition of the Forgotten Music Project.

I've had some inquiries whether or not we're doing it this month. Yes! I just hadn't put up this call for entries since I was dealing with some other stuff.

Bring on the forgotten music. Here's the usual rundown: I'll post links on Thursday to everyone who posted in July. If you have the time, great. If you can't make it, you can either let me know before Thursday (and I'll remove your name) or not not (whereby readers can jump to your blog and read your latest entry). If you want to join and you haven't posted before, just let me know and I'll get your name on the list for Thursday morning. As usual, I"ll do a summary at the end of the day.

Looking forward to everyone's entries.

Book Review Club: Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

(This is the August 2010 edition of Barrie Summy’s Book Review Club. For more reviews, click the icon at the end of this post.)

To paraphrase Anthony Bourdain (and make him roll his eyes were he to read this), as soon as I finished Kitchen Confidential, I wanted more. I am not the person for whom he wrote that book, published in 2000. By his own admission, he wrote that book for a select group and hoped for moderate success. What resulted is a ten-year run that brought the profane writer-chef international recognition and a devoted fans by people like me: foodies. I devoured the book and enjoyed it a great deal.

I love his Travel Channel program, No Reservations, and delight as he waxes rhapsodic on the wonderful deliciousness of dead animals, mainly porcine. I sometimes hang on his every word. I have made local excursions around Houston, all inspired by things he likes. He is easily my favorite of the television chef personalities.

So it was with great enthusiasm that I awaited this summer’s new book, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook. It’s a sequel of sorts to Kitchen Confidential. With the first book, Bourdain was a working chef who also wrote and did no television. Medium Raw sees his transition from a working chef to a television personality and celebrity chef, a personage he often derides. He discusses that aspect of his schtick in the new book as well as the genesis of his hatred for Food Network, selling out, and that thing about fish on Mondays.

As Bourdain said in the 100th episode of No Reservations this past Monday, he writes like he speaks, and he speaks profanely. This book isn’t for the meek or for folks who are easily offended. While I no longer speak like that, his sailor’s language makes for some mighty funny passages, none of which I can quote here.

To get the Full Bourdain, you simply must hear the audiobook version. Like Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain reads Medium Raw with joy and relish. He’s able to emphasize an F-bomb here or a put down there. The book was published in June and I patiently waited for the audio version to show up on Audible.com in July. It’s more than worth the wait.

For all the chef-talk and foodie wisdom Bourdain sprinkles throughout the book, it’s his discussion of his only child that softens his edge and lessens the acerbic tone of his voice. As a man who never thought he’d be a father, parenthood has changed him. Mostly. A parent myself, I know what being a dad can do to a man. It’s really cool to hear Bourdain talk about what fatherhood means to him.

If you enjoy celebrity chefs and their programs and books, Anthony Bourdain’s newest non-fiction book certainly belongs on your shelf. Besides, the man can write*. You’ll notice there isn’t a semi-hidden co-author. This is Bourdain, sauteed in a reduction of his own prose. My only hope is that he doesn’t wait another ten years until he writes his next book.

*The 100th episode of No Reservations shows lots of footage from a documentary about Bourdain filmed in 2000. Surprisingly, in scenes showing him typing at his keyboard, he doesn’t type with all ten fingers. As best I could make out, he uses four: three on his right hand, one (index) on his left. Maybe that’s why it takes so long for him to write books on cooking.

Note: Famously, Bourdain’s mission statement is boiled down to this: I write. I eat. I travel. And I’m hungry for more. I tried my hand at my own Bourdain Quatrain: I love. I read. I write. And I'm eager to turn the next page. To see how I arrived at it, go here.

What might yours be?

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Beat to a Pulp - The Cover!

I am already honored to be a part of the inaugural anthology from Beat to a Pulp. If I wasn't already jazzed at having one of my stories stand alongside tales from such stand-out names like Ardai, Gorman, and Reasoner, I need only look at the cover. Holy moly, that's an awesome cover.

What I really dig are the frayed edges. That's the kind of detail that brings home the feel of this collection.

Keep an ear cocked next month for when I get my copy, you're gonna hear a peal of excitement coming from Houston! Then you'll hear silence because I'll be devouring this baby.

Forgotten Music: July 2010 - The Summary

Thanks to all who participated.

• Sean Coleman – Art Garfunkel, Watermark
• Bill Crider – Stonewall Jackson
• Martin Edwards – Loneliness Remembers
• Randy Johnson – Ratt
• Todd Mason – Maggie and Terre Roche, Seductive Reasoning
• Scott Parker – Bruce Springsteen, Lucky Town
• Perplexio – Bill Champlin, Runaway (a Chicago-related post)
• Eric Peterson – Mother Love Bone, Apple
• Charlie Ricci – Robert Lamm, Leap of Faith (a second Chicago-related post!)

See everyone back on 26 August.

Forgotten Music: Lucky Town by Bruce Springsteen

I came late to the party. I'll admit that right now. During the heyday of Bruce mania (1975; 1984-85), I not only missed the boat, I didn't even want to get on. I couldn't stand him. I was too young for the "Born to Run" craze and was too enthralled in other 1980s-era Top 40 music to care about that guy who sounded constipated when he belted out "Born in the U.S.A." I mean, come on, the video juxtaposed live concert footage with the album-version of the song...and they didn't match. How dumb was that?

Cut to 1989, the year after the release of "Tunnel of Love," and my then-girlfriend gives me a copy of ToL. I listened and I paused. Hey, this ain't bad. Granted, it's not your typical Bruce cassette what with its talk of love and stuff, but it's good. I get to thinking: hey, maybe Born in the USA was actually okay. I bought it, listened to it, and liked it. Another influence in my Springsteen awakening was the books of Stephen King. There was a stretch there where ever book had at least one character comment on Springsteen. I listened to more records, bought more, liked more. When he disbanded the E Street Band, I was so unaware of Bruce's history (that he'd record his own songs sans band) that I worried that I'd never get a chance to see him live, much less get a new CD by him.

Then 1992 happened. As a new fan, I was beside myself that Bruce released not one but two CDs of music. Twenty-four songs. I was in heaven. As a result of this tortured route to Springsteen nirvana, the CDs that long-time fans think of with only a passing thought are the same CDs that have a special place in my heart. In the eighteen years since their release, Human Touch and Lucky Town have gone everywhere I've gone. But only one of them has aged particularly well.

Lucky Town is the most Springsteenian of the two CDs. Sonically, Human Touch is a direct descendant of the Born in the USA sessions with a focus on love more than any previous CD. Normally, listeners get the 'falling in love' CD and then the heartbreak CD. Not so Springsteen. Tunnel of Love was the cheating record, questioning his feelings and the efficacy of love itself. Then, Bruce falls in love, deeper than before, and writes a collection of songs about it. That's the bulk of Human Touch.

But Lucky Town shows the old Bruce reemerging, the disillusioned one, the one who doesn't want to believe in love--because the world is just too damn hard--but does so anyway. "Better Days," one of the two singles released in 1992 ("Human Touch" was the other) kicks off the CD with a rim shot and power chord you could put down in the rock-and-roll Bible. What makes Springsteen unique when it comes to love songs is the types of couplets he chooses. This ain't some 70s-era flowery, string-laden love song. This is the real world, and the real world brings with it bumps and bruises as well as the redemptive power of love. Witness the first verse:

Well my soul checked out missing as I sat listening
To the hours and minutes tickin' away
Yeah, just sittin' around waitin' for my life to begin
While it was all just slippin' away.
I'm tired of waitin' for tomorrow to come
Or that train to come roarin' 'round the bend
I got a new suit of clothes a pretty red rose
And a woman I can call my friend

Who among us can't admit that there have been times when we've thought life was moving along underneath us while we're sitting still? I don't see any hands. But does Bruce mope? Naw. He gets his new skin ("suit of clothes"), a new lease on life ("pretty red rose"), and a friend with which to walk down the road of life. He takes control of his life, sloppy though it may be, but tells us all that he couldn't have done it without his wife.

It is this kind of sentiment that resonates throughout the music and words of Lucky Town. When it comes down to it, we are each responsible for ourselves. We can't blame anyone or anything for our choices because we all have choices to make. Some are good, some bad, but we have to live with the consequences. Four tracks later, the song "Leap of Faith" bursts out with a riff on the same theme. At first, Bruce sings "Oh heartbreak and despair got nothing but boring/So I grabbed you baby like a wild pitch" and then breaks into the chorus: "It takes a leap of faith to get things going/It takes a leap of faith you gotta show some guts/It takes a leap of faith to get things going/In your heart you must trust." Springsteen leaped...and landed on solid ground. And he brings with him the stories from both sides.

This isn't to say that there aren't challenges to overcome or a few you can't. Springsteen laments gang violence in his adopted hometown of LA in "Souls of the Departed." In fact, his response ("Tonight as I tuck my own son in bed/All I can think of is what if it would've been him instead/I want to build me a wall so high nothing can burn it down/Right here on my own piece of dirty ground") garnered some ire back in 1992. Sure, Bruce is rich enough to build those walls. How about the rest of us?

The highlight of CD for me is his most personal song, "Living Proof." And it's one of the greatest examples of Bruce adopting Gospel-tinged lyrics in his music. He talks about prayer, life, God, and everything else. His incorporation of religious-themed lyrics proved essential when he wrote 2002's “The Rising in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11. But they work well here, too. After his leap, after finding the right woman, he was still unsure. Like he sings, "In a world so hard and dirty so fouled and confused," he was "Searching for a little bit of God's mercy." He was searching for living proof. What was Bruce's problem? The same that many of us can related to, I expect.

I put my heart and soul I put 'em high upon a shelf
Right next to the faith the faith that I'd lost in myself
I went down into the desert city/Just tryin' so hard to shed my skin
I crawled deep into some kind of darkness
Lookin' to burn out every trace of who I'd been
You do some sad sad things baby/When it's your you 're tryin' to lose
You do some sad and hurtful things/I've seen living proof

The live version (which you can find on his 1992 CD “MTV Plugged: In Concert”--highly recommended for all versions of his new 1992 songs) blows your speakers out with its power.

What do you get after all of this suffering and self-awareness? The mountaintop. Having just come through the valley of darkness, through all the tribulations of his life since his career began, Springsteen tells of his "beautiful reward." His character is searching for his beautiful reward but Springsteen has found his: a loving wife, children, a house, and a good job. It don't get much better than that.

Lucky Town may not the best Bruce Springsteen CD out there, but it is worthy to stand alongside the great ones. Give it another listen or listen for the first time. And think about your own life. I'll bet you that at least one song from this collection will resonate with you. Find that song and add it to you Life's Playlist. You won't be disappointed.