Saturday Music Club: Early/Mid '80s Jazz-Pop Resurgence

Though this one is better-recorded.





Time-shifting just a bit...


And another outlier:


















And a second posting of this excellent, and only slightly late, reading of "Calmarie":

FFB: Terry Carr, ed: SCIENCE FICTION FOR PEOPLE WHO HATE SCIENCE FICTION (Doubleday 1966); Harry Harrison, ed: THE LIGHT FANTASTIC (Scribner's 1971)

Missionary Work

Science Fiction for People Who Hate Science Fiction was Terry Carr's first solo anthology to be published, after a volume or two of his work with Donald Wollheim on their Best of the Year sf volume for Ace Books; The Light Fantastic: Science Fiction Classics from the Mainstream (sic: there is not now, nor has there ever been, a true mainstream of literature) was not Harry Harrison's first antho, but his first, as well, was an sf BOTY, in his case for Putnam/Berkley, with Brian Aldiss as increasingly co-editing junior partner in the first volume or so. Perhaps the same impulse that drives one to work on annual showcases makes putting together this kind of instructional anthology, even beyond the usual "this is important, or at very least interesting" thrust of nearly any anthology assembled with care, particularly attractive...in the cases of these two fine anthologies, the instructional thrust can be executively summarized as "Open your eyes." (The appended "fool!" is only occasionally barely audible, almost impossible to completely suppress, as well.)

The Carr anthology brings together accessible, intelligent, (at the time) not terribly overexposed mostly sf stories (H.L. Gold's synesthesia tale "The Man with English" certainly is arguably fantasy, and Arthur Clarke's "The Star" introduces supernatural elements of the most widely accepted sort in Christendom)...Ray Bradbury's "The Sound of Thunder" hadn't quite become common coin by the mid '60s, and the Damon Knight story, despite "To Serve Man" having become a much-loved Twilight Zone episode, was nearly as famous as Knight's other early joke story, and even more sapiently pointed). While "What's It Like Out There?" remains The cited example of What Else Edmond Hamilton could do aside from planet explosion, and the Wilmar Shiras a slightly odd choice in this set of encouraging the outlanders to try some of the pure quill. Algis Budrys, in reviewing this one at the time, noted that people who hate sf hate reading, and the only way to get them to take up this book would be for it to be socially necessary to have on their coffee-table or equivalent (as Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five and Stranger in a Strange Land and to a lesser extent at that time Dune and No Blade of Grass and The Child Buyer would be)...but the thoughtful reader who thought they hated sf somehow (probably more common in '66 than today, if not much moreso) could find some diversion here, at very least. Or, by the end of the decade, could enjoy making a joke about reading up on the topic in their Funk & Wagnalls paperback edition.

Harry Harrison attempts a slightly more double-edged trick, in getting the (presumably well-meaning ignorant) snobs against sf to consider reading the form, and to get similar snobs within the sf-reading community to look beyond the commercial labels for the pure quill wherever it's actually found. Harrison, too, gets in some work in this "sf" context that is arguably (the Cheever, the Greene) or almost inarguably (the Lewis, the Twain) fantasy rather than sf, though the sort of fantasy that sf people usually find agreeable, even leaving aside the time-travel paradox introduced in Anthony Burgess's "The Muse" (Burgess, of course, couldn't leave sf alone any more than C. S. Lewis could, and saw no more reason to do so than Lewis, I'm sure). And, of course, Gerald Kersh and Jorge Luis Borges had no qualms about being considered writers of fantasticated fiction, as long as no one insisted that was all they did or could do, and, happily, no one has...if anything, Kingsley Amis, that passionate advocate for sf so labeled, has seen his advocacy and contributions to the literature all but forgotten in favor of his Angry Young Man (and Older Man) satire, even when careful to have Lucky Jim a reader of Astounding Science Fiction magazine back when Analog was still called that.

It's a funny old world, and there's no shortage of ignorance of all sorts, but that's what this FFB exercise is here to combat, in its small and often nostalgic way. I liked both these anthologies a lot as a kid, and would still like them if I was first to open them today. What more could we ask?

Science Fiction for People Who Hate Science Fiction ed. Terry Carr (Doubleday LCC# 66-24334, 1966, $3.95, 190pp, hc); Also in pb (Funk & Wagnalls 1968).

7 · Introduction · Terry Carr · in
11 · The Star [Star of Bethlehem] · Arthur C. Clarke · ss Infinity Science Fiction Nov ’55
21 · A Sound of Thunder · Ray Bradbury · ss Colliers Jun 28 ’52
37 · The Year of the Jackpot · Robert A. Heinlein · nv Galaxy Mar ’52
79 · The Man with English · H. L. Gold · ss Star Science Fiction Stories #1, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1953
91 · In Hiding [Timothy Paul] · Wilmar H. Shiras · nv Astounding Nov ’48
135 · Not with a Bang · Damon Knight · ss F&SF Win/Spr ’50
143 · Love Called This Thing · Avram Davidson & Laura Goforth · ss Galaxy Apr ’59
157 · The Weapon · Fredric Brown · ss Astounding Apr ’51
163 · What’s It Like Out There? · Edmond Hamilton · nv Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec ’52

The Light Fantastic ed. Harry Harrison (Scribner’s, 1971, hc)
· Introduction—The Function of Science Fiction · James Blish · in
· The Muse · Anthony Burgess · ss The Hudson Review Spr ’68
· The Unsafe Deposit Box · Gerald Kersh · ss The Saturday Evening Post Apr 14 ’62
· Something Strange · Kingsley Amis · ss The Spectator, 1960; F&SF Jul ’61
· Sold to Satan [written Jan 1904] · Mark Twain · ss Europe and Elsewhere, Harper Bros., 1923
· The End of the Party · Graham Greene · ss The London Mercury Jan ’32
· The Circular Ruins [1941] · Jorge Luís Borges; trans. by James E. Irby · ss Labyrinths, New Directions, 1962
· The Shout · Robert Graves · ss The Woburn Books #16 ’29; F&SF Apr ’52
· The Door · E. B. White · ss New Yorker, 1939
· The Machine Stops · E. M. Forster · nv Oxford and Cambridge Review Nov ’09
· The Mark Gable Foundation · Leo Szilard · ss The Voice of the Dolphins, and Other Stories, Simon & Schuster, 1961
· The Enormous Radio · John Cheever · ss New Yorker May 17 ’47
· The Finest Story in the World · Rudyard Kipling · nv Contemporary Review Jul, 1891
· The Shoddy Lands · C. S. Lewis · ss F&SF Feb ’56
· Afterword · Harry Harrison · aw

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: with more content...

Thanks to all contributors (and there likely will be at least a couple more coming today) and you readers; as always, if I've missed your link, or that of someone which should be here, please let me know in comments. Thanks again.

Bill Crider: Stealing Home (trailer)

Brian Arnold: Saturday Morning Recreated: ABC, Fall 1982

Chuck Esola: Smoke 'Em if You Got 'Em

Corey Redekop: Dune (1984)

Evan Lewis: Meet Nero Wolfe; The League of Frightened Men

George Kelley: Vera Cruz

Iba Dawson: Little Voice

Ivan G. Shreve: Sergeant Preston of the Yukon: Arctic Odyssey

James Reasoner: The Rogues (1964-65)

Jerry House: The Gorilla (1939)

John Charles: One Down, Two to Go

Juri Nummelin: Tarantula

Kate Laity: (Ken Russell Archives:) Delius

Michael Shonk: The Outsider (1967); The Outsider (1968-69)

Patti Abbott: Rich Man, Poor Man

Prashant Trikannad: The Last Voyage (1960)

Randy Johnson: A Bullet for Joey

Scott Cupp: Monsters (2010)

Sergio Angelini: Tequila Sunrise






Steve Lewis: You Came Along

Todd Mason: The Not Quite As Big Broadcast: Radio Drama from the 1960s to Now (please see below)

Walter Albert: Two of a Kind (1951)

Yvette Banek: Zero Mostel and The Producers (1968)

Related Matters:

Ed Gorman: Do buy Cinema Retro

Prashant Trikannad: Long Live King Kong!

Stacia Jones: February Films to Watch For

Stephen Gallagher: Don't buy Murder Rooms: The Ultimate Collection

The Not Quite As Big Broadcast: Radio Drama from the 1960s to Now

This will necessarily be a work in progress...and, in a sense, is an extension of previous posts on podcasts and radio (and commercially-recorded audio) drama generally. But there are several archives and active projects that have been brought up in various fora of late, so I'd thought I'd gather at least some access information here for this week's post.

Ongoing:

L. A. Theatre Works (formerly broadcast as Act One Radio Theater), and they make available cds of their other productions, aside from the ones being broadcast. This week, the posted episode is a production of On the Waterfront, with a bonus of a 2002 interview with Budd Schulberg.

The Relativity Series is also a LA Theatre Works production, with multiple episodes of science-fiction, science-fantasy, and science-related plays posted for streaming.

The Thrilling Adventure Hour, like the Theatre Works, stages radio plays before audiences, with an emphasis on cheerfully nostalgic parodies of common sorts of (you guessed it) adventure drama of the '30s and '40s. My own favorites tend to be from the series devoted to the supernatural investigators of the Nick and Nora Charles variety, Beyond Belief, with Paget Brewster and Paul F. Tompkins as Sadie and Frank Doyle. Episodes can be heard at their Soundcloud page, and more recent ones at their Nerdist pages. The This American Wife interview with Brewster and Tompkins in character then as themselves is also very worthwhile (TAW, as one might gather, is devoted mostly to parody of NPR and PRI programming, while also serving as a source of actual interviews and features on its own ticket.)

Earwolf, the podcast cluster, features two continuing dramatic series, if both spoofish and intentional throwbacks, The Apple Sisters and Mike Detective (we await the second season). Improv4Humans is also dramatic, as improvisational sketches are developed as you listen...which is true to some extent in some of the chattier podcasts, as well.

The BBC, of course, particularly on Radio 4, and the Radio 4 Extra (Radio 7 rebranded and slightly retooled), continues to be a source, one that isn't getting along with my current browsers here at work, and I miss it.

ZBS Foundation (the initials stand for Zero BullShit) don't believe in giving away too much of their work, but oddly enough do have some video shorts up for free, though none of their audio drama (that they're better-known for).

Archives of latter-days series:

The Internet Archive, aka Archive.org, is always a good place to start.

...much more to come...

Saturday Music Club: FLiP: "Kagome Kagome" and "Kaa to Nyaa go" and "Darts"

from Dear Girls, their debut ep:

FFB: Bob Shaw: MESSAGES FOUND IN AN OXYGEN BOTTLE and Terry Carr: BETWEEN TWO WORLDS (NESFA Press 1986)

OK, this almost feels like a bit of a cheat...another fannish collection, or in this case two collections, and the double-volume, like PITFCS, is still in print (and is sold by the same folks, the New England SF Association, who handle sales for Advent: Publishers). But Terry Carr and Bob Shaw, whose professional careers were both really sparked by the Ace Science Fiction Specials series that Carr edited and which published several of Shaw's first novels, were frequently brilliant writers who made a mark but died too young (not as kids, but too young), and this volume, a souvenir item for a convention at which the two men were guests of honor, collects a nice sampling mostly of their fannish essays and fiction, though also including Carr's gem of a fantasy "Virra" (from The Magazine of Fantasy & SF in 1978), published shortly after the one collection of his short fiction, The Light at the End of the Universe (1976) and thus left out of that only other volume of Carr's shorter work not devoted exclusively to his fannish writing. Both men were legendary contributors to fannish literature, and mainstays of fandom even after becoming fully professional writers and, in Carr's case, even more visibly an editor; certainly Shaw was one of the leading lights of Irish fandom, and Carr one of half-dozen or so most revered among contributors and publishers of fannish writing in the subculture. These selection were chosen for their excellence and their accessibility...not too much (if a little) Utterly Insider fannish reference (though, for example, it will help if you remember the claptrap Erich Van Daniken made a fortune promoting in the latter '60s and early '70s in enjoying "The Bermondsey Triangle Mystery," the transcript of a parodic convention speech Shaw offers as his first entry). The tenor of much of the lighthearted work from both men falls somewhere between James Thurber and Dave Barry, with the particular worldview of the more acute sort of fannish mindset applied, as Shaw is quick to note in his introduction. We still have some comparable folks, such as David Langford, still with us, but Carr and Shaw probably had more to give, and certainly deserved the opportunity to do so. But go look for justice in the universe.

For more largely unjustly neglected books and such, please see Patti Abbott's blog (and spare a good thought for her).

January's Underappreciated Music: the links and RIP: Joe Morello and Paul Motian

Patti Abbott: Kalena Kai

Bill Crider: The Sons of the Pioneers; Don Gibson

Jerry House: Bessie Smith

Randy Johnson: Jake Holmes, exploited by the Yardbirds (and that minor successor project of Jones and Page)

George Kelley: Some Girls (remastered) by The Rolling Stones

Charlie Ricci: The Turtles

In 2011, we lost two of the great jazz drummers of the post-bop era...major contributors to third stream and other adventurous music of the era: Joe Morello and Paul Motian. Two New England guys, of Southern European extraction at a time when that wasn't always comfortable in America (Morello Italian-American, Motian Armenian-American), about the same age (Motian a few years younger), and both began as string-instrumentalists: Motian was a guitarist, Morello a wunderkind violinist. Instead, they moved over to being among the most impressive and influential of drummers, usually but not exclusively as jazz players, and both thoroughly engaged in musical education (Morello particularly formally, as the creator of texts and a/v materials and as an instructor, Motian often in taking in younger players in his bands). With the loss of Max Roach and Elvin Jones and Art Blakey and Connie Kay and Kenny Clarke and a slew of others over the previous decade or so (of that generation, perhaps the only prominent survivor is Chico Hamilton, but I'm probably being criminally forgetful), it's a Change of the Guard, and not necessarily a welcome one.

I met Morello once, and he suggested that this was among his own favorite performances:


Some further examples:




Of course, Morello wasn't a part of the "original" Dave Brubeck quartet; just the best one.

Paul Motian (has there ever been a better surname for a drummer?), with his first great band:
(the loud hiss is kicked down with the beginning of the music)


With Paul Bley and Gary Peacock:


with the Charles Lloyd Quartet:


Rest in glory.