Rest in peace, Paul Di'Anno

He's running free...

Punk music bloomed in the mid 1970s and by the end of the decade had permeated the popular culture. Just as Iron Maiden was forming and ready to burst onto the scene as the premier act in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.

Maiden’s first two albums are a compelling fusion of punk and heavy metal, blending everything that made that moment in time unique.  And that made Paul Di’Anno just what Maiden needed as a lead vocalist.

Di’Anno had an unpolished, angry, raspy style, perfect for songs like “Prowler,” “Running Free,” “Wrathchild,” and “Killers.” He brought a menace to the stage and looked like he might kick your ass after completing the set. 

But that’s probably underselling Di’Anno, who also could straight out sing in an emotive, soulful way, as evidenced with songs like “Remember Tomorrow” and “Strange World.”

I am someone who firmly believes Bruce Dickinson greatly elevated Iron Maiden. Founder and bassist Steve Harris wanted someone with greater vocal range, stage presence and professionalism, and found him in Dickinson. Maiden would not have achieved the heights it reached had Bruce not joined the band.

But that does not diminish Di’Anno’s contributions in the slightest. They are immeasurable. And those first two albums are still damned good. Today they sound as fresh and unique as ever, and still make it into my rotation. 

RIP Paul, and thanks for the music. 

Stephen King's The Shining, book and film

I’m a big fan of The Shining, book and film. Both work really well, for slightly different reasons.

My grandfather owned this edition.

I encountered the book first, discovering it along with many other horror and men’s adventure titles through my grandfather. He used to keep a few shelves of well-worn paperbacks behind his easy chair and down in his basement, and when my parents would visit or drop us off for a night of babysitting I’d inevitably find something good to read.

Among the titles that stand out from this time are Whitley Striber’s The Wolfen and Stephen King’s The Shining.

I “read” both as a kid, skimming here and there for the good parts. Both scared the shit out me. My grandfather’s edition of The Shining had the added bonus of stills from the movie, so I had a visual representation of Jack Torrance, Wendy and Danny.

Eventually I would view the film, which also scared the shit out of me as a kid and later bring me great artistic pleasure as an adult. But the film has been so successful and vivid in the public imagination that it has in many ways surpassed the book and become the definitive version of the story. So, I decided to revisit the novel, deep as I am in the Halloween season and struck as usual by the need to indulge my horror sensibilities.

There are many similarities between film and book. The deep isolation of The Overlook, its history. Danny’s ability to “shine,” his precognition as well as knowledge of things that have passed. Jack’s instability. The major plot points and beats of the book are there in the film, too. The endings differ greatly, though people make a little too much of this. Both Danny and Wendy escape, and Jack does not, even if the “how” is quite different.

The book however departs from the film in other interesting and important ways, perhaps principally in that it’s a character study of Jack Torrance. He’s not the sole POV character (Wendy and Danny, and minor characters including Dick Halloran get their turns, too), but it’s mostly Jack’s story. A man battling his demons—career frustration, artistic failures, domestic chafing including resentment for his wife--all fueled by the demon of alcohol. Danny’s “shining” gets a much deeper, fuller treatment in the book. He can detect not only moods but whole thoughts in the heads of others. The motivation for the Overlook wanting him is therefore much stronger in book than film.

I’ve mentioned before that films and books have their unique strengths. 

The film does some things better than the book. Stanley Kubrick’s long, panoramic shots of the approach of the Torrance family in their VW bug, and the hotel interior, empty hallways and ballrooms and kitchens, lend the film a sense of physical isolation that the book cannot quite match. The iconic shots of the murdered twin girls and the tsunami of blood from the elevator are so strikingly rendered in film that they surpass the book, too.

But the book gets us inside Jack’s head in a way no film can. I found myself understanding and even sympathizing with book Jack on a much deeper level than Jack Nicholson’s portrayal. I love Nicholson in the film (his work approaching Wendy on the staircase--“Wendy, gimme the bat”) and later crashing through the bathroom door with an axe (“here’s Johnny!”) are fantastic, but he’s pretty much unhinged from the get-go, a veneer of normalcy papered over an unstable lunatic that needs very little psychic urging from the hotel to erupt. In the book we get much more of the why behind Jack’s vulnerabilities, including his childhood traumas with an abusive father, creative frustrations, self-loathing and guilt, and his deep struggles with alcohol.

In short, I love both versions, but the book serves as another example of why I appreciate both mediums and don’t privilege one above the other.

More (mediocre) content is not better than no content: A rant

Once in a while you’ve got to let off some steam (Bennett). For most, that means punching a heavy bag, screaming into a pillow, maybe going crazy and tearing the tag off a mattress.

For me, it’s … angry blogging! Friday rant incoming.

What’s gotten under my skin?

The incessant need for “more content.”

I’m hearing this in the cries of Rings of Power defenders, many of whom admit that while the show is mediocre at best, and plays fast and loose with Tolkien lore in nonsensical ways, they nevertheless continue to watch. Because “its more Tolkien content, and I need more Middle-Earth. I need more content.” 

Actual quotes.

This chaps my ass.

No one needs “more content.” Not of this sort.

To me it sounds like infantile and babylike cries of, “more food, mama!”

How about, more art, please.

Stop consuming cheap and disposable shit, and begging for more. Find the good stuff that already exists, and enjoy that instead. 

There’s more content right now than anyone can consume in a lifetime.

If everyone stopped producing content tomorrow—if somehow we implemented a worldwide ban, and you could only consume content that’s already been made—you’d have enough for 50 lifetimes.

You’ve got way more than enough. I’m not advocating this, BTW, just making a point.

I hate the need for more, at any cost. I also strongly dislike the word “content” when it comes to media. “Content” is the stuff we expel from our bowels. Probably not what we should be feeding our minds with.

We do need good art. But corporations don’t make art. Corporations make content, on an industrial scale, for undifferentiated masses, in order to make loads of cash. As we see with Star Wars and now (unfortunately) The Lord of the Rings “franchises.” Corporations buy franchises and expect massive ROI on their investments. In Amazon’s case, it’s all about getting more Amazon Prime subscribers, converting to product consumers. The Lord of the Rings becomes a means to an end, a power grab, which is the opposite message of the book.

When you consume poorly made “content” produced by corporations it encourages more of the same behavior. Instead:

Support independent artists and small businesses producing new material. Discuss thoughtful and well-made art. Appreciate it. Encourage creation of more of that sort of art. Or, explore the good, old, time-tested stuff. 

If you adopt these practices worry not, you still have near infinite options.

More “content” comes with a cost.

It devalues the historical wealth of riches we already have. I have a bias here; I’m a historian. I do wonder: Who talks about Fritz Leiber anymore? Clark Ashton Smith, Leigh Brackett, Poul Anderson? Very few, in comparison to the new and shiny content of the moment. Hell even Ursula LeGuin, once a household name, is starting to slip into the past. 

I worry these men and women will be lost to time under an avalanche of new “content.”

“More content” chokes out the magic of what makes old properties special in the first place. The avaricious need for more content causes every timeline, every side character, every magic item or scroll, every byway, to be fully filled in. Until the magic is gone. 

We no longer need to wonder how the force operates. We no longer need to speculate about the Blue Wizards and what they were doing.

They’ve all been spelled out, like an adult paint by numbers, in the pursuit of feeding the content machine.

We need dark places in the woods, unexplored realms beneath the seas. 

And we need white space on the page. 

Obviously, I enjoy modern adaptations. Obviously, I consume some of them. Perhaps that makes me a hypocrite. But I’m definitely more judicious these days with what I watch and read, because I know that you are what you eat. And I’m not a big fan of eating shit.

I’m not advocating closing off possibilities. What I do advocate is, mindful consumption. Read or watch deeply instead of broadly. Then share that out. Celebrate the good. And stop giving your time and attention to the mediocre. 

The haunting season is here, in Lovecraft Country

Heading to a trail behind my home, in Essex County.

"It is the night-black Massachusetts legendary which packs the really macabre 'kick'. Here is material for a really profound study in group neuroticism; for certainly, none can deny the existence of a profoundly morbid streak in the Puritan imagination."

--HP Lovecraft 

October is here and I couldn’t be happier. I love this time of year.

I live in Lovecraft Country. I’m surrounded by horrors.

To the west, Arkham University. To the east, Innsmouth and Kingsport. 

The South, Salem, which needs no fictional fears. Along with Danvers State Mental Hospital. Or at least the façade, now that the main body has been turned into haunted condominiums.

For good measure, to the North is New Hampshire, home to America’s Stonehenge. Northwest is Vermont, setting of ‘The Whisperer in Darkness.”

I’ve been reading some Lovecraft to get in the mood for the season, Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. The 1982 Del Rey edition with the wraparound Michael Whelan cover that serves as the main canvass for the subsequent line of paperbacks.

I have read most of Lovecraft’s stuff, but it’s been a few years. So it always leaves me very pleased to see the plethora of local towns called out in the stories.

Newburyport, which I visit quite frequently. Rowley. Ipswich. Marblehead. Athol. Portland. We still have a handful of old Puritan homes with small dark windows and the long sloping roofs that nearly touch the ground, the haunted architecture that served as inspiration for stories like “The Picture in the House.”

I’m minutes away from some of these locations. In about 10 minutes I can be in Newburyport, home to several scenes in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” My wife and I love to eat there and stroll along the wharf.  In “Shadow” a decrepit bus takes passengers on a little-used route to Innsmouth, home of a strange, mutated race of fish-men and the Order of Dagon Hall.

Which makes it not impossible for a Deep One to have wandered over and taken up residence in this still pond just a short walk behind my house. Where I took these photos, today, while getting outside for fresh air.

These photos are a minor piece of Lovecraft Country.

Nothing too extraordinary, but in a few weeks they’ll look a whole lot more suitable as the orange and red leaves begin to pop. And perhaps a few Mi-Go. What’s that sound? Perhaps the Music of Erich Zann…

Home to a Deep One?

Don't cross that gate...

Alone on the path?