Sunday, the 18th of June, 2006 We will publish again in a fortnight.
'She's looking for the music. She can hear it but she can't find it. There are candles everywhere. Some parts of the room are low-ceilinged and high-cushioned, just right for kissing and gossip and splitting a bottle. Some parts are ballroom-size. The floor slopes down, away from the stone ceiling. Dawn trips a little, blames the drink. The bass gongs through her blood, a fiddle skirls, the faraway downbeat (alone of a tinny fusillade) cracks two glasses touching, a false blow, ting! Not in this room. Nor the next.' -- Jennifer Stevenson's 'Solstice'
Nearly Midsummer, and life around the Green Man offices has started getting a little weird. Oh, all right, a little weirder. Zina Lee here, reporting in from the GMR building on abeautiful warm June day. I've been noticing that the young plants in the gardens and window boxes have started hitting their stride and the baskets outside the doors are approaching full speed on the floral display. But there's other stuff going on. The Midsummer Solstice is our namesake's time, sure, mischievous nature and all, but this is ridiculous. Things have been going missing a little more often; one puts something down and it disappears -- a week later, one finds it in a totally different room than the room from which it went missing. Poltergeists? The early onset of senile dementia? One of The Cats has developed opposable thumbs? Hmmmm. Inanimate objects -- computers, sound equipment, bicycles, you name it -- have started developing what might be called personalities, or perhaps a migration path. Surely that computer desktop was different yesterday when you put it to sleep, but you can't quite think how. One of Reynard's taps has gotten cranky (okay, so that's not all that unusual, but throw it in anyway) down in the Green Man Pub, and the musicians in the Neverending Session have recently started complaining of strings that won't stay in tune, cracks in previously entirely stable reeds (all right, pipers' complaints can't be called unusual either), and rosin going missing. And don't get me started on the kitchen staff complaints. Significantly, there've been some magnificent displays put on by lightning bugs in the gardens the last few evenings, and the cats have been very alert indeed. I suppose you could make a case for overflow of life-force, or biorhythms going off kilter, or just that the midsummer energy has gotten into us all (and the building). But I'm plumping for a slight rash of fairies. Mind you, not the tall, Seelie noble-looking fairy or elf of literary and celluloid fame, but the average, household, put-the-milk-out-in-a-saucer-so-we-don't-end-up-cursed-Mildred kind of fairy, common as measles. I can't be the only one who has suspicions. The woman on the flower and herb cart at the corner out front is completely out of St. John's Wort, rue, forget-me-not, rowan, and rosemary, and someone has risked the wrath of old Augustus, our concertina-playing gardener, by taking clippings off the young morning glory vines on the brick wall outside the kitchen garden. I even noticed a new horseshoe hanging up over the door of Gus's shed near the old stables the other day; I expect not so much for its luck, but for its iron. And now I'm wondering if it wasn't Gus who's been cleaning up the twigs under the rowan copse on the east side of the grounds. Mind, one wouldn't want to rid oneself totally of fairies. Besides the fact that they can be just as capriciously generous and benign as they can be suddenly irritable and malign, there's the wonder factor; life without them might be a bit too grey and predictable. Anyway, when odds and sods go missing, they make excellent scapegoats.
Paul Brandon has a new band, several novels underway, short stories to write, a theatre piece even prolly, and Jules, his lovely wife, is having 'a babbie' which is due in October, but he took time to write us a review of Lunasa's Se recording which just came out on Compass: 'I had to pause after I wrote that, because, as the cliche says, I still remember it like it was yesterday. The gig, at a now-extinct venue in Brisbane called the Bass Note, was an utter revelation for me. I refer to it as my 'Kick up the Pants' gig. I went mainly because of Trevor Hutchinson, and being a huge fan of the Waterboys I wasn't going to miss a chance to see him play. I'd heard of the other three members-- Kevin Crawford (although at that time everyone thought Kevin was Michael McGoldrick), Donogh Hennessy and Sean Smyth -- but didn't know too much about them. I came away stunned, shaken, rattled, and with a head full of musical monkeys from having just seen four lads perform in the most spectacular, precise, attention-demanding manner. Donogh Hennessy's powerhouse guitar style utterly changed the way I played the instrument, and in a very real sense, it's because of him and Lunasa that I play Irish music today. So Lunasa have a very special place in my record collection, not to mention my musical soul.' Read his Excellence in Writing Award winning review for why he likes this recording! Ahhhh, Hotel California. Remember these lyrics from The Eagles? 'On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair / Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air / Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light / My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim / I had to stop for the night / There she stood in the doorway; I heard the mission bell / And I was thinking to myself, ’this could be heaven or this could be hell’. Definitely a weird song befiitin' some very strange years! David Kidney looks at the book of the same name by Barney Hoskyns: 'Subtitled the true life adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and their many friends, Barney Hoskyns' Hotel California is exactly that: a chronicle of the heady days of the singer-songwriter era, when songs became diary entries, and radio listeners learned more about the artists' sex lives, drug use, and political interests than we had ever known before. Hoskyns captures them all, in all their egomaniacal glory!'Go ahead -- read it. Certainly it'll bring back memories of those days or your consciousness is even more, errrr, fried than mine is these days! Hugh Pope's Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World is the latest book about the Ottoman Turkish culture that Donna Bird has reviewed. In her view, it has a flawed thesis, to wit: 'My biggest complaint about Sons of the Conquerors, however, brings me full circle back to Pope's Turkic world thesis. If language is the primary link connecting these peoples, as Pope claims, then wouldn't it make sense to provide at least some explanation of the salient common characteristics of those languages? After a single paragraph in his Prologue, the only explicit reference to this is in an appendix of less than five pages in length. It's just not very convincing as the basis for his argument. Sons of the Conquerors certainly provokes thought about the many meanings of ethnicity. The real question it raised for me is this-how can people have an ethnic identity of which they are completely unaware? It's one thing for Turks living in Sofia or Berlin to stay in touch with relatives or to go 'home' to Turkey, but quite another for Uzbeks in Central Asia to feel any emotional ties to Istanbul.' Read her reasoning as to why Pope could have written a splendid book but didn't quite do so. Denise Dutton says Esther Friesner's Temping Fate is about a summer job of a very different nature: 'It's never any fun being different. Or is it? Ilana Newhouse feels out of place in her Connecticut hometown, and her attitude isn't exactly winning over prospective summer employers. But things start to look up for her when she arrives at the Divine Relief Temp Agency. Finally, she finds someone who is willing to give her a shot, so she decides to accept the offer; anything's better than the dull job her parents are sure to come up with if Ilana comes back empty-handed. But Ilana isn't going to have a typical summer employment experience. Her temp assignment is for the Fates, three women who literally have life and death in the palm of their hands (or rather, on spindles in the back room).' Grease Monkey is a forthcoming SF graphic novel from Tor that Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who edited it, is very enthusiastic about. So is April Gutierrez who reviewed it for us: 'Eldred's characters are charming and it's easy to get caught up in their stories (and all too easy to identify with Robin, an average guy who's good at his work, a pulp fiction novel fan . . . and abysmal at dealing with women). The female characters are pleasantly strong-willed without being harpies, a refreshing treat. Eldred's art is crisp and clean throughout, rendered in black and white. Not every panel has a background, but when they do, the attention to detail is first-rate. Eldred comments in the afterword that the 27 episodes were written across the span of a decade, which makes their consistency of tone and artistic style impressive indeed. And hopefully he'll produce more episodes over the next decade, to tell us more about this future Earth and the personalities he's populated it with.' Read her review to see why she came to that belief. R. Garcia y Robertson's Firebird gets reviewed by Lory Hess: 'In the land of Markovy, a fantastic version of medieval Russia, a young girl is raised by the ancient Bone Witch without knowledge of her parents, her birthday or her age. She has only her name, Aria, which she knows was given to her by her mother, and a small spell of invisibility, legacy of the Bone Witch. With this scant protection, and the love of a foreign mercenary, she embarks on a perilous quest to recover the Firebird's magic egg from the treasure vaults of the kings of Markovy, and return it to its nest. Thus, she hopes to lift the curse on a country threatened by civil war and invasion. Hm, sounds familiar . . . wasn't the Firebird theme used not long ago by Patricia McKillip in her In The Forests of Serre? Both books even have similar cover art by Kinuko Craft. And when Tartars, shamans, and airships crop up in Garcia y Robertson's world, I can't help thinking of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. ' Ok, so does Garcia y Robertson bring to this tale that makes it fresh and worth reading? Read her review for her answer to that question! In her second review, Lory looks at a book by a well respected author: 'In the midst of the Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) craze in the 1970's, Andre Norton published this novel set in the world of the TSR role-playing game --apparently the first such novel ever. Twenty-eight years later, D&D is still with us, surviving a revolution in gaming technology that one might have expected to crush such a low-tech relic of another age, and Tor has reissued Norton's Quag Keep in paperback, another expression of D&D's long-term appeal.' Does it work? Read her review to see if even the great Andre Norton can work within a gaming world and wrote more than pedestrian fiction. New reviewer Tiffany Matthews has at a series long on fun and short on seriousness: 'A recent trip to Key West gave me the opportunity to indulge in some disreputable literary fun, including openly sauntering around with seedy-looking novels, such as those in Kim Harrison's series about Rachel Morgan, 'a bounty hunter and witch with serious sex appeal and an attitude,' whose remit appeared to be stalking vampires while clad in impossibly snug black leather pants.' Read her review to see if this is the perfect summer reading for you! Once in a while, we do a review which is far less than up to our usual standards of excellence. Indeed we did, in the early years, some pretty piss poor reviews. So if we can get a fresh review copy from the publisher, we do a new review. And that's what we have this edition from Robert M. Tilendis in this review: 'I've been reading a lot of McKillip lately, and In the Forests of Serre is one of the most impressive of her books I've come across. She brings us her signature themes -- love, redemption, growth and maturation -- with a slightly different slant: identity, which is always under the surface of her work, here takes a prominent place, as Gyre becomes Ronan, Ronan becomes a Ferus in the making, and Sidonie herself dons a disguise to escape from Serre. The firebird and Brume seem to have no fixed identities, or at least the outward aspects of their personae are fluid, while the nameless monster insinuates itself into many of the characters.' Read his well-crafted and exceedingly thoughtful review to see why this is yet another McKillip novel which you should be reading! Poor Stefan Petrucha -- someday we'll like something he's written. We didn't particularly care for Kolchak, The Night Stalker: The Devil in the Details, nor does this work, Timetripper, Book One: Yestermorrow, fare any better as Elizabeth Vail notes here: 'In today's label-defined reading world, the category 'Young Adult' fiction has come to embody an unfair sort of stigma. Several engaging fantasy novels, series, and authors can be written off by careless readers, due to the fact that their books have been classified as Young Adult. The classification itself warns a potential reader (incorrectly) that the story contained within a YA novel's pages is juvenile, softer-edged, and toned down in order to accommodate the youthful and ignorant. Teenagers are a great deal smarter and more attuned to good writing then some adults give them credit for, and with that in mind, I highly suspect that few teenagers will be fooled into thinking that Timetripper, Book One: Yestermorrow is correctly written for their age group. Stefan Petrucha's method of writing for teenagers doesn't rely on evenly blending mixtures of adult fiction tropes with those aimed for the younger set, but on painful juxtapositions of adult violence and childish naïveté.' Ouch. Oh, go read her review -- you love a good thrashing as much as I do!
Senior Writer Peter Massey has been padding around Green Man Towers with a Cheshire Cat grin on his face. When asked the reason for this sudden transformation, he said it was the afterglow of attending the Chester Folk Festival. Not a wrong note was heard for the entire weekend, and Peter discovered a new love: Isambarde: 'If I were forced to pick just one of the guest artists and hand them the Grammy award for the best in the festival or the best newcomer, it would have to go to Isambarde, a relatively new three-piece band from the Coventry area. This band is on the way up at a meteoric pace! They have all the right ingredients, excellent musicians, excellent selection of traditional and contemporary material with superb, well thought-out arrangements, good stagecraft--they all really looked as if they were enjoying every minute of what they do, and they sing like real folkies! ...Their pleasing, bright arrangements have put 'fun' back into folk song. ...This environment usually sorts out the 'pigs from the onions', as you get the 'true' sound of the singer or band. I have to say they were brilliant!' Peter also has some very positive things to say about the other Festival performers -- Dick Gaughan, Steve Tilston, Back of The Moon, James Keelaghan, 422, Mick Ryan & Pete Harris, Keith Donnelly, Isambarde, Tom Napper & Tom Bliss, Cloud Street, and others. Go here to read his review. Mike Wilson was lucky enough to see his musical hero, Mary Black, and her son, emerging singer-songwriter, Danny O'Reilly at a recent concert in Manchester, England. O'Reilly, Mike reports, possesses a 'depth and maturity beyond his years.' Mary Black looked 'absolutely radiant and with a rejuvenated enthusiasm that was obvious from the very first song. It was a pleasant surprise to hear Mary playing mouth organ on the opening song; Noel Brazil's lively 'The Land of Love.' This renewed vigour was apparent throughout the concert and it was sheer joy to see Mary performing some of the more popular songs from her impressive back catalogue with such passion, almost as if she had only just discovered them.' To learn more about this 'mesmerising, accomplished performance,' click here.
SPike 'ere, after a long break. The biography is goin' @#$%in' badly! It's murder writin' 'bout yerself all the livelong day. I needed a break ta get down 'ere in the Green Man sub-basement. The HUB of musical noises of all descriptions! An' it certainly don't hurt that Dave's fridge is well-stocked with icy cold Guinness an' Boddingtons! I see that things 'aven't changed much since I wuz 'ere last. Ya still don't know whatcher gonna get so far as the CD offerin's are concerned. Some beauties this time, an' some quite nice writin' too. How do these blokes do it? First up a name I'm not familiar wif! Peter Bell! Welcome, Pete! He listens to a disc that 'as some appeal fer me! A re-issue of a 70s album by The JSD Band. The great lamented John Peel raved 'bout these guys! So too does Peter, 'Imagine The Faces playing folk music a la 'Full House' era Fairport Convention and singing in an impenetrable Scots accent and you should have a good idea of the rawness and vitality of this band at its best.' I'm still imagining the Faces playin' folk music...so you all go read the whole review here. Then old chum Tim Hoke (and Managing Editor) takes the first of several Excellence in Writing Awards for this week wif his fine review of The Red Clay Ramblers. He says this, 'A band's sound evolves, as new interests and new personnel enter. The Ramblers were no exception. It's the degree of change that makes this album such a surprise. If you want to hear an old-time string band, you won't hear it on this recording. You might, though, find that the band's new sound grows on you.' Always on the lookout fer new @#$%in' sounds? Read Tim's review! Me good mate David Kidney (Master Reviewer an' keeper of the key to the fridge) wuz groovin' to the sounds of ac stack of new blues CDs when I arrived last week. John Lee Hooker Jr., Guy Davis, Eddie Turner, Jeff Lang an' Cassandra Wilson wow, that's quite a bunch! David begins this way, 'I've said it before, and I'll say it again, there are all kinds of blues out there...slow blues...for some midnight grinding...fast and loud rockin' blues for perking you up out of a funk... acoustic blues...electric blues...gospel blues...folk blues, Chicago blues, Delta blues...more than 40 sub-genres! And anybody who tells you that these blues are all the same...well...he just doesn't get it. Look at these five new releases, each one identified as 'blues' but each one coming at the 12-bar structure from another place! Each one with something new to say.' Check it out, 'ere! Dave receives our second EIWA for 'is review of the schmaltzy pseudo-psychedelic group that wuz The Association. Like their name implies they '...did look like accountants. They sounded like choirboys, even more so than the Beach Boys. Production is crisp and clean, and instruments appear that you might not expect, such as tone generators and oscillators! But mainly, it's down to the vocals...presented with a brilliant sheen and professionally arranged harmonies that even today maintain a freshness that sets them apart from other bands of the day.' If you say so Dave-me-lad. Read the rest of 'is Award winning review! Senior Writer Peter Massey digs the new Whistlebinkies CD. Listen to 'im rave! 'This is Scottish Celtic music at its very best. The skirl of the pipes makes its mark immediately. There is some thing about traditional Scottish music that is indefinable. As you listen you can't help but be transported north of the border. If bands like the Chieftains do it for Ireland, then the Whistlebinkies certainly do it for Scotland.' Read on here! Then there's Music Production Editor Gary Whitehouse, last in the alphabetical list but first in our 'earts! Gary got the third of this issues EIWAs wif 'is fab review of T Bone Burnett's recently released collection Twenty Twenty. T Bone Burnett... didn't he produce that Cassandra Wilson CD? Wuzn't he involved in O Brother Where Art Thou? That's the bloke! But this one's all T Bone. Gary says, '...mostly what T Bone Burnett does is tell stories. Two earthlings with greed in their hearts brazenly introduce themselves to the primitive inhabitants of another planet...A girl grows into a young woman, her life constantly twisted by the reactions of men to her looks...A boy grows up into a successful businessman but loses his love by inattention...A city's prostitutes go on strike...A man encounters a maid who is also a professional dancer...A lothario lurks in a hotel lobby...A man reminisces about a beautiful celebrity who won't stay buried...And lovers pine over lost love in song after song...' Ya sure T Bone don't come from MY neighborhood? Gary also looks at Dirty Little Secret from an artist well-known to Green Man readers: 'Katharine Whalen was the secret weapon of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, the North Carolina band that rode the crest of the swing revival in the mid- to late-'90s. Her Betty Boop-influenced vocals brought welcome variety to the group, which was otherwise dominated by raucous male voices and even more raucous instrumentals. She put a lot of personality behind her singing in a way that added depth to the group.' Read his review to see why he thinks she has promise as a solo artist!
An' that's it. Some great music. Some fine writin'. Jus' wot we've come to expect from Green Man, ain't it!
Updated by those ever-so-pesky ravens at midnight, the nineteenth of June, 2006.
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