Peter Hoflich

TCCOC

the Complete Chronicles of Conan, by Robert E Howard – I have read several Conan comics, from the classic Barry Windsor-Smith Marvel comics to the gorgeous recent explicit Dark Horse line. It’s all good. But I always felt it was a shame that I’d never read the original Robert E Howard stories. I finally got my chance to give the stories a try when I found this gorgeous 900-page tome of all 21 of the original Conan stories, along with two poems (the classic “Cimmeria”, and “the Hour of the Dragon”, an intro to the novel of the same name), and three drafts, a synopsis (“the Hall of the Dead”), and a fragment (“the Hand of Nergal”). The collection also contains “The Hyborean Age”, a pseudo-history by Robert E Howard, that traces the lost Hyborean Ages through their various developments from Conan’s lost primordial age of barbarians, to the modern barbarians and the birth of civilization.

Conan stories are alive with wonder and amazement, full-fledged tales of brutality and bloodspilling, with our grim and determined hero facing death without fear and regularly plunging into the unknown at but a whim. They are instantely likeable and immensely readable. Definitely a wild ride that’s well worth it on every occasion. The stories range in length from about 10 pages to over 150, and they are set at different times in Conan’s life, from when he was a teen until when he ruled the land of Aquilonia near the end of his life. Wow! A typical Conan adventure would involve a sorcerer, a brute, a betrayal, a girl, a dungeon, an inhuman beast (or barbarian hordes), and often be set in the unholy ruins of ancient, corrupt, fallen necromantic civilizations; some tales involve nameless evils that are almost Lovecraftian – it was no coincidence that the two authors were friends through many long correspondences – and resurrected sorcerers of long-dead kingdoms. There are also a few witches, also typically timeless, who invariably require human sacrifice to win their youthful good looks, and maybe a vampire or two.

“The Phoenix On The Sword” is the first Conan tale, published in 1932, and it introduces both Conan and Thoth-Amon, his sorcerer nemesis, and depicts King Conan surviving an assassination attempt that involves a hell-beast and four traitors. Great magic, wonderful language. “The Scarlet Citadel” is another tale of King Conan, trapped with his slaughtered armied by a traitorous ally, he’s made prisoner; he escapes from the dungeons, escapes a serpent, frees the wizard Pelias and extracts his revenge. “The Tower Of The Elephant” tells a tale of a young Conan as a thief, infiltrating the unassailable tower and learning the secret of its prisoner, and the heart of the elephant, as well as the evil wizard Yara, who is laid low with the words “Yag-kosha gives you a last gift and a last enchantment”. “Black Colossus” is a tale of the young general Conan, who comes to the aid of princess Yasmela, whose kingdom has come under threat by an awakened wizard and his conquering hordes. It’s a great tale of armies and the deaths of thousands and is great fun to read in all of its fantastic bewilderment. “The Slithering Shadow” is about the wanderer Conan, with his girl Natala, roaming the desert and discovering a city of dreamers who are hunted in their halls by strange magical creatures. “The Pool of the Black One” has Conan joining a pirate gang, killing its master, taking his girl, and exploring an island haunted by demonic slayers of a fantastic cultish civilization; of course, he kills them all and makes his escape with the girl. “Rogues in the House” is a great tale of political intrigue that involves Conan, a nobleman who has fallen out of favour with the court magician/kingmaker, the magician, and a great ape creature that wants to be a magician. Nice stuff. “Shadows in the Moonlight” has the warrior Conan saving the lovely Olivia from brutes, then taking her to another haunted island with a crew of pirates. In “Queen of the Black Coast”, Conan falls in with a crew that is plundered by the queen of the black coast, only he survives – but he fights so savagely that the queen takes him in, makes her his lover, and then goes into the jungle to plunder gems from a haunted castle. Again, they encounter evil magical foes that kill everybody but Conan. Great, Lovecraftian stuff here too, as with “The Slithering Shadow” and “The Pool of the Black One”, but better. “The Devil in Iron” is a crazy tale of a haunted city on a hill where civilised men try to trap the mercenary leader Conan, only to be destroyed themselves (Conan destroys everybody – his clever adversaries, the ancient magicians and everybody else, while also saving the girl). “The People of the Black Circle” has a queen of a cursed kingdom forming an alliance of sorts with Conan, a mercenary leader in the Himalayas, forming and breaking alliances, being betrayed at turns, encountering mercenary magicians, magician hordes, gaining magical hexes and protections, and bringing down an ancient house of black magic, while surviving ambushes and various Mexican standoffs, landslides and avalanches, the works. This story really has it all! “A Witch Shall Be Born” is about a queen being usurped by her twin sister, with General Conan coming to rescue the kingdom from the depraved and corrupt leaders. Hurray for Conan! This is also the story where Conan is crucified in the desert and left for dead. “Jewels of Gwalhur” is a cool tale of the mercenary Conan in deep Africa trying to play kingdoms off against each other as they revive centuries-old traditions in a fortress of ancient magic, Conan rescues a pretty little seductress at the expense of great wealth, meanwhile solving a murder mystery and laying his enemies low. Very nice indeed. A bit of Sherlock Holmes about this one. “Beyond the Black River” has Conan in frontier land, fighting to protect the civilised settlers from the savage Picts, at one point going into the Pictish jungle to assassinate a Pictish necromancer, before retreating to save settlers from a massive onslaught. Nutty stuff. “Shadows in Zamboula” is a minor tale that has Conan coming to a mysterious town where he gets involved in royal intrigues, magic, poisonings, attempted assassination, and strange cannibal rituals. Great ironic ending to this one (in fact, there are two great ironic endings here!!). “Red Nails” is an absolutely insane story of Conan and the lovely red Valeria, a she-devil, escaping to a depraved hidden kingdom in a valley of the tyrannosaurus rex (which Conan and Valreia manage to kill), before stumbling across a ruined city where two nihilistic warring tribes are squatting; our couple become involved in the intrigues, before nearly falling victim to bizarre, traitorous scheming of a creepy ages-old bisexual witch-queen and her lackie king.

“The Hour of the Dragon” is a fantastic tale of King Conan going up against sorcerous and political foes (three traitors raise a 3,000 year-dead necromancer and enlist his aid – a decision they live to regret), losing his kingdom, then gaining it back via the recovery of magical materials. Great chase sequences, and there are plenty of tense moments when it all nearly falls apart, only to be won in a rousing overture – hooray!! “The God in the Bowl” is a very cool barbarian detective tale that involves a thief (Conan), some cops, a politician, and an (absent) necromancer. And a big, nasty monstrous creature. “The Black Stranger” is a nutty tale of primordial politics, Pictish frontier lands, a phantom stranger, forest expeditions, poison, intrigue, barbarian hordes, wild alliances, and a few damsels in distress. Nice. “The Frost Giant’s Daughter” is the short, classic tale of Conan’s battle in the snow with the cruel (and cruelly beautiful) Atali, and her brothers. “By Ymir!” “Drums of Tombalku” is a strange desert tale that hardly involves Conan, but is about a warrior Almaric who knew Conan, who rescues a princess; returning her to her city, he discovers the secret of that horrible settlement – and Conan does appear at some point. “The Vale of Lost Women” is a creepy tale of a woman’s revenge, and her foolish attempts to escape danger without Conan’s help (he rescues her anyway – yay!).

The stories are full of wild and lusty language:

The cat sank into a crouch, and Balthus numbly remembered tales of its appalling ferocity; of how it would spring upon an elephant and drive its sword-ike fangs so deeply into the titan’s skull that they could never be withdrawn, but would keep it nailed to its victim, to die by starvation.

Conan utters his great oaths: ‘”Crom, Ymir and Mitra!” raged Conan. “Gods and devils, could I but reach the fighting, if but to die at the first blow!”‘

Conan knows religion!

“I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom’s realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer’s Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”

Sometimes the conversation gets political:

“You sit on satin and guzzle wine the people sweat for, and talk of divine rights of sovereignty – bah! I climbed out of the abyss of naked barbarism to the throne and in that climb I spilt my blood as freely as I spilt that of others. If either of us has the right to rule men, by Crom, it is I! How have you proved yourself my superior?

“I found Aquilonia in the grip of a pig like you – one who traced his genealogy for a thousand years. The and was torn with the wars of the barons, and the people cried out under suppression and taxation. Today no Aquilonian noble dares maltreat the humblest of my subjects, and the taxes of the people are lighter than anywhere else in the world.

“What of you? Your brother, Almarus, holds the eastern half of your kingdom and defies you. And you, Strabonus, your soldiers are even now besieging castles of a dozen or more rebellious barons. The people of both your kingdoms are crushed into the earth by tyrannous taxes and levies. And you would loot mine – ha! Free my hands and I’ll varnish this floor with your brains!”

I wish that Howard had lived longer and given us more stories like these. Conan is awesome.

The afterword gives some colour on Robert E Howard, his history of publishing, aspects of his peculiar wilderness small-town life, his relationship with his parents (especially his dying mother), his fans, his publishers, the artists who created covers that features Conan (a central aspect to pulp fiction publishing, of course – it was the Frazetta covers that are largely credited with giving Conan a new readership in the 1960s and beyond), and ultimately what drove him to take his own life at age 30.

After writing so many words praising the book, I feel like I should write more. But really, there’s only one word you need for this book: great!!

PYY

Pop Yeh Yeh, Psychedelic Rock from Singapore and Malaysia – 1964-1970 – Yes, this is just as cool as you imagine it would be, 26 slabs of very old-sounding psychedelic sounds, mostly sung in Malay, some songs with a distinct Indian feel to them, but all with wild guitar sounds, some cool organ, general grooviness. Yeah! “Budi Bahasa” by Adnan Othman and the Rhythm Boys is slow and grinding, “Kisah Disampang” by M Osman and Orkes Nirwana (love the band names) is slicker and based on a cool guitar riff. “Aku Kechewa” by Roziah Latiff and the Jayhawkers starts off with some beautiful guitar riffing before going into some hauntingly beautiful female vocals. Stunning!! “Oh Teruna” by Fatimah Amin and the Clans picks up where the previous song stops – quickening the pace a notch, with a similarly beautiful female voice. Nice. “Jangan Goda” by Afida Es and the Singlap Boys is cool, funky psychedelia, also with a female lead singer making it extra spicy. “Oh Ya Ya” by Rajah Ahmad and Dengan Dendang Irama is like the title suggests – boppy and happy, this time with male voice and chorus. “Temasah Ria” by M Said and Les Remaja has some seriously distorted fuzz going for it, very cool in an MC5 sort of way!! “Bersiar Siar” by Babians Boys featuring Halipah is a rock number with a little boy singing, with lots of “la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la”, it’s so-so. “Dara” by M Osman and Les Fentones is poppy and breezy. “Syurga Idaman” by Azizah Mohamed and Orkes Nirwana are back with a nice number with a swampy, surfy beat and more little boy vocals. Nicer, maybe a bit Arabic here. “Jauh Pandangan” by Halim “Janda-Ku” Yatim and the Sangam Boys is chanty with chorused singing. “Nelayan Bersampan” by Zaleha Hamid and the Black Cats is a more minimal song, with plenty of emphasis on female voices singing mainly in chorus. “Kasih Tak Sudah” by A Ramlie and the Rhythmn Boys (nice typo) is a cool old rock tune that rambles on and on with sentimental tones.

“Berisiar Di Taman Hiboran” by Salim I & The Wisma has great funky guitar work, and a wailing Middle Eastern voice. Nice. “Bimbang” by A. Rahman Hassan & Orkes Nirwana is a bit gloomier, but has a nice upbeat bridge. “Mula Bertemu” by M Rahmat & The Teruma is a nice rock number, while “Revolusi” by Adnan Othman & The Wanderers goes off on some great organ and fuzz guitar, it’s a roaring rock number. “Ayah.. Kini Ku Bercinta” is a beautiful wailing tune by Nur Azilah & Desa Bersaudara that is particularly haunting. “Kembali Lagi” by A. Halim & De’Fictions is a very cool, driving psychedelic rock song that needs to be heard to be believed – it has it all! “Rindu” by Siti Zaiton & The Twilites is a rare sax-led song that has beautiful female vocals. Nice. “Bertemasha” by Zaleha Hamid & Orkes Zindegi is traditional-sounding Middle Eastern guitar pop that has cheesy children’s laughter in it, but also great long instrumental bits, as well as a bit of sax. The prominent siren-like voice is a bit grating, actually… “Sidia Siapa” by Noor Hamzah & Band Mesra has some cool guitar riffs at the beginning, and some cool male vocals – pure guitar pop, sweet and heavy. “Surat Ku Untuk Mu” by J Sham & The Wanderers starts off with some wedding keyboard and then gets into a low-key little keyboard-driven pop (and that keyboard gets a bit annoying after a while…). “Kan Hilang Nanti” by A. Halim & De’Fictions starts off with some wicked Hendrix-like guitar bending, making it among the more psychedelic numbers here, the song is also a conventional local pop song at heart, with heartful, echoing singing. “Tak Mengapa” by A. Rahman Hassan & Orkes Nirwana is a nice, sombre rock/pop song with cool vocals. “Bintang Pujaan” by Hasnah Haron & The Spiritual 70s is a cool female-led guitar pop song, of the type that we’ve heard a few times so far – it does sound familiar. But it is cool nonetheless. Love!

While there’s only one CD, the packaging is awesome with two fold-out panels full of old pics of Singapore and Malaysia, inserted into the set are also two lovingly-created (if poorly laid out) booklets of about 40 pages. Wow! The first one recounts the history of Pop Yeh Yeh in a long essay by Pop Yeh Yeh scholar Carl M Hamm, who copyrighted his essay in 2012. The essay gives a lot of zeitgeist, also talking about the politics of the era, the connection to Western music (tentative – they got the music and the clothes, but not the attitude, the politics or the outspoken-ness). There are great pics, such as the transistor radios of the time (that often served as amps for the equipment), the bands themselves, era-pieces such as Hofner guitars, Cliff Richard discs, album covers and other memorabilia. There’s a “fast forward to today” section, and a word about the record labels of the day. Then there’s also a whole section for the lyrics of all songs, translated into English. The second booklet runs through bios and histories of every group and recording artist featured in the set, although for some information is scant. Nice!

NKNL

Naomi Klein, No Logo – I read somewhere someone describing Naomi Klein’s deconstruction of Roots, the Canadian branded clothing store, and realised only then that her book, No Logo, was written by a thoughtful, academic Canadian who might give me some interesting Chuck Klosterman-like accounts of that weird Canadian branding phenomenon and its perturbed origins and effects. I, like Klein, remember seeing everyone in my grade six class stamped with the same boring Roots sweaters in the cold months, and the same boring Roots t-shirts in the warm months. I could never figure out what Roots was and why people were so fascinated by it. Five letters, a beaver, and you have a youth uniform. Why?

Klein has written a whole book about brands and brand culture. She relates personal histories and interactions with brands, she relates brand anecdotes, she cites statistics and reads trends into them, she discusses awareness and activism, she hypotheses and emits stern warnings about cultural trends that the unthinking masses follow like sheep. Her book is interesting, her ideas often striking, but ultimately she succumbs too often to an urge to ramble; and having read the same or similar points popping up in various parts of the book strengthens my belief that she could have benefitted greatly from a strong editor who could have trimmed the prose, consolidated the points, and chopped out 30% to 40% of the near-400 pages down to a tidy 250 pages or so.

Not all of her ideas are good, though, and while I cannot prove anything, I am suspicious of some of the conclusions she draws from simple statistics – she seldom sounds credible. The book is re-packaged as a 10th year anniversary edition, but branding and culture has marched on without No Logo – the book is in bad need of an update; there is, after all, nary a mention of Google, Yahoo! or Facebook to be seen, and the obsession with Nike (and especially with its then-CEO Phil Knight) is a bit overbearing. On top of that, many of the numbers are 1997 numbers, giving us a statistical snapshot of the pre-Britney Spears era.

The book often hits the mark: there’s an amusing discussion of Space Jam, Michael Jordan’s co-starring venture with Bugs Bunny, and comments like “Nike had some reservations about the implementation of the movie” over concerns that Jordan’s brand-hopping had sullied his status as a brand vehicle for the shoe-makers. Klein also jumps all over the hollowing out of corporate brand-holding America as a place that no longer actually made stuff but simply owns rights and copyrights, while farming out production so that it could focus on branding and marketing; naturally, this is simplistic, but brands like Nike are easier targets are easier targets than Kelloggs, which really makes Frosted Flakes. Nice. The book is littered with surreal quotes, like David Hill, CEO of Fox Broadcasting, saying that “we are hoping to take the attitude and lifestyle of Fox Sports off the TV and onto men’s backs, creating nation of walking billboards.” Well, I guess Hill is in heaven because his vision has become a reality, for that’s what we’ve become indeed (although it’s not for me, personally…).

Interesting statistics: “1992 was the first year since 1975 when the number of teenagers in America increased.” Forget about marketing Tide and Snuggle, focus on MTV and Nike (and maybe Wal-mart). Sell to status-conscious kids who run in packs. “If you sell to one, you sell to everyone in their class and everyone in the school.” And when Tony Blair re-branded Labour as New Labour, Klein notes that “his is not the Labour Party, but a labor-scented party.” Nice. Of course, not all marketing is to kids, but they’re a big and important demographic. Klein lists weird hip-targetting branding antics, like when Coke and Old Navy launched pirate radio stations (?!?!). Ruminations on Eddie Vedder’s obligation (and failure) to use his cred to make a difference.

When the world’s cameras were turned on Seattle, all we got were a few anti-establishment fork-yous, a handful of overdoses and Kurt Cobain’s suicide. We also got this decade’s most specacular “sellout” – Courtney Love’s awe-inspiring sail from junkie punk queen to high-fashion cover girl in a span of two years. It seemed Courtney had been playing dress-up all along. What was revealing was how little it mattered. Did Love betray some karmic debt she owed to smudged eyeliner? To not caring about anything and shooting up? To being surly to the press? Don’t you need to buy in to something earnestly before you can sell it out cynically?”

There’s a funny anecdote about Spice Girl Posh Spice saying that the Spice Girls “wanted to be a ‘household name’. Like Ajax.” In another freaky anecdote, a school that was engaged in a huge corporate project with Coke – designing Coke’s new marketing campaign – actually suspended some troublemaker who dared to show up to the exercise wearing a Pepsi t-shirt. But Klein sometimes takes it too far, noting that Serbian youths would wear Chicago Bulls caps as they burned American flags (what – all of the kids wore Chicago Bulls caps?). “If we agree on nothing else, virtually everyone knows that Michael Jordan is the best basketball player that ever lived.”

Weird statistics like “The mammoth international temp agency Manpower Temporary Services rivals Wal-Mart as the largest private employer in the US.” But is that internationally, or in the US only?

From time to time her prose gets shrill, bloated and quite ugly:

Corporate censorship has everything to do with the themes of the last two chapters: media and retail companies have inflated to such bloated proportions that simple decisions about what items to stock in a store or what kind of cultural product to commission – decisions quite properly left to the discretion of business owners and culture makers – now have enormous consequences: those who make these choices have the peer to reengineer the cultural landscape.

I get it – controversial artists care enough about Wal-Mart to change his album just for the Wal-Mart buyers, but do we care if shocking album covers are less shocking in some stores? Big deal.

She also lets her thoughts get a bit carried away: “Book superstores, with their plush chairs, faux fireplaces, book clubs and coffee bars, have slowly come to replace libraries and university lecture halls as locales of choice for author readings on the book-tour circuit.” She recounts an absurd story when Michael Moore, at a reading for one of his books, insisted that striking workers get time at his mic. He was shocked when his reading got cancelled. Why? She rages at some companies’ decisions to hire temp workforces. “[Bill] Gates has already converted one-third of [Microsoft's] generalworkforce into temps, and in the Interactive Media Division, where CD-ROMs and Internet products are developed, about half the workers are officially employed by outside ‘payroll agencies,’ who deliver tax-free workers like printer cartridges.” Hmmm… it does suck for people to work temp when they’d rather be full employees, but she discredits herself with the “deliver workers like printer cartridges” bit.

The book is divided into four sections: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, No Logo (apparently, there was no room in Klein’s heavily over-written tome to add No Future). No Space covers the growth of the brand, No Choice covers the über-permanence of brands through pervasive brand creep, and the creation of mega-brands through mergers and acquisitions. No Jobs gets into the trimming of workforces by mega corporations solely concerned with the health of their brands, and No Logo gets into the resistance against brands and brand culture.

The book is so wordy and repetitive that I really lost steam during No Jobs, and didn’t have the patience for No Logo, so for now this is an incomplete review, given that No Logo is probably the thrust of the book (which she finally gets to after 279 pages of introduction!!), but I didn’t have the patience for nearly 200 pages of that, as she goes through topics like “culture jamming”, reclaiming the streets, the new anti-corproate activism, brand-based campaigns, case studies on Nike and Shell and McDonald’s, the role of students and communities, brand-based politics and consumerism and globalisation.

No sweat! No joke!! No nukes!!! No hope!!!! It’s easy to say no, it’s hard to say yes, Yeah!!

TDOCM

The Death of Captain Marvel – This collection combines the classic “The Death of Captain Marvel”, Marvel Comics’ first graphic novel, with three other Captain Marvel titles. The first one, Captain Marvel issue 34, tells the tale of Marv’s encounter with Lunatic Legionnaire Nitro (the cover of that issue is also cropped for the cover of this collection), along with Marvel Spotlight On Captain Marvel, issues 1 and 2. The former is important because it shows the source of the cancer that kills Marv in the graphic novel, and it’s also a pretty good story, but I’m not sure about the middle two tales, which are about the Titan’s computer Isaac, who’s gone insane and thinks it’s human.

By the way, Nitro’s super-power is that he can blow himself up… nice super-power!

The story itself is more a tale of flashbacks, of Mar-vell taking leave of his friends and enemies, including Rick Jones – with whom he has a complicated relationship – and his new girlfriend/former enemy Elysius. The Marvel universe learns of it, it mourns in advance, Spider-man just can’t take it, all of Marvel-dom’s greatest scientists (Reed Richards, Henry Pym, etc) can’t figure it out. Gosh! Finally, there’s a strange battle with Thanos, and then… the end.

Yes, a very strange story indeed. Sorry for all of the spoilers, but you didn’t think that Marv would get out of it alive, did you?

TVZRVM

Townes Van Zandt, Rear View Mirror – This is a great live album of Townes Van Zandt playing 17 of his songs live. There’s no information about when or where these songs were recorded, but it’s clearly a small club, and may be as recent as 1993, when the original album was released. The songs are great, and are mainly Townes’ voice and guitar, sometimes a second guitar, sometimes a fiddle. Townes never misses a note, which may mean he was nearly sober when he recorded this. All of the songs are fantastic, but maybe the most surprising one is the opener, “Pancho And Lefty”, his most famous song, done here with a bit of fiddle. It sounds great without the Mexican horns.

Ae

After Earth – After Earth is one of those movies that just looks really bad from the trailer, and generally people who don’t like M Night Shyamalam would write off without seeing it. Zen had seen some trailers and badly wanted to watch it, so watch it we did (ironically, he doesn’t want to see the new Man Of Steel film, ha ha – no interest – but he did want to see this one).

Due to a misunderstanding on my part about where the bloody cinema is, we got there late and missed 10 minutes. It must have been an eventful 10 minutes, because I get the feeling a lot happened. The predicted space ship crash happened, and the father and son team need to survive. The film sets up some interesting situations, and the main premise is very simple – go retrieve a homing beacon that is 100 miles away, make sure you survive multiple crazy dangerous situations to turn it on (meanwhile there are plenty of flashbacks and spooky dreams). Perfect.

The multiple crazy situations are pretty crazy, and suspension of disbelief will really only get you so far. At one point he loses his weapon. Where did it go? We don’t see him lose it, it’s just gone. He gets attacked, then protected by a giant bird that saves his life twice. What’s going on? At the end we get an encounter with a dangerous adversary that is resolved in a fairly cheezy way (why is everybody a trained Matrix-style trained kung fu killer?

Will Smith is kind of creepy as a super-soldier who doesn’t let go (“Take a knee, cadet”), and who looks more like Lawrence Fishbourne than Will Smith; Jaden Smith is kind of weepy and over-acting. He does a good job looking like a scared kid – maybe that’s what he really is.

DHA

Dust, 2-album re-issue (Dust, Hard Attack) – A great, great, great album! WOW!!! The best undiscovered near-Black Sabbath band ever! Truly astounding… (sadly, the creepy blue-tinted band photo that appears on the cover is less good than Hard Attack’s depiction of a dwarf invasion).

I learned at some point that Dust had been Marky Ramone’s teenage band and put Hard Attack on my wish list. Well, I never did buy it, and then I found out that their two albums were being re-mastered and re-released on one CD. Bonus!! So I made buying that a priority. Wow, I’m glad I did – I’m listening to this nearly as much as the new Black Sabbath album 13!!

On first listen I found it a wee bit disappointing. It wasn’t quite as heavy as I expected, and was more Cream-influended than Sabbath-influenced (people always say that Sabbath invented heavy metal – I truly believe that if Sabbath hadn’t existed, our metal would all be Cream-based… yuck!!), although I did dig the wild bass inflections. It definitely got better as it went along, and the second album is definitely better than the first. The Dust sound is great. The drumming is pretty solid. The singing is good. The songwriting is cool. The albums are a bit inconsistent, especially the first one, with odd weird ballads, pop or country songs thrown in, as well as some hints of early Rush. It’s… a strange collection of songs. But now that it’s really grown on me I consider this compulsory listening. What a great band!!

The opening song “Pull Away/So Many Times” starts off mellow, and then launches into a cool psychedelic rocker, with wild, aggressive bass lines. I could listen to this song forever (weird backing vocals kick in near the end, though). “Walk in the Soft Rain” is a so-so folk guitar strummer that is a bit less interesting, while “Thusly Spoken” is a nasty, yucky pop ballad. Yes, these guys do lose their way a bit. They come back onto the path with “Learning To Die”, a nasty and brutal little tune. “All In All” is a bit silly-sounding, but it’s okay. “I Been Thinking” is a silly country song, that is happily also very short. “Ivory” is a fantastic rocker that is also short – short and sweet!! “How Many Horses” is quite country rock-ish, with a really terrible, drippy solo. Oh well… “Suicide”, the second-last song on the album, is probably the best they ever did, right up there with the long psychedelic rocker “From A Dry Camel” on the second album. “Suicide” also includes a totally amazing bass solo – love it!! Closing the first album is “Entrance” (ironic title, dude), a short acoustic ditty.

The second, eponomously-titled album Dust opens up with “Stone Woman”, with a pretty little whistle, then some groovy slide guitar and some cool bopping rock. Yeah! “Chasin’ Ladies” is a great funky blues number with a great burbing bassline, and a cool echoey vocal line. We need more songs like this. “Goin’ Easy” is a true blues song, with some very nice slide guitar. “Love Me Hard” is a wicked rocker that drills on and on with great power drumming and groovy basslines. “From A Dry Camel” is a monster of a song, starting off with huge gong sounds, then some solo bass trudging away, the song really only picks up over one minute in, then three minutes in it picks up pace and becomes an incredible, psychedelic rock-out, and the last two minutes are kind of like the first two. A true masterpiece of sludge.

“Often Shadows Fall” is a very pretty, gloomy number. “Loose Goose” is an instrumental that ends off the album (and this set), just as the first album had an instrumental final song, but in this case the song bops and rocks and is effectively a fully-formed song waiting for lyrics.

The CD comes with a cool little booklet too, man, containing pictures of the band, and short blurbs from the three band members, as well as their manager, Kenny Kerner, who went on to produce KISS.

Wow, I went for dinner for the second time in a week at Lagnaa, bare foot dining, at 6 Upper Dickson Road in Little India in Singapore. This is the place where they have 10 levels of spiciness in their curry (I’ll lean on The Washington Post to provide some background). I’d been there on June 16th, after my band’s gig in Little India, and couldn’t resist an opportunity to savour their lovely masala dishes.

I brought Zen and Naoko this time, although Zen had been reluctant at first. We got there at 5:00 PM, a bit early, and found out that the upstairs “barefoot” section only opened at 5:3; the very kind staff lady gave Zen a popadam to munch on in the meantime and we wandered around the area and went for a beer at the Prince Of Wales, an old haunt of mine nearby on Dunlop Street. Nice. Got back to Lagnaa at 5:50 or so, with a healthy appetite, had the whole upstairs to ourselves the whole time, chatted for a long time with the staff about masala and curries, and enjoyed a wonderful meal. Zen, who had previously been reluctant to go out for food in Little India, even told me things like “this is the best curry I’ve ever had in my whole life, even better than Japanese curry” and “this place has replaced Bar Bar as my favorite place to go to in Singapore.” It really pays to have an open mind and try out new things!

Yes, a wonderful experience indeed. Both of the ladies who work there gave us wonderful stories about curry, about life in general, even a philosophical discussion about Indonesia’s slash and burn farming that has kept Singapore in a haze all week (which lifted this afternoon).

After we left the place we saw a beautiful full moon hanging over Little India. Awww… Took a cab home, chilled. Great weekend underway.

Lagnaa’s highway to heaven

10 – We declare you king
9 – Make my day
8 – Say your prayers
7 – Where angels fear
6 – I dare you
5 – You are crazy!
4 – Show off!!!
3 – Hotter (chef can’t, can you?)
2 – Hot (almost anyone can)
1 – Not h to (anyone can)

I’m now a four, actually…

My peg

We’re a curry family

Four curry leaves means level four, two curry leaves means level two…

Superbrain!!!

Superbrain!!!

Update – on August 23rd, one day after the full moon, five of my colleagues and I went to Lagnaa to try their curry, two of us (me included) tried the level five, four of us tried level six. Two of the level-sixers didn’t make it, the the rest of us did. It was great fun! I also got the chance to meet the master chef, K7 (Kaesevan), who explained that the measure of spiciness of the curries goes up by 100,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU) per chili leaf; I tried Level five, which meant 500,000 SHU. Next challenge – level six. Last night was the full moon, so that means we have nearly four weeks to prepare before the next full moon – August 21st! I need to do a six before I can do a special seven at the full moon, looking forward to it!

lovely, lovely curry!!

the gang’s all here!

six leaves means 600,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)

I’m at Level Five!!

I’m at Level Five!!

the beer was good too!!

Today was a great day! I woke up early, went with Zen and Naoko to Zen’s softball game.

We had some practices and warm-ups, and then Zen played his first two innings as a pitcher. He did a good job, striking out his first two batters; it was nearly a no-run inning but the team lost a chance to get the third guy out. Oh well. Zen’s subsequent inning didn’t go well, but we were so happy that he had such a good first try. I couldn’t see the second game because I had to go off to my concert, but it turned out even better than the first one. Great job, Zen!

In the afternoon I had a show with my band MegalomaniA. We rocked the house – it was eight bands playing Black Sabbath songs. Some of them were pretty good too! The club has a strange stage, but that just made it more interesting.

Here are a few pictures from the weekend.

Zen striking out his first batter – OUT!!

Batter Zen

MegalomaniA rocks!!

My friend’s band!

Uh oh… looking for trouble…

Black Sabbath poster

BS13

Black Sabbath, 13 – It was 1978 the last time Ozzy Osbourne got together with his band Black Sabbath to record new songs, the classic Never Say Die (much-maligned, it’s still full of great songs). They used Sounds Exchange in Toronto, Canada and froze their balls off from January to May putting the album together, a period of much misery according to Ozzy’s book (interestingly, Keith Richards had used the studio the year earlier to record his Toronto Tapes). At the time I was in neighbouring Mississauga, nine years old, and knew nothing about Black Sabbath. I was in grade four at school, with my favorite teacher Martyn Godfrey, and I went to piano lessons. I think that summer I might have started listening to the Beatles in 1978, but I don’t think so – it might have been 1979. Can’t be sure any more. Later, in 1981, I became a super-huge Ozzy Osbourne fan upon the release of “Diary Of A Madman”; “Speak Of The Devil”, where Ozzy records Black Sabbath songs with his own band, was the first music item I ever bought with my own money. I remember hearing Mob Rules play on the radio in 1981 when it was released.

A year after recording Never Say Die, Ozzy was fired from the band, and spent the next 34 years building a monstrous solo career, probably in no small part to the masterful management of his wife Sharon. Good job, girl. He has actually recorded and toured with Black Sabbath over the years, but there’s been no new album with him and the band… until June 11th, 2013!

Of course, Black Sabbath had kept going over the years with Tony Iommi and a rotating line-up of original or new members, which included a great spell with Ronnie James Dio; the last Black Sabbath album was Forbidden, released in 1995 with Tony Martin. It did not get good reviews. Since then Iommi has released two solo albums, and another album with Ronnie James Dio in 2009 that could have been called a Black Sabbath album the way Heaven And Hell and Mob Rules were, but it wasn’t (the band called itself Heaven And Hell to save itself legal grief – nice move, since Heaven And Hell is also a great band name, and the relaxed legal atmosphere probably helped give rise to the current re-re-reunion and its immense productivity).

So lucky for us – now we get this, a new Black Sabbath album, released on June 11th, 2013 and called 13 in honour of the year it was released (and maybe to piss off Anvil and Suicidal Tendencies, who have albums with the same name out this year). While critical reviews that I have seen have generally been positive, there have been some mixed reviews from fans, who have plenty to gripe about for the absence of the magical Bill Ward on skins (apparently he was falling off his drum stool – too old to play?) or Rick Rubin’s production capabilities, but I have no complaints at all. It’s a great album! It gives us everything we want – great riffs, great energy, great teamwork, great lyrics (nobody ever mentions the lyrics – they’re superb!!), great reminders of the band’s sound through its various periods over the years, and funky, fun production elements. Wow!!

I even like the single “God Is Dead?”, which has great mood, great riffs, and a wonderful stomp towards the end (of course, the solo is ultra-short – Iommi more than makes up for that on the rest of the album). And here’s another thing that nobody mentions is the linkage between the recent death of Ronnie James Dio (Dio, of course, means God in many languages) and the obvious rivalry between Dio and Ozzy. Looks like Ozzy won that rivalry, and gets to shout “Dio Is Dead” night after night. A bit creepy, and I might be reading too much into this, but hey – what if?

The songs are fantastic, and extremely varied, as we get songs akin to the band’s 70s sound, 80s sound, 90s sound, and Ozzy’s solo sound. “The Beginning Of The End” starts the album with a pun, as well as big slashes of doom chords, just the way the first album opened up with the song “Black Sabbath”, and then gets into swing. It just goes on and on, before ending up with a positive major-chord chorus. Ultimately, it’s very doom-y, with a long solo. “God Is Dead?” is well known by now – bloody good, with a cool “Hole In The Sky”-ish stomp near the middle, although it does have some cheezy moments on Ozzy’s delivery (no worry, plenty of great moments too!); this the first song to refer to Satan, who is mentioned or is part of the spirit of several songs on the album (“Methademic” seems to be written from his point of view again). I believe that it was the best choice for a single, but could have been improved with a better solo (and one longer than only eight bars). “Loner” is crunchy and cool, a bit of a pop song. A lot of people I know call this their favorite song on the album, but it’s probably the one I like the least, from its over-simplicity right down to the annoying drum sounds. “Zeitgeist” is the “Plant Caravan”-isch tune, right down to the bongos (looks like Rubin showed some self restraint by not putting Ozzy’s vocals through the exact same effect as they did on “Planet Caravan”, clearly; it’s one of the only things that’s different about this recent update of that song). But it’s a great song nonetheless – you can never have too much of a good thing. “Age Of Reason” is a long song that kicks off with a fantastic opening riff, quickly gets into great verses, then goes through lots if huge changes; I thought at first that it sounds rather like a song from an Ozzy solo album, with Zakk Wylde-ish dive-bombing, but I do now believe it’s very Sabbath-y. There’s a great solo, and a wee bit of keyboards thrown in. “Live Forever” is a cool, crunchy rocker again, it could have been on the Devil You Know album the band did with Ronnie James Dio in 2009. “Damaged Soul” is a great bluesy number that gets pretty heavy. A great bluesy stomp that has a cool harmonica solo. As such, it’s the key song on the album for emulating the dynamics of the first album. Great solo too – it just goes on and on! “Dear Father” is a scary song about child abuse, also more like an Ozzy solo song. It has a crunchy riff and a poppy solo. At one point it picks up into a very cool stomp and charges along. Great! It closes abruptly with the thunder and rain sounds that you’d hear on the first album, probably indicating the completion of a cycle of Black Sabbath. It may also indicate that there will be no follow-up to 13 – that’s it from Black Sabbath, thank you very much, and that first song really was the beginning of the end of the band. Eight songs, just like they have on most of their albums.

There are three “bonus songs” on the second disc that’s included in the deluxe edition; bonus songs are great, but I’m not sure why they needed a second disc – there are only 69 minutes of music combined between the two discs, it would have all fit onto one with five minutes to spare. As such, all of the bonus songs are good, and should probably have been better on the album in the place of weaker songs like “Loner” and “Dear Father”. They are also pretty short – in the official eight album songs, half of them are over seven minutes long, but the three bonus tracks are only five minutes long or less (“Peace Of Mind” is only 3:41, nearly as short and tight as “Paranoid”, ha ha). “Methademic” starts with cool acoustic guitar before breaking into that unstoppable riff and some songwriting and lyrics (great Ozzy snicker here). Of course, the anti-drug lyrics are a bit hypocritical, but the song still makes a nice partner song to the anti-heroin “Hand Of Doom”). Later, he reveals that he’s singing the song from Satan’s point of view by snickering again and saying “Hell is where you’re going… heh heh heh, I’ll see you there”). Cool psychedelic sound effects at the end, man. “Peace Of Mind” is a cool mid-tempo rocker full of crunchy guitars that sounds a bit like “Live Forever”. “Pariah” has one of the coolest opening riffs of any song on the album – actually, it’s a double opening with a very nice mellow electric start-up, before breaking out into a killer riff. The song has a very tender, beautiful solo. Great closer to the set – better closer than “Dear Father”, actually… which proves that you need to get the “Deluxe edition” and not the regular release (as an added feature you’ll also have the satisfaction of knowing that you’re getting what the vinyl snobs are missing out on, heh heh).

Here’s the song “Naivete In Black”, which can only be bought on the Best Buy version of the album (whatever “Best Buy” is – we don’t have anything with that name in Singapore). It’s a short, crunchy rock/pop number.

Great album – get it if you haven’t already!

13 is the number of times I have listened to Black Sabbath’s 13