Legendary photographer Michael Childers joins us Wednesday, January 9th at 7PM

Johnny Marr talks about the beginning of the Smiths

We are gearing up for Tony Fletcher on 1/16/13

We are longtime Smiths fans here at the Soup.  We are pretty excited about Tony Fletcher's new book A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of the Smiths.  Mr. Fletcher will join us at 7pm on Wednesday, January 16th to discuss and sign his book.  It is essential reading for Smiths, Morrissey, Marr fans!

We love Jeff Buckley too!

"No Regrets: Writings on Scott Walker" edited by Rob Young

Personally, my life would be kind of empty without the sounds of Sparks and Scott Walker.  Both are on this world, yet they seemed kind of removed from the world as well.   And both have huge cultural baggage of sorts, but cannot be put in a box or simply explained.  They have to be experienced - and "No Regrets: Writings on Scott Walker" is a super enjoyable read (i.e. experience) that goes through out the career of Scott.  

The book is put together by Rob Young via the great British music magazine 'The Wire.'   And this is the perfect publication to do an anthology all on the subject of Scott Walker's music.  Included are late interviews with the composer/songwriter/singer, but more interesting to me are the essays on certain aspects of Scott Walker's albums.

To give one who isn't exposed to the world of Scott Waler, it is best that I give him and his music a brief introduction.  Scott Walker was a member of the Walker Brothers (none were actual  brothers), from America but went to London during the British invasion.  Unlike the Beat groups of that time, The Walker Brothers specialize in Phil Spector style big production ballads - with Scott as lead vocalist.  An incredible voice who knew how to relay a lyric like it was a simple act of putting butter on a hot piece of toast.  Over a short period of time they became teen idols of sorts, and for Scott this was a sign of total despair.   A man of humor, but a sort of humor that laughs with Ingmar Bergman films than say the Carry on films.



In the mid-60's to late 60's he made a series of solo albums that are now considered to be classics.  And they were very odd albums compared to the swinging 60's of London.  Huge orchestrations, beautiful voice singing Jacques Brel songs as well as his own material - which at the time were very much influenced by Brel and the whole French style of singing about personal and earthy narratives.  While everyone in the world of pop was tuning in- or dropping out - Scott was sort of a hipper version of Jack Jones (a singer he admired at the time) or a throw back to the pop crooner.   So that alone made him stand out with respect to the Pop explosion of the 1960's.



In the 70's he lost the pilot of sorts (and reading this book now I have second thoughts on this period)  and sort of sang for his supper - till the late 1980's where he made a series of albums every 10 to 12 years that are totally unique, odd, beautiful, disturbing, and well, fantastic art.   This book covers all different aspects of Scott Walkers very long but fascinating career.



The longest piece is by Ian Penman, focusing on the albums that no no really cares about - including Scott!  But here you can see how this 'dead' period gave fuel for him to make his future masterpieces - and therefore cannot be denied!  The beauty of Walker's life in music is that they are all pieces of a puzzle - and you have to spend the time going over those pieces or putting them together to see the whole picture, which of course is a masterpiece.  And this book helps the listener put the pieces together.   Pennman with great wit, writes about the down years of Scott that to me are not wasted, but career wise must have been a downer for him.



And there is not really a downer of an essay in this book.  Young did a remarkable job in giving an intriguing picture of Scott Walker.  I am so happy that this book exists.

Download: John Alan Friedman's "Anatomy of a Comic Strip"

Hot on the heels of Fantagraphics' new deluxe edition of Josh Alan and Drew Friedman's Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead (available online at Book Soup!)... Black Cracker Online presents Josh Alan Friedman's "Anatomy of a Comic Strip," a free e-zine that includes original, annotated script pages for "The Joe Franklin Story," the notorious 1980 collaboration with his younger brother, the caricaturist and cartoonist extraordinaire, Drew Friedman. 

Also includes a new essay, rare panels, photos, & video. 
Download this prize piece, here.

Live Event: "Gainsbourg" with the author Gilles Verlant, Translator Paul Knobloch, and TamTam Books' Publisher Tosh Berman

  

ARTBOOK @ Paper Chase, Book Soup and Tam Tam Books invite you to the launch party for Gainsbourg: The Biography.

Join us for a tribute to Serge Gainsbourg, the French singer, songwriter, poet, composer, artist, actor and the country’s most beloved pop export since Edith Piaf. The evening will feature Gainsbourg videos and music, and a discussion with the Biography author, Gilles Verlant, in conversation with translator, Paul Knobloch and Tam Tam publisher, Tosh Berman.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012
7:00 pm

RSVP@dapinc.com

FREE but RSVP required and will be accepted until venue capacity is reached

 

ARTBOOK | Paper Chase

7174 Sunset Boulevard
(corner of Sunset and Formosa)
Hollywood, California

(323) 969-8985

Serge Gainsbourg redefined French pop, from his beginnings as cynical chansonnier and mambo-influenced jazz artist to the ironic “yé-yé” beat and lush orchestration of his 1960s work to his launching of French reggae in the 1970s to the electric funk and disco of his last albums. He was the self-proclaimed ugly lover of such beauties as Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin, the iconic provocateur whose heavy-breathing “Je t’aime moi non plus” was banned from airwaves throughout Europe and whose reggae version of the “Marseillais” earned him death threats from the right.

Gilles Verlant’s biography of Gainsbourg is the best and most authoritative in any language. Drawing from numerous interviews and their own friendship, Verlant provides a fascinating look at the inner workings of 1950s–1990s French pop culture and the conflicted and driven songwriter, actor, director and author that emerged from it: the young boy wearing a yellow star during the German Occupation; the young art student trying to woo Tolstoy’s granddaughter; the musical collaborator of Petula Clark, Juliette Greco and Sly and Robbie; the seasoned composer of the Lolita of pop albums, Histoire de Melody Nelson; the cultural icon who transformed scandal and song into a new form of delirium.

Special thanks to the evening's bookseller, Book Soup.

"The History of NME" by Pat Long

And to think it all started with accordion music.  The flame that started the fire that was heard all around the world.  Well Polka is not that far from punk really, but nevertheless New Music Express (NME) started off as a newspaper focusing on the accordion music scene that was happening in the early 1950's  - and of course one has to presume that it lead to the pop music of its era.   And strange enough NME, in 2012, is still with us.  In fact its the second thing i see on the Internet.  First is Dennis Cooper's blog, then NME, after that the Guradian for news.  So you can see what's important in my life!

Pat Long's book on NME is really good, and being designed orientated, this is a  perfectly designed book with respect to its subject.  A lot has happened in Pop music over the years, and its amazing that a press can still exist after so many generations.  And without a doubt NME had or has its dives into the underworld as well as its highs - but as a paper it had some remarkable writers  - to be specifically the wonderful Nick Kent.   The rock n' roll writer who didn't have a guitar to throw around, but his pen was pretty mighty.  

This book by its very nature of its subject matter also has ties to England's pop culture history -and really, this book could have been five or six books.  One on the fifties, one on the sixties and so forth.  But beyond that this is a really good introduction to pop history and more important the presses that were beyond and supported such pop movements.   Buy it for the beauty of it all!

"New York Mon Amour" by Jacques Tardi

Jacques Tardi is pure gold.  I almost want to say he's my favorite filmmaker, but he's not a filmmaker, he's a graphic novelist/artist. He has done everything from turn-of-the-century Paris noir to classic crime noir, to this book "New York Mon Amour," a snapshot of 1980's New York...that is noir.  One feature length story and three short one's - and what he captures is the foreigner's on their last legs looking at NYC as an exit to even maybe even a worst world out there. 

The first (and the most longish) narrative "Cockroach Killer" (written by Benjamin Legrand) is about a refugee from World War Two, who lives and works in NYC as a bug exterminator.  Which means he travels through out the city going for the dirt and the inner-lives of its citizens.  A sort of 'another take' on the William Burroughs exterminator character, but this character is not as tough, he's just surviving on the filth that was (or is) NYC.   On one of his jobs he visits the 13th floor of a Manhattan building, because normally there isn't a 13th floor - nevertheless he comes across a school of mysterious  assassins. For a brief moment his life is thrown into a world of a haunted and chased man.  The narrative being used to examine the inner-life of New York as it is being slowly destroyed.

What's left is two short stories by Dominique Grange, who is married to Tardi, that examines the life of a troubled assassin who couldn't complete his mission and the other on a woman from Vietnam who is tracking down someone from her past in Manhattan.  And again, both stories are snapshots taken from a foreigner's point-of-view of going through hell, and that state of mind is the landscape of New York.  

Tardi's own story "Manhattan" is nothing but that.  Probably the most ultimate alternative view of a tourist coming to NYC to ....  well you should just read it.  Nevertheless, Tardi has a master's touch in capturing the coldness in life and I really feel he's a master in his field.

Excerpt from "New York Mon Amour"

Jacques Tardi

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Cruise of the Rolling Junk"

Such a small book one can fit it in their back pocket, yet, this small object had a profound affect on me. Written as a magazine piece for the upscale Saturday Evening Post, the article eventually found a home in a less prominent publication - a car magazine.

Originally written as a serial, "The Cruise of the Rolling Junk" is 'On the Road' for F. Scott Fitzgerald and his somewhat nutty but beautiful wife Zelda. One morning Zelda had a passion to have fresh biscuits and peaches from her natural home in Alabama. So taking off from Connecticut, in a very unreliable car - the re-named "Rolling Junk" they go on the road to pleasure. But alas, things don't work out.

For one they have consistent problems with their automobile on this trip, which often left them stranded in the back woods of even badder hotels and in the hands of a series of rotten car mechanics. But in reality they are sort of 'the truth' vs. the unreality of the Fitgerald's. In what seems like a nice weekend trip turns into an obsessive journey to the couple's inner world. The landscape of this piece is 'charming and funny but there are very dark overtones that takes over the reader in the 21st Century.

Written while he was working on The Great Gatsby, F. Scott's attenna was up and working. But sadly and quite disturbing is his attitude toward Black Americans. The cruel side of his observations comes to front, so that alone makes it difficult to 'like' him as a narrator. And Zelda's personality (via Scott) is sort of troublesome as well. She is sort of a combination of a nagging so-so and a spoiled child. What must have been read in the early 20th Century as funny becomes somewhat sad and disturbing in the 21st Century.

Which brings up to mind does Fitzgerald's writing has something to say to people now in 2012? Well, for one, this book is very close to the edition that was originally published in "Motor" in 1924. The book comes with photographs of Scott, Zelda, and the Rolling Junk as the adventure happens. So it is very much a period piece of its time - but what's contemporary is the mental attitude of Fitzgerald as he and Zelda wonder back into the Southern past, that for sure will bring failure.

Like the image of most male americans, Fitzgerald is not one with his car. A cowboy has his loyal horse, and the male has his relationship with their car. Here The Rolling Junk practically rebels against Scott's wishes for a solid car outing. The humor in this book is a good few chuckles but the real 'dark' humor is the failure of communication, the lack of understanding of machine, and the need to entertain a wife who is slowly going out of the picture.

The trip ends as a failure of sorts, and Fitzgerald for sure sees this as an aesthetic that things rot from the inside to the exterior. A throw-away literature but what I think is a masterpiece from F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald reading Shakespeare

Some film footage of the couple.

Book Soup: Summer Reading Lists (Dan Edition)

(The two rules of summer: always bring sunscreen and always bring a book.)

From Dan: 

There are six books that I must read before Labor Day.  I'm sure I'll find more but I will definitely finish the books on this list.  And I will be tanned too.  And well rested.

Eisenhower in War & Peace - Jean Smith.  I visited the Eisenhower Library in Kansas as a small boy and I'm pretty sure my parents "Liked Ike," but I must confess it's Mad Men that has really kick started my interest in the Eisenhower era.

Home - Toni Morrison.  Always a surprise, always moving.

Family Fang - Kevin Wilson. A weird family of performance artists - enthusiastic parents and mortified children.  Sounds like a hoot!

Thomas Hart Benton - Justin Wolff.  I'm really into the regional artists right now.  This biography of Benton looks promising.

Wonderland Avenue - Danny Sugarman.  I have started this book twice and it is amazing and scary. I know it is taking me to a dark place so I have to steel myself for the journey.

Then Again - Diane Keaton. An amazing woman and an endearing tribute to her mother.