Immaculate Scoundrels by John Fultz, a review

An immaculate cover.

When it appears in sword-and-sorcery anthologies, John Fultz is a name that I look forward to reading.

Why?

His “Chivane” (Worlds Beyond Worlds), “Evil World” (Neither Beg Nor Yield), and “The Blood of Old Shard” (A Book of Blades) are terrific, ranking among the best of modern sword-and-sorcery that I’ve read (and I haven’t read it all, I can’t keep up). I recommend any modern S&S reader seek out Worlds Beyond Worlds, which collects 11 of his fantasy tales published during 2010 to 2020. Almost all of the stories in it are good.

But despite his reputation for short fiction, John recently started a series, Scaleborn, of which Immaculate Scoundrels (2024) is the first.

It is well done fantasy, blending epic fantasy with sword-and-sorcery. It boasts a nice cast of characters and a lot of action. The prose is clean and unadorned, modern, and dialogue-heavy. It reminded me more of Joe Abercrombie than the stylized Jack Vance shaded with ornate Clark Ashton Smith flourishes that I was used from his prior works.

I think the style of Immaculate Scoundrels probably works best for longer, multi-series works. Or perhaps Fultz, who once described his literary influences as Lord Dunsany, Howard, Lovecraft, Smith, Tolkien, Tanith Lee, Darrell Schweitzer, and others, has finally found his voice. 

Regardless, he’s a good writer. He really understands pacing and story, too.

Speaking of Abercrombie, the main character of the work, Thold, reminds me a little bit perhaps of Logen Ninefingers. Very deadly and with a reputation that proceeds him. He’s a well-drawn character, as is the sorceress Yuhai, the two of whom get most of the ink here.

“Scoundrels” describes the cast of characters that populate the book, many of which have baggage, flaws, or ulterior motives at odds with the cohesion of the group. Nevertheless as their paths cross they stick together through to the end, drawn by necessity or perhaps a higher fate.

There is a distinct Asian flavor to the world of the Scaleborn. Yhorom is not your traditional Medieval European fantasy 101. Fultz does a nice job creating a world that feels both dirty and visceral and familiar, but also alien. War is its unending drumbeat.

It’s also got great fight scenes and inventive magic. A fun and atmospheric tomb raid, and a desperate final battle with a high body count, higher than I was anticipating for a series. I won’t spoil any of that here but you’ll be surprised, methinks. Plus cannibal tribes and weird monsters. And of course we are introduced to the race of Scaleborn, which are mostly human in appearance but with patches of scaly skin. They are a marginalized, dwindled race, and often brutalized by human captors. But we get just a little bit of that here with much left to the imagination, presumably to later entries.

Despite being a multi-character series, Immaculate Scoundrels feels much more S&S than high fantasy. As noted, the scoundrels are mostly rogues who enjoy the sordid side of tavern life, and a few have made a living as hired thieves or assassins. Outsiders and rogues, making a hard living. This isn’t A Wizard of Earthsea or The Belgariad, though there are definite higher powers (or at least greater forces) at work.

All that said, this one did not land quite as squarely for me as the best of his shorter S&S pieces. I suspect this is largely due to preference; I am that rare bird that prefers short stories and standalone novels. I find most multi-series fantasy to be padded out unnecessarily. Immaculate Scoundrels feels a little more expansive than I typically prefer. There are several threads that Fultz leaves open-ended, a budding romance unconsummated, all of which my impatient self would prefer to get now, in one book.

I can and do recommend it, however. Immaculate Scoundrels is a fun, strong, good read, a promising start of a new series that fans of independent authors and sword-and-sorcery should support.

TL;DR, read some Fultz, people.

Start the Fire, Metal Church

Metal Friday returns with simple, hard-driving metal. Metal Church and "Start the Fire," off The Dark (1986).

Nothing subtle about this one, just a great example of classic mid-late 80s metal. The main riff kicks ass, decent guitar solo, and the late David Wayne puts on a terrific vocal performance.

Nothing else needs to be said. 

Have a kick-ass weekend, in The Dark.

A review of Iron Maiden, Nov. 9 2024, Prudential Center, Newark New Jersey

Me, Scott, and $22 beer.

Last week I was hanging out with some younger colleagues at a work retreat, and a few expressed amazement to learn that I had tickets to see Iron Maiden Saturday night.

“Iron Maiden? Aren’t those guys like, a hundred years old?”

“In their 60s and still rocking. Selling out arenas, in fact.”

Incredulous faces. But I get it. 

They don’t know what I know. What all metal fans know.

Iron Maiden is not just one of the biggest metal acts on the planet, they’re one of the biggest bands on the planet, full stop.

Banged out show.

Age does not seem to be a barrier for Maiden. Someday father time will catch up to them, as it does for all of us. Time it waits for no man.

But not this night.

Long review short: Maiden was awesome. They never disappoint. They did not fail to meet even my higher than usual hopes for this concert. My favorite Maiden album is Somewhere in Time, and The Future Past World Tour features a heavy rotation of songs from both that album and their latest studio release, Senjutsu. 

Past and future.

That’s what we got, a lot of past and future hits. From the once and future king(s).

Bruce leaned heavily into the time travel theme. He put on a battery powered leather jacket from deep in the Maiden archives, one he last wore circa 1986. This was part of a fun monologue which led appropriately enough into “The Time Machine.”

After the opening Vangelis theme from “Blade Runner” (a favorite film of mine which inspired the iconic and dystopian Somewhere in Time album art), Maiden hit the Stage like a tornado to “Caught Somewhere in Time.” 

Then it was on to my favorite song off the album, “Stranger in a Strange Land.”

These days I’ve taken to leaving my cell phone in my pocket. Like many others for a time I’d record chunks of concerts, but I found myself never going back and listening to the clips, which inevitably disappointed me. Today I prefer to live in the moment. Besides, someone always winds uploading a superior recording on YouTube.

But I had to capture Adrian Smith’s “Stranger in a Strange Land” solo, perhaps my favorite in their catalog. Here it is. 

As with all cell phone recordings this does not do it justice. It’s a pale replica but nevertheless I offer it here for the curious.

The rest of the set list is below.

Maiden famously never played “Alexander the Great” live, until this tour. So I can now check that off the bucket list. It was great, one of the highlights of the show. Cyborg Eddie made I believe three appearances on stage, including once for a laser cannon duel with Bruce. Bruce by the way was in a cracking good mood, which is not always a guarantee. His banter was fun and positive, and he left with the comment that they’d 100% be back next year (European tour dates already announced) because us fans “were the only friends they’ve got.”

Was I surprised with anything on the setlist? Not really, except that perhaps they did not play their usual closer “Hallowed be thy Name.” No songs from Powerslave, one from Seventh Son, and one from Piece of Mind was perhaps a bit of a surprise, but I’ve heard heavy doses of these albums on prior tours.

I was quite satisfied.

One good, unexpected surprise: “Hell on Earth” in the encore. It’s a terrific song and worked very well live. 

I could see “Wasted Years” coming from a mile away. It’s the most recognizable song on Somewhere in Time if not their entire catalog. But a satisfying conclusion.

I drank a giant $22 IPA (a price that included tip, but so laughably overpriced that I had no choice but to buy it) and had a blast crowd watching. Again, the place was sold out, which is fucking remarkable, so I enjoyed many memorable sights and fan nonsense.

The only lousy part was my cranky right knee which flared up in agony halfway through the set. I was unable to extend it due to the tight seating, requiring me to leave my seat and walk it off on the concourse. I returned to my seat, but the bright pain resumed with three songs to go. Likely arthritis. 

It sucks getting old, and time is not on my side, but hey, it might mean I’ll have my own cyborg components soon. 

Caught Somewhere in Time

Stranger in a Strange Land

The Writing on the Wall

Days of Future Past

The Time Machine

The Prisoner

Death of the Celts

Can I Play With Madness

Heaven Can Wait

Alexander the Great

Fear of the Dark

Iron Maiden

Encore:

Hell on Earth

The Trooper

Wasted Years

* Addendum 

I realized I forgot to mention The Hu! Maiden's opening act was a Mongolian folk metal band. Loved their incredibly unique sound, a mixture of powerful orchestra and something like Rammstein. Worth getting there early to see.

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?

Neither Beg Nor Yield, a review

This book can have none more attitude.

Neither Beg Nor Yield is an ass-kicking sword-and-sorcery anthology that you should read.

This thing is a beast, an obvious labor of love. 456 pages. 20 stories. Illustrated throughout. An incredible lineup of authors. How the hell did editor Jason Waltz manage to land this group, a who’s-who of fantasy writers? Each story gets an outro penned by Waltz, a smattering of biographical info coupled with his insights on what makes each story fit the prescribed “sword-and-sorcery attitude” that unites each of the stories.

This book has attitude.

Did we mention attitude?

Waltz plants an Iwo Jima-esque flag for what sword-and-sorcery means to him. It can be summed up in one word. Attitude, with a capital A. Always. Stories of vital, never-say-die protagonists, shouting “enough talk!” before contemptuously hurling a dagger into their garrulous foe (this actually happens in one story). Think of Conan cutting down a magistrate and hacking his way free of a corrupt courtroom, or running down a cruel Frost Giants’ Daughter in the snowy wastes. “An indomitable will with the passion to live,” Waltz proclaims, in his introduction to the volume “It’s Not Gentle.” 

This attitude accurately describes a large swath of S&S, and undoubtedly draws many fans under its bloody banner. Including me.

It’s an interesting and compelling way to look at the subgenre, even if it does circumscribe S&S a bit more narrowly than I’d prefer. I suspect it might leave out the Clark Ashton Smith weird/antiheroic strain of Satampra Zeiros that I enjoy, for example. I’m not sure if it permits a story like “The Best Two Thieves in Lankhmar,” or most of the Elric stories. I fear something like HP Lovecraft’s fuck around-and-find-out, dreamy and atmospheric “The Doom That Came to Sarnath” would not make the cut. 

Even Conan realizes the pen is often mightier than the sword, and diplomacy is needed.

On the other hand Waltz’ theory allows for a story like “Suspension in Silver,” a story set in the present in which werewolves attack a tattoo parlor that most probably would not consider S&S. So in another sense, it’s permissive.

Sword-and-sorcery can mean different things to different people, and readers gravitate toward it for many reasons. Though it is admittedly a relatively narrow subgenre dominated by men and women of action, there are different strains within it, not all flush with attitude.

We can decide what sort of S&S we prefer. And that flexibility allows an editor to curate a vision for what type of stories he or she wants to publish.

Waltz plants a firm fucking standard in the ground with NBNY. A giant middle finger at the sky, drenched in blood. I commend him for this.

Are the stories any good?

Of the 20 tales, I liked at least 13 of them. S&S anthologies are never perfect and I consider this a very good hit-miss ratio.

My absolute favorites included:

• Soldier, Seeker, Slayer, John C. Hocking. A powerful story with an end that hits like a ton of bricks. A mercenary who has lost his memory has it all come crashing back.

• The Stone from the Stars, Chuck Dixon. This was well-told, amusing, and entertaining start to finish. Reminded me of a Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story with a little more gross-out action.

• Evil World, John Fultz. Fultz is one of the best S&S writers working today and delivers the goods every time I read him. This story taps into the mythic, with battles against external evil and weakness within.

• Reckoning, Keith Taylor. Taylor is an excellent author, full stop, one of the best of the S&S “silver age” or whatever you want to call it, late 60s to early 80s. The author of Bard takes us back to his sweet spot, Dark Ages Ireland for a tale of Nasach. The combat is 10/10. Great little tale.

• Bona Na Croin, Jeff Stewart. I don’t believe I’ve read anything by Stewart before but I loved this gritty story from an unknown to me author. Very Taylor-esque with its ancient Celtic setting, good use of grit and historical realism that makes its irruption of weird magic powerful and horrifying.

• Virgins for Khuul, Steve Goble. Another new name I was pleased to be acquainted with. This was like a much better told Death Dealer story, over the top but in a fun way. Includes a massive snake and a protagonist with the moniker “Slaughter Lord” … but it all works.

• The Last Vandals on Earth, Steven Erikson. Erikson is a great author even if I have no intention of wading through his Malazan series. Powerful and well-written with an emotional charge, dying letters written in blood never fail to move me.

• Maiden Flight, Adrian Cole. Very apropos ending for the book. Concerns a Valkyrie and a warrior not ready to depart for the halls of Valhalla. The Northern thing never fails to land with me and this one stuck the landing.

Five other stories were good, entertaining if not as unqualified good as the ones above. Seven failed to land with me, likely a matter of taste and style. The only disappointment I want to mention is the Joe Lansdale story. I am a HUGE Lansdale fan and was greatly anticipating this one, but I bounced off its gonzo style and (very) strange subject matter. It reminded me of his The Drive-In, which I also did not particularly enjoy. I love Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard stories, and several of his standalone novels including The Bottoms. He writes humor better than any author I’ve read, save Douglas Adams. He can do pathos and action with equal facility. I’m firmly in Joe’s fan club and he can take the critique. Other reviewers seem to like “The Organ Grinder’s Monkey” so make of this what you will.

TL;DR, get this book and read it. You will be entertained, and your testosterone levels will increase. It’s pretty metal.

Rock on.

Weird Tales of Modernity: Elevating the artistry of the Weird Tales Three

Pulp and other forms of genre fiction have become not just an accepted form of entertainment, but an acknowledged outlet for meaningful artistic expression. But this is a relatively recent phenomenon. For more than a century literary critics shunned pulp, categorizing it as cheap entertainment for coarse consumers, junk food devoid of value. Some actively discouraged its consumption.

Today literary elites no longer dictate broad cultural tastes—or if any do, they certainly wield less power and influence than the likes of Harold Bloom, Edmund Wilson and William Dean Howells once did. At least from my limited perspective.

But one result of this century of neglect is comparatively few literary studies. Only recently have we seen a steady uptick with the likes of Jonas Prida’s Conan Meets the Academy (2012), Justin Everett and Jeffrey Shanks’ The Unique Legacy of Weird Tales (2015), Mark Fisher’s The Weird and the Eerie (2017), Bobby Derie’s Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others (2019), John Haefele’s Lovecraft: The Great Tales (2021), and Stephen Jones’ The Weird Tales Boys (2023). We have plenty of catching up to do, which makes Jason Ray Carney’s Weird Tales of Modernity (McFarland, 2019) a welcome volume. It’s a work that certainly deserves more attention. I recommend it strongly, with a few caveats.

The first caveat is price. McFarland describes itself as a leading independent publisher of academic and general-interest nonfiction books, but academic publishers typically charge more due to their small print runs, and McFarland, though cheaper than some academic presses, is still pricey. This book runs nearly $40 new at just under 200 pages.

The second is accessibility. Weird Tales of Modernity is a challenging read. It took me a while to get into the flow due to the denseness of Carney’s language and use of academic jargon. I have a degree in English and have read (and even appreciate) academic writing, but it’s been a while since I tackled such material and needed to shake off a little rust to get back into that headspace. It probably also assumes a little too much familiarity with literary modernism.

But once I acclimated to the language I both enjoyed Weird Tales of Modernity as an entertaining read, and for the compelling case it makes for the literary merits of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard. Carney’s central thesis is that the “Weird Tales Three” were not just producing entertainment, but contributing meaningfully as original artists writing in reaction to literary modernism.

This would be a good time to explain that particular term. 

Literary modernism was an experimental mode of fiction in vogue from roughly the late 1800s to the early 1940s, peaking in the interwar period (1920-39)—roughly concurrent to the literary output of Howard, Lovecraft, and Smith. It was a time marked by profound disillusionment in institutions and doubt that universal truth and human progress were possible. Rapid changes in technology and industrialization coupled with the carnage of World War I made old certainties a shifting sand.

Amid these rapid changes artists such as T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, William Faulker, and Virginia Wolfe adapted modes of literary expression to match, abandoning old traditions and pioneering new prose and poetry techniques--slice of life, introspection, emphasis on realism, abandonment of meter and rhyme in poetry. As the old sureties in life were slipping away, they sought to achieve immortality through “art in amber,” even if just in limited, fragmentary glimpses. A chief example is Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), a dense and sprawling work which depicted the events of 24 hours in the life of Leopold Bloom.

Carney argues that Smith, Lovecraft, and Howard were aware of this movement, but instead of engaging in it produced stories of shadow modernism, “strange art, artists, and experience of art created in reaction to modernity.”  Howard’s decaying cities and corrupt civilizations and Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones and uncaring, indifferent cosmicism were symbolic representations of the terrible ephemerality that lurked behind the seeming consistency of our day-to-day lives—the inevitable march of time and the subsequent corruption and decay of all human endeavor. The Weird Tales Three saw through this veil and understood the ephemerality of life—the “ephemerality of the ordinary” as Carney repeats in an oft-used phrase.  “Irrespective of tribe, race, clique, or coterie, we are all ephemeral forms trembling in strange stasis destined for formlessness.” 

Capturing the ephemerality of human endeavor required more than the language of literary modernism could provide. It required fantastic and extraordinary literary techniques married to the techniques of the Gothic novel—hallmarks of the Weird Tales Three. Writes Carney, “After many creative iterations honed over several stories—e.g., Pickman’s demented art, Malygris’s sorcery, the fell mirrors of Tuzun Thune—this shadow modernism becomes an inhuman form of technology that, functioning like a cognitive prosthesis in the virtual world of fiction, thereby reveals the secret truth of history: history is a cruelly accelerating process of deformation. The ordinary is ephemeral. History is the interplay of form and formlessness with formlessness terminally ascendant.”

Carney does an impressive job supporting his thesis with multiple references from the literature, both from mainstream modernist writers and from Howard, Lovecraft, and Smith. I found his arguments original and convincing, offering new insights and perspectives I hadn’t previously considered. If you take these writers seriously it’s a book you ought to seek out.

In addition to his scholarship Carney has done much of note for sword-and-sorcery and the broader field of pulp fiction. His efforts building the online Whetstone discord community (which recently shut down after a notable run of some five years), initiating the Trigon awards and associated conference, organizing academic panels at Howard Days, and of course establishing the Whetstone Amateur Magazine of Pulp Sword-and-Sorcery, served an important function for many. We’re all on the same path of dissolution and formlessness, which makes any efforts to make sense of the art we enjoy while offering warmth and community for other like-minded souls deeply appreciated and sorely needed. Weird Tales of Modernity and Carney’s broader oeuvre serve as a bulwark against the ephemerality of the ordinary.

This review also appeared on the blog of the Rogues in the House podcast.

Prayers for Howard Andrew Jones, ardent sword-and-sorcery champion

When I heard the news that Howard Andrew Jones was diagnosed with inoperable and fatal brain cancer, it staggered me. I’m still reeling. 

The great HAJ, author of Lord of a Shattered Land

Although we’d never met in person, Howard is much more than just an author whose works I admire. He’s a person I admire.

Relentlessly optimistic.

Passionate and informed.

Encouraging and welcoming.

And after all that, he’s also a darned good writer responsible for some books I enjoyed, and recommend you seek out.

I got to know Howard a bit through an online Discord community, Whetstone, which has recently shuttered. We also served together on a Rogues in the House podcast and a video panel, The Best of Sword-and-Sorcery.

But despite meeting him in online venues only, I feel like I knew him. 

I’ve heard it said that if an author writes in enough volume, and truly, that he will inevitably end up on the page. I’m not sure if I fully believe this, but I do believe it in the case of Howard. 

He was Hanuvar. Relentless in his work, honorable, hopeful that one day he might succeed in his mission.

He was also The Skull, mascot of Tales from the Magician’s Skull, the sword-and-sorcery magazine he edited for Goodman Games. Relentless in his love of sword-and-sorcery, and threatening immolation for anyone who profaned the sacred genre. He reduced many interns to ash, all in good humor of course.

He was a tireless champion of Harold Lamb, whose stories he assembled in an eight-volume “Harold Lamb Library” series for Bison Books. Howard constantly shoehorned Lamb into every conversation about early pulp adventure writers, which was endearing but also opened many eyes (including my own) to Lamb’s underappreciated influence and greatness. Instead of “GOAT-ing” Harold as all-time Lamb champion, we’ll bison him, I guess.

I’m hoping against hope that somehow we might get more stories from his pen. I hate talking about him in past tense, because he's still very much alive. But the news does not sound good.

Cancer steals people in their prime, with no warning. Cancer stole someone near to me, now it threatens Howard’s life. It is an absolute scourge and I hope one day I might live to see it eradicated, or driven back to the pits of hell from whence it came, like Conan did to Thog in Xuthal of the Dust.

Life can be absolute shit. 

This heavy news is yet another reminder to live every moment like it matters. Because they all do, and we never know when it may all be taken away.

Prayers for Howard and his family.

Resurrection, Rob Halford

Let's set the scene for this Metal Friday.

In the late 90s heavy metal was in shambles. A Mad Max wasteland, fans squabbling over the little juice that remained like savage, scavenging bikers. The mutated blight of grunge and nu metal (Jesus I hate even typing nu metal) had dropped a steaming deuce on anything resembling taste, talent, or actual heavy metal. It was a dried out, sad, creatively bankrupt, pathetic wasteland of terrible music, suffused in the outflow of the great septic tank of post hair-metal apocalypse. 

God I hated this period.

And please don't try to change my mind. It sucked, hard. I saw it all, first hand, at multiple Ozzfests and a lot of shitty listening sessions in college surrounded by assholes in flannel. Yes, I gave it the old 'college try,' for FOUR YEARS, and can confirm it sucked, Pearl Jam and all.

I saw Limp Bizkit come out of a toilet, literally, at Ozzfest. They should have stayed there. I'd gladly hit flush, as the world cheered. 

Spare me your nostalgia and stories; this was fucking dark times for heavy metal.*

And then came 2000.

Iron Maiden came roaring back with Brave New World, and Rob Halford came out of a post Judas Priest funk with Resurrection. And suddenly the world tilted back on its correct axis, and all was right again. 

Heavy metal was back.

"Resurrection" was Halford telling the world, "Fight and 2wo were interesting ... okay not 2wo. But I needed these albums at this point in my life. I've gotten them out of my system. Now? Fuck that noise. I'm back, with legit music." 

This was a repudiation of the 1990s. Don't believe me? Here's the lyrics:

I'm digging deep inside my soul

To bring myself out of this god-damned hole

I rid the demons from my heart

And found the truth was with me from the start

Holy angel lift me from this burning hell

Resurrection make me whole

This song is awesome. It resurrected heavy metal.

Listen and enjoy. And remember how fragile it all is, boys.

* I don't hate you, I just think you have terrible taste in music.

Of artistry, addiction, and self-discovery: Forthcoming memoir of fantasy artist Tom Barber

Tom Barber at the canvas.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. 

--Kurt Vonnegut

Tom Barber was working in a commercial art studio in the mid 70s when he walked into a local bookstore while on lunch break. He found a book of illustrations by N.C. Wyeth, picked it up, leafed through it. 

Returning to work, he marched in to his boss’ office and gave his two-week notice.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but after looking at those paintings I knew it was something along those lines,” he said.

That “something” was a lifelong commitment to the creative muse over the commercial. Wherever that path would take him. 

Tom assembled a portfolio for Houghton Mifflin, a Boston publisher specializing in children’s books. And was promptly humbled. “I got my first interview with a real art director,” he said. “He looked through my work and told me I ought to find another line of work.”

Stung but undeterred, Tom took his ideas in a new direction. An architect friend reviewed his work and saw something the art director didn’t. He asked Tom if he’d ever been to a sci-fi convention. Tom hadn’t. So he painted several pieces and attended his first convention, art in tow.

And promptly sold every painting he had.

Tom's first cover.

Buoyed by his success, Tom set his eyes on New York. “I started pounding the pavement, trying to get a cover on a magazine called Creepy,” he recalled. After a few failures, his first agent encouraged him to try sci-fi. Tom painted a beautiful spaceship against an alien backdrop. That turned out to be his first cover, for the March 1976 Amazing Science Fiction, featuring a story by George R.R. Martin (aside: 43 years later Tom received an email from a scientist informing him that the March ’76 cover got him interested in aerodynamics and wind tunnel testing, and eventually to studying failure modes in US spacecraft). That same year Tom attended the New England Science Fiction Convention, met his second agent, and started selling regularly to New York publishers, including Zebra Books, an imprint of Kensington Books. 

Zebra published Tom’s work in a torrent, for the likes of the covers of Black Vulmea’s Vengeance (Robert E. Howard), Lud of London (Talbot Mundy), Andrew Offutt’s The Sign of the Moonbow, Adrian Cole’s The Dream Lords: A Plague of Nightmares, Lin Carter’s paperback revival of Weird Tales, Robert Bloch’s Mysteries of the Worm, and others. 

One of my favorites.

The rest is history. “I found my niche,” he said.

That history will soon be revealed in full. Tom recently finished a memoir of his creative life, and is currently exploring publishing options.

He’s also still painting, though as much or more of the natural world than S&S and SF. In addition to Frazetta and N.C. Wyeth he’s also a devotee of Claude Monet, and you can see clear inspiration of the French impressionist in his expansive skies and galaxies.

But Tom still takes regular detours into the weird and macabre. His new memoir will feature more than 60 pieces of art. Some are scenes from his life, but others are conceptual, and dark, reflecting his own dark struggles with alcohol addiction. So you’ll experience not just his story, but a large slice of his visual imagination.

Tom discovered his love of speculative fiction from the short-lived TV show Flash Gordon (1954-55), which he watched as boy of eight. Later he discovered Conan and Frank Frazetta. “That took me off into the land of make believe. Or maybe I already had it in me and that woke it up,” he said.

Zebra kept Tom busy...

His imagination never stopped working. In fact, he spends a good deal of his time wandering the halls of his mind. As a regular at the Vet Center in White River Junction, VT, attending readjustment counseling, he recalls standing with a bunch other Vets in the kitchen one day. “As I was standing there, one of the psychologists came out and said to the group, ‘you know, just because you see Tom standing here in person, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s actually here.’ I just spent a lot of my time in other worlds, my head in the clouds, my heart in the stars.” 

Tom dwells in other worlds because he’s found this one rather chaotic. He served as a Vietnam-era army medic from 1968-71, providing bedside care for some grievously wounded soldiers returning from the jungle. The experience never left him. 

In the early 80s Tom moved to Arizona, leaving behind the east coast and his promising art career. He attempted to keep working but his addiction got the better of him, and for a while he stopped painting altogether. Drinking not only derailed his career but nearly ended his life. He was fortunate to have friends who realized he needed help.

The memoir begins with him finishing off his last beer in a smoky little barroom full of drunk Indians up in Flagstaff, Arizona. This was followed by a 28-day, in-patient rehab program at the VA in Prescott. 

“I knew if I didn’t stop drinking, I’d be dead. All the details are in the memoir.”

Tom reads books about Zen Buddhism and has tried meditation with limited success. Painting remains his principal form of meditation, his studio a place where the chaos stills. 

After a series of sessions at the VA his counselor recommended Tom put his life to paper. Writing his memoir proved therapeutic.

“She said, ‘Tom, you’ve had an interesting life. Why don’t you write?’ So I went home and starting writing. It took hold, and turned out to be a real eye-opener,” he said. “I was learning about myself, stuff I didn’t realize.”

The book is written for entertainment but also to let others suffering with addiction know that there is a way out. Tom doesn’t care who knows about his struggles. He hopes his story might help them in some way.

“One thing I don’t like about Alcoholics Anonymous is the word ‘anonymous.’ You’re not supposed to tell people,” he said. “Well, I always tell people because you don’t know who you’re standing next to. They could be ready to go home and shoot themselves.”

Attack at Dawn

At age 78 Tom is a survivor, and likewise his best work stands the test of time. Most of his classic work is in the hands of private collectors.  In the noted collection, The Frank Collection: A Showcase of the World's Finest Fantastic Art (Paper Tiger, London, 1999), the following short writeup accompanies his work, “Attack at Dawn”:

Watching over these sculptures, peering warily above the tops of their shields, is Tom Barber’s small army of armored warriors in Attack at Dawn, a personal work he created circa 1980. This is the first piece we purchased from him. We were immediately drawn to the image, always wondering, who and what army might those soldiers be confronting that morning? We lost track of Tom in the early 80s, when he moved out west to paint western scenes. And no one that we know in the fantasy art world has ever run into him again. That’s a shame because Barber was a great talent and if he had stayed in the field he would today be known to fans around the world.

And then one day, there he was. Sober.

“Attack at Dawn” now resides in the private collection of George R.R. Martin.

Tom's latest S&S foray.

Jane recently asked him to create a new piece of commissioned art. Tom responded with a foray back into sword-and-sorcery, a muscled warrior battling a fearsome giant scorpion. 

Today he continues to get occasional jobs, including some covers and private commissions.  And he continues to live by the motto: 

Art that isn’t shared with the world is only half finished.

Can you separate the art from the artist?

The Graveyard Book and American Gods are good books. Both before Neil Gaiman became embroiled in the current controversy … and after. 

That doesn’t mean I have to like Neil Gaiman the person to enjoy his books (and if the current allegations are accurate, he’s a pretty slimy dude). But I can still read and enjoy The Sandman.

Because art is separate from the artist. Anyone who claims they had an inkling of Gaiman’s alleged behavior from reading Coraline is full of shit. 

There is no need to learn all about your favorite artists. It used to be you knew almost nothing of SF/F authors, save in the occasional printed interview in Analog or the like.

Let’s step away from Gaiman for a moment, who for obvious reasons is a bit of a lightning rod.

Closer to home for me are writers like Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. Both writers of a long-ago age, some of their stories literally published 100 years ago. 

Both with well-documented racist beliefs….beliefs which were incredibly common in their day and age. And which aren’t even immediately noticeable in huge swathes of their fiction, regardless.

Both are being read today, and will continue to be read, long after all their critics are dead and forgotten. 

You should be reading these guys if you’re a fan of speculative fiction.

You should be reading these guys if you’re a writer of speculative fiction.

You should be reading these guys if you’re a historian of speculative fiction.

If you don’t, you’re missing out on formative writers that will make you a better writer. And great stories that will give you experiences you can’t get anywhere else. And important literary history that will leave blind spots in your understanding of how fantasy fiction came to be today.

Are there some truly abhorrent writers that make this decision murky? Of course. Marion Zimmer Bradley and David Eddings come to mind. I understand why some want to disown these authors and never read them again.

But even these guys can still be read. I won’t stand up for MZB or Eddings like I do Howard and Lovecraft, both because of personal tastes and because I don’t think they’re nearly as good or important. I am not convinced either will be read 100 years from now. In fact, they probably won’t.

But both can still be read. Because we can separate art from artist.

I realize this question is subjective. Every individual’s threshold for offense is entirely unique. Each reader brings his or her own unique experiences to the table. Some readers are afflicted by past traumas they cannot overcome. Some readers are better than others at compartmentalizing.

But that makes the objective statement, “art cannot be separated from artist,” false. 

Yes, every artist brings something of his or herself to their writing, but the alchemy of creativity defies analysis. An artist does not pour everything of themselves into every story, they choose what goes in. Or they themselves compartmentalize, pour their self-loathing into evil characters committing bad deeds, in acts of self-introspection.

There are many beloved writers, living and dead, with skeletons in their closet—skeletons we don’t know about, skeletons which will never see the light of day. Because the artist is long dead, or no record of their behavior exists.

Every human being on the planet has skeletons. We just don’t know about many of them. Nor do we have to.

If you happen to be one of those rare birds who watches 30 minutes of local news, reads Neil Gaiman, and stays off the internet—you’d never know about the unfolding scandal. It would not diminish your enjoyment of his books. You don’t know who the artist is beyond what is on the page, and you don’t to have to, to enjoy and appreciate his or her work.

Can you separate art from artist? Ultimately it’s an individual choice.

But if you’re asking me? Of course you can. 

And you should.

You already have.

Hither Came Conan; A Review

Also a winner of The Valusian Award from
the Robert E. Howard Foundation.

Robert E. Howard Days was wonderful for many reasons, but among them was the opportunity to talk Robert E. Howard, anywhere, anytime, with anyone. Standing in line waiting for barbecue at the pavilion, on a schoolbus tour led by Rusty Burke, or wandering around downtown Cross Plains, everyone was there to talk REH and ready to engage in banter about their favorite tale or their own Howard origin story.

It was like being in a warm blanket of Howard-heads.

Then it was over, and I was thrust back into the hard cold world of the ordinary.

The good news is if you own Hither Came Conan you don’t have to wait a year for a similar experience. Imagine a bunch of folks gathered around a proverbial campfire with an assignment: "Why is this Conan story Howard’s best? You’ve got 10 minutes. Go.” That is the premise of this volume, published in 2023 by the nonprofit publishing house Rogue Blades Foundation.

Hither Came Conan serves as a fine companion to the Conan stories. I can imagine this book serving as an ongoing reference, pulling it off the shelf and seeing what Deuce Richardson or Gabe Dybing has to say when you’ve finished re-reading “Black Colossus” or “The People of the Black Circle” for the eighth time.

This exercise admittedly gets a bit absurd when you are assigned something like “Vale of Lost Women” or the unfinished “Wolves Beyond the Border.” Everything Howard wrote has some minor touch of genius, some cool scene or vivid snatch of poetic prose, but no one can seriously defend the likes of “Vale” as REH’s finest hour. But I give the respective essayists credit for the attempt.

The list is authors assembled for this project is impressive. Wide ranging, from top scholars to fiction authors and ardent fans. People like Patrice Louinet, who stands in the black circle of top Howard scholars (his Hyborian Genesis essays in the Del Reys are a must), Jeff Shanks, David C. Smith, Bobby Derie, Mark Finn, Morgan Holmes, Richardson, many others.  But the true spine of the book is “Re-Reading” Conan by Bill Ward and Howard Andrew Jones, a written dialogue which appears with every story including the “Wolves on the Border” fragment and “The Hyborian Age.”

Truth be told I was preoccupied and not paying attention in 2015 when the great Black Gate Conan re-read was going on, and so I missed this series when it first appeared. It is reprinted here in Hither Came Conan and so was new to me. This remains the best part of the book. Ward and Jones engage in a back-and-forth discussion that almost feels like spoken word. Both are of course incredibly complementary to REH and offer shrewd insights into what makes each tale great, or at least solid pulp fare, while largely managing to avoid engaging in hagiography. Neither are afraid to critique REH and talk about which stories or parts of his stories fell flat or conform to predictable pulp formula. I’m still puzzled by Howard (Andrew Jones’) ongoing rejection of “Beyond the Black River” but hey, that’s why you read a book like this. If it was all unadorned praise it would invite no engagement and discussion and get real boring, real fast.

Some of the essays are very good, others are uneven or somewhat uninspired. My own is in here (“Honor Among Thieves: Hyborian Age Morality,” an “Extra, Extra!” essay analyzing “Rogues in the House,”) which in hindsight is OK. I’m my own worst critic. If you’ve read it let me know what you think.

I gleaned a few new insights reading the essays, for example the considerable effort REH placed into “Man-Eaters of Zamboula” after reading John Bullard’s appraisal of Howard’s careful revisions over three drafts. But what is best about this book is the sense of shared admiration for this character, and the varied voices of the wonderful community of fans that have sprung up around him. In that vein I also appreciated the work of editors Jason Waltz and Bob Byrne for also including the voices of the readers of Weird Tales. It gives us a sense of communion with the past, and the knowledge that fans leaving comments on the Black Gate website aren’t so different than fans writing to The Eyrie letters column circa 1932-37. 

Indeed any evaluation of Robert E. Howard and Conan involves a communion with a time and place nearly 100 years ago. But one that thankfully shows no signs of slipping into the past, thanks to new volumes like this.

The Battle of Evermore and the timeless nature of fantasy

(early metal-ish Friday)

That it is told in the language of fantasy is not an accident, or because Tolkien was an escapist, or because he was writing for children. It is a fantasy because fantasy is the natural, the appropriate language for the recounting of the spiritual journey and the struggle of good and evil in the soul.

--Ursula LeGuin, “On Fantasy and Science Fiction”

The critics who have dismissed fantasy as juvenile escapism have failed to recognize that fantasy grapples with real and eternally pressing issues, albeit wrapped in metaphor and fantastic trappings.

The same critics who worship at the altar of realism and extol the virtues of novels about average people in familiar times cannot admit their darlings have rapidly aged and are fast losing their relevance. While the classics of fantasy remain as fresh today as the day they were written.

That’s because the language of fantasy is unbound by time, or place. It deals with the big issues—conflict within and without, love, sorrow, friendship, the inevitable march of time, pain, decay and death—in poetic abstraction, and in heroic meter and timbre. Modern novels that reference an author’s time and place will confuse the modern reader with surroundings that grow increasingly abstract and impenetrable with the passing years, while the Hyborian Age or Middle-Earth remain eternally familiar and inhabitable even as their authors slip further into the past. They are distanced from the ordinary, but close to the human heart.

The Battle of Evermore will still be played 100 years from now, though perhaps never as well as this version by Heart. Because we all grasp its emotional depths, and understand the meaning of the plaintive cries.

The apples turn to brown and black

The tyrant's face is red

Oh war is common cry

Pick up your swords and fly

We’re always trying to bring the balance back. It’s the eternal struggle never won, but once in a while we experience the blessed peace of equilibrium.

The Battle of Evermore will still be played 100 years from now, and remain as unspoiled as Lothlorien, because it is the timeless matter of fantasy.

A review of Metallica, August 2nd 2024, Gillette Stadium

Nosebleed seats but what a view!

Metallica isn’t the best heavy metal band on the planet (that would be Iron Maiden or Judas Priest, take your pick) but they’re undoubtedly the biggest. A loyal following of metal diehards coupled with massive crossover appeal to a broader audience of casual hard rock fans and event seekers makes their shows a true event. 

But even I didn’t think Metallica was capable of selling out two nights at Gillette Stadium. They proved me wrong.

Here we are 40 years later with the band in their early 60s, bigger than ever and still sounding fantastic.

I greatly enjoyed the Friday night August 2nd show and left happy and impressed. I didn’t necessarily think that would be the case going in.

I spent some years pissed at Metallica after they abandoned the angry thrash of their first four albums, all genuine metal classics. I no longer harbor any resentment about their drift into mainstream hard rock, or even their St. Anger nu metal flirtation. As I told my buddy Scott I don’t believe Metallica deliberately sold out on the black album; I think they were just evolving in a direction I didn’t particularly care for.

But there is no doubting the showmanship and passion that marks the second half of their career. And they still play the hell out of the old hits. Metallica opened with three deep cuts and ended with two more. And they played “Orion,” which genuinely surprised me and was a personal highlight. Here’s the setlist:

• Creeping Death

• Harvester of Sorrow

• Leper Messiah

• King Nothing

• 72 Seasons

• If Darkness Had a Son

• Foxboro on the Run (Kirk and Rob doodle)

• The Day That Never Comes

• Shadows Follow

• Orion

• Nothing Else Matters

• Sad But True

• Hardwired

• Fuel

• Seek & Destroy

• Master of Puppets

Yeah, Sunday had a better setlist overall, but fans at that show had to put up with driving rain and lightning delays and lousy opening acts. We got Pantera. I’m happy with our show.

I’ve seen Metallica on a couple occasions but this was the first in a long while, and if I’m correct the first with Robert Trujillo. Who I was surprised to hear has been with the band longer than any other bass player. Jason Newstead had a run of 15 years, Trujillo has been with Metallica since 2003. His audition is famously covered in the recommended show and tell-all documentary “Some Kind of Monster.” He’s a talented player with incredible energy.

The band sounded tight, Hetfield’s vocals were on point, and I enjoyed Kirk’s soloing on a number of custom guitars (including his famous purple and gold-lettered Ouija board painted job). “Creeping Death” right out of the gate set the tone for a high-energy show. The concert did seem to sag a bit in the middle, from “72 Seasons” through “Shadows Follow,” but that might have been because I didn’t know the material. Most of the fans were into it. But again “Orion” floored me and “Fuel” was explosive. “Master of Puppets” was a fantastic closer. The sound system and the tower screens (see accompanying pic) surrounding the stage were impressive. Metallica must have hung around for at least 10 minutes after the show thanking the fans and horsing around on stage, a nice touch.

Tailgating is a major part of the concert experience for me and we didn’t slack off that aspect. The three of us set up folding camp chairs in a Dunkin Donuts parking lot, drank lite beer and shot the shit about old times as customers purchased ice coffee and crullers at the drive-thru window.

Orion, Metallica

My metal summer continues, and so Metal Friday continues, with Metallica. 

"Orion" oozes nostalgia and loss, which I'm possibly projecting knowing that its architect Cliff Burton died just six months after its release. It feels like a dirge--and it very much is. The song was played over speakers during Burton's funeral, and James Hetfield had notes from the song's bridge tattooed on his left arm. 

Incredible. 

38 years after its release "Orion" remains a beautiful piece of work, haunting and atmospheric and utterly unique. The break at the four minute mark, broken when Cliff comes back in alone with his bass, is perhaps the high water mark on a magnificent album.

I can't even tell you how many times I listened to "Orion" in high school, driving around aimlessly with Master of Puppets in my car stereo. I relish those days.

I'm hoping I might hear it when I see Metallica next Friday at Gillette Stadium. Highly unlikely as Metallica almost never plays it live, likely out of respect for their late bassist. We'll see.

Treasure Island and the powerful call to adventure

It’s been a busy last month or so. Mostly in a good way, with some PTO combined with some busy times at work. But that means my writing has suffered and the blog collecting a bit more dust than usual.

Reading has been OK. I did manage to finish Ursula LeGuin’s Tehanu and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island while on vacation last week, and have since moved on to Beowulf and Other Old English Poems.

Treasure Island was a treat. I hadn’t read this since I was a kid and it holds up extremely well, both from the perspective of an adult reading a book ostensibly for young men (it was first published in serialized fashion for Young Folks, a children’s magazine), but also a work written in 1881. It’s bloody, but relatively bloodless, the violence ample though at a slight remove. The action however never stops, and the atmosphere and plotting are things of beauty. Pure, mainlined adventure from page one.

Treasure Island was published as a standalone novel in 1883, a time when literary realism and literary modernism were in the ascendancy, and so was a bit of an anachronism, a throwback to the historical romances of the likes of Sir Walter Scott. But it nevertheless proved immediately popular with the reading public and even many critics of the age.

I read a 1930 edition (Windsor Press) with a fascinating introduction by Harry Hansen, “How Robert Louis Stevenson Wrote Treasure Island.”  In addition to an interesting story behind the physical writing, publishing history and critical reception, I learned of another chapter waged in the well-grooved war of realistic vs. fantastic fiction. Henry James, perhaps the greatest practitioner of slice-of-life/realistic fiction, enjoyed the book himself—but nevertheless critiqued it during a symposium on the art of fiction in 1884. James was “unable to come to grips with the author because it did not touch his own experience,” Hansen writes. James further stated, “I have been a child, but I have never been on a quest for buried treasure.”

Word reached Stevenson. Though he never claimed Treasure Island was more than an adventurous narrative, Stevenson felt the need to defend his work and expound on the artists’ urge to create fantastic stories full of vicarious experience removed from our own. “The creative artist takes certain characters, incidents, motives out of the vast store of living and arranges them to suit his mind,” he wrote, adding that a creative author “both selects from life and expands the slightest incidents, possibly even more successfully when they relate not to what he has actually done but what he has wished to do.”

Stevenson adds a final beautiful rejoinder to James, quoted verbatim by Hansen:

If he has never been on a quest for buried treasure, it can be demonstrated that he has never been a child. There never was a child (unless Master James) has but hunted gold, and been a pirate, and a military commander, and a bandit of the mountains; but has fought, and suffered shipwreck and prison, and imbrued its little hands in gore, and gallantly retrieved the lost battle and triumphantly protected innocence and beauty.

The only thing missing was the N.C. Wyeth illustrations I remember so vividly from my childhood in whatever edition I first enjoyed, decades ago. This edition had fine black and white illustrations by Lyle Justis, but Wyeth of course is a master.

While I remain on a bit of a reading break from sword-and-sorcery Treasure Island is definitely part of its DNA.

***

Tehanu was a lovely read, LeGuin at the height of her literary powers, and I will probably have more to say about it later. Not as soaring or epic as the original Earthsea trilogy but a stirring coda. And quite a distinct experience from Treasure Island, reserved and reflective. It was sitting on my shelf for years and I finally plucked it off and read it, and am glad I did.

The analog kid—some reflections on music and technology and Into the Void

Spiraling into a (digital) void...

I recently finished Geezer Butler’s biography Into the Void. A fun and interesting read for many reasons. It’s mainly as you’d expect a detailed look into Geezer’s time with Black Sabbath, in which he served as bass player and principal lyrics writer. Geezer experienced a wild rock and roll lifestyle, including a roller coaster ride to the top in the early to mid-70s and subsequent plunge to the bottom in the late 80s and early 90s. But along the way Into the Void offers some interesting commentary and a glimpse into how radically the music industry has transformed from 1969-today. Largely due to the rapid adoption of new technology and the corresponding shift from analog to digital.

I am of Generation X (born 1973) and have the benefit of living in two worlds. I grew up in an analog era of tapes and stereos, but also had a front seat to the rise of computers and digital music, and later Napster and YouTube and Spotify. I rode that lightning. 

With that perspective I’ve come around to the belief that technological adoption results in both progress and regress. It is not a universal good, each step an advance toward some Star Trek utopia espoused by deluded techno-utopians like David Brin. Nor is it an evil, each advance in technology removing us further from some mythical Garden of Eden and closer to a digital Hell. 

It is just Change, for better and for worse.

Music used to be harder to access. You had to plunk down hard-earned coin to buy it. There were fewer options, no carefully curated song lists built around your mood or vacation destination. Unless you wanted to go through the considerable trouble of making a mix tape.

But analog music was (and remains, with the right equipment) of a better sound quality than compressed digital, richer and more resonant. And friendlier to the collector. With your analog purchase comes physical art, albums with foldouts and liner notes and the like.

Many things got better for music with the advent of digital. With Spotify Premium ($10.99/ month, soon to be $11.99) I have access to essentially every piece of music ever recorded. I can go to YouTube and watch any music video I formerly had to pray Headbanger’s Ball might play. I can watch hundreds and thousands of concerts I’ve never been to, and documentaries and fan videos, when before the only options were to buy a VHS copy of Live After Death or take a gamble on a bootleg.

Tapes were never a great way to preserve music, and records and CDs can warp or scratch. Digital is “forever” (as long as you pay the monthly fee).

In short, digital was great for me, the fan and consumer, in many ways. I benefit it from it in a small way here on the blog, with my ‘Metal Friday” posts where I can link to videos and share them with like-minded metal fans.

Nevertheless, I prefer the way the music industry used to work. Or at least, enough of it to tip the balance toward the analog era. I’m aware I’m a trader in nostalgia, but like Geezer Butler I believe have some legit arguments to back me up (which makes us both geezers, I suppose).

In the pre-digital age recorded music was not a commodity. It had to be committed to physical objects—records, tapes, CDs—in order to be distributed. Albums had controlled pricing and were marked up to create profitable margins. And because artists could and did make real money on album sales, that meant live shows served a different purpose. They were a way to promote new albums and drive records sales. They were cheaper. 

But for the artist, digital distribution is a nightmare. Butler in his book scoffs at the royalties he receives from Spotify, despite the fact Sabbath has sold more than 75 million albums. Says Butler:

While bands in the sixties and seventies got robbed by dodgy managers, modern artists and groups get robbed by streaming services like Spotify, who pay a fraction of a cent per play. It’s not even worth looking at Sabbath’s income from Spotify, it’s so small.

The only way to make up for the loss of album sales is through touring, which has led to exorbitant concert prices.

Some will argue that the unlimited choices offered by Spotify and YouTube are an unmitigated good for the consumer. But I don’t necessarily see it that way, even though I have found bands on these platforms. Research has found that people like choice, but from a limited, selected set of options. Unlimited choice is crippling, which is why we need curation. Kerrang or Headbanger’s Ball served this purpose back in the day, but today who are the arbiters of taste? It’s harder to find new music when there’s no curated selections in record stores. It used to be a handful of your local rock radio stations would bring you the latest bands, now you have to subject yourself to the whims of algorithms or corrupt search engines.

But access to music just scratches the surface of the massive impact of digital.

Electronic drum machines and autotuned voices massively lowered the bar for who could record an album. It undercut raw ability and negated craft gained through sweat equity, trading it out for dance moves and good looks. Manufactured music gave birth to the rise of pop performers who captivated audiences through sex appeal and dance moves. This kicked off at the turn of the new millennium with the rise of Britney Spears, N’Sync, Backstreet Boys, and the Spice Girls, and continues unabated today.

Before the advent of digital, record labels gave bands like Rush and Black Sabbath several albums to find their sound. It was a risk, but a calculated one, because these bands had paid their dues in clubs, built followings, and could perform. They were talents that then required promotion. 

Of course there were exceptions. Record labels were and are out to make money and signed many shitty bands purely because they were part of a hot music movement. But in general the labels had a longer leash and more patience for artists. When the emphasis is on the music, who cares how the band members look? 

If four ugly dudes from Birmingham England with an experimental new sound that didn’t follow pop formula (and certainly could not dance) were born in 1999 rather than 1949, could they become rock stars? Does anyone think we’d have had Black Sabbath today? Butler doesn’t:

People tend to ask me: Could Sabbath happen now? The truth is, probably not. The odds of four working-class lads coming together in a rough place like Aston, writing very heavy songs about their gritty reality and making it in the music industry are slim to none. They wouldn’t look “right,” they wouldn’t sound “current” and they’d be too much of a risk for major record companies.

Digitalization renders music into a commodity, cheap and disposable, no longer holy. We don’t have to queue up and wait for the new Guns and Roses albums as we once used. My daughters love Taylor Swift and pay big $ to see her in concert but don’t own her albums. The entire concept of an “album” is practically meaningless.

I don’t believe this is better, or healthier, for music. 

I am heartened that analog still has a place. You can still find music stores and new records for purchase. I smile when I see young kids buying records and admiring the artwork, and enjoying the look and feel of a physical object in their hands instead of a vaporware download. But buying physical music is a novelty, not a necessity.

While something was gained in the switch to digital, something was lost along the way.