Primal Scream, “Come Together (7" Mix Andrew Weatherall)” (1990)

[listen up!]

Primal Scream’s third album, Screamadelica, threw out the band’s original alt-indie style in favor of house techno dance approaches. DJ Andrew Weatherall gets producer credit with Hugo Nicolson on much of the album, including “Come Together,” which appears in multiple variations on the original single and on later deluxe packages of the album, with production also handled by Terry Farley and Hypnotone. The album has a veritable rainbow of producers, including the Orb on arguably the best track, “Higher Than the Sun,” and the somewhat unexpected classic-rock man Jimmy Miller, who produced the Rolling Stones’ great run from Beggars Banquet to Goat’s Head Soup, as well as work for Blind Faith, Spencer Davis, and Traffic. He doesn’t seem to have a direct hand in “Come Together,” but his influence is felt there when you compare the tracks he did produce, “Movin’ On Up” and “Damaged.” “Come Together” is just a song, but what a song. The approach is all soul all the time, with heavenly chorus. On the album, it runs over 10 minutes, but most of the variations are closer in size to this 4:26 version. It’s the groove that appeals to me in all of them, with a phalanx of singers, a pure dance drive (see also the cavorting in the official video), and enough maracas-and-bongo-style percussion to fill the studio to the ceiling. Bobby Gillespie’s whisper-perfect vocals take it home. Somehow, back in the day, I wound up with the single—I might still have it around here somewhere—and I never had a problem letting it all play through. It’s just that kind of song. Once it has insinuated into your brain and lifestyle, you’re not likely to mind hearing it on repeat.

“His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood” (1990)

My first story by Poppy Z. Brite (aka William Joseph Martin) is a pretty good one, all things considered. It was published when he was only 23 but seems to be hardly his first—I’m seeing some 1987 publication dates, when he was 20. On ISFDB this story is classified as belonging to the “Cthulhu Mythos” series, which obviously has many H.P. Lovecraft stories as well as various by others. I did not get a Cthulhu hit off this story, but some of it reminded me of Lovecraft, macabre details like the grave-robbing, a main feature. Brite’s sense of sexuality is miles beyond the timid Lovecraft. Weird editors Ann & Jeff VanderMeer compare Brite to “Decadent-era French and English writers [more] than the contemporary horror scene.” That seems like a reasonable point—are we talking about Baudelaire, Rimbaud, de Quincey? The open perversions here are almost refreshing. Brite is a trans man and takes masculine pronouns, but he may be more nonbinary. I’m not sure. Sexuality is all over this but it’s also indeterminate. The first-person narrator is a man and so is his partner. They start out having sex with others, sometimes together, and end up having sex with one another. They drink absinthe they stole from a grave, which is partly responsible for inspiring them to rob more graves. Finally, apparently, they steal from the wrong grave, as one night a strange apparition of a beautiful boy appears at a nightclub. I love, by the way, how Brite integrates clubbing into the mise en scene of this story. And I like how it’s just out there in terms of “divine decadence” (my term by way of the movie Cabaret). It all comports with my sense of Brite—I’ve been meaning to look into him since the ‘90s—except it’s much better and more natural than I expected. It always sounded a little like a put-on and possibly it is. I still don’t know that much about him. I believe he has moved on from horror since the ‘90s, but I don’t know. This story, which is quite fine in its own right, even if I’m missing the specific Cthulhu elements, definitely makes me think he’s worth looking into further.

Poppy Z. Brite, Wormwood
The Weird, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
Story not available online.

“The Last Feast of Harlequin” (1990)

This long story by Thomas Ligotti is his Cthulhu story, more or less, and a very good one, with humor and unsettling details and setting. The mysterious town of Mirocaw (which keeps sounding in my head like a derangement of “miracle”), somewhere in the Midwest, holds an annual winter solstice event. Our first-person narrator is an academic whose specialty is the anthropology of clowns. Much of the humor here depends on his fascination with clowns. Not only does he study them but he dresses up as one every chance he gets. “The Last Feast of Harlequin” is not only dedicated to “the memory of H.P. Lovecraft” but also looks to a Lovecraft story for inspiration, “The Festival,” which also takes place at the winter solstice and mirrors other details found here. Our guy is mindful, of course, that the winter solstice is also the Christmas season. The contrast is one of the things that makes this story work so well. The town is all decked out in decorations, but they are slightly off. All the festive lights, for example, are only green. It’s a chaotic party scene on the streets, like a Mardi Gras, with strange parades and most people dressed in costumes and masks. Some of the costumes suggest social divisions in the town. One, usually coming from the poor side of town, look like the figure in the painting by Edvard Munch, The Scream. Our guy can’t really get anyone to talk to him and explain what’s going on. He decides to dress like the Scream folks and go mix and mingle. There’s an ongoing parade with floats and a marching band. As he wanders about, he notices a pickup truck cruising along collecting the Scream revelers. It stops for him and he climbs in back with the rest. I really wanted to tell him not to do this. What follows is, again, much like Lovecraft’s “Festival” story, but Ligotti folds in more layers of meaning. There’s a professor who was highly influential on our guy, and it’s surprising and ominous to find him there, not least because he disappeared many years earlier and now seems to be running the show here. The story is not perfect, not without flaws, but it grabs on and never lets you go. The narrator is always interesting and makes suspension of disbelief easy, which is good because this story gets to some intense and crazy places.

Thomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
Listen to story online.

An Angel at My Table (1990)

UK / Australia / New Zealand / USA, 158 minutes

Director: Jane Campion

Writers: Janet Frame, Laura Jones

Photography: Stuart Dryburth

Music: Don McGlashan

Editor: Veronika Jenet

Cast: Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh, Karen Fergusson, Iris Churn, Kevin J. Wilson, Melina Bernecker, Glynis Angell, Sarah Smuts-Kennedy, Colin McColl, David Letch

I saw this picture when it was new in 1990 and loved it so much that I bought a one-volume of the Janet Frame memoirs on which it is based. Typically enough, I have been toting it around ever since and still haven’t read it. But the movie, directed by Jane Campion (The Piano, Holy Smoke, The Power of the Dog), still looked pretty darned good to me. It was created originally as a TV miniseries with three parts of about 50 minutes each, suitable for one-hour programming. The three parts, presented here as a “trilogy,” touch on Frame’s childhood, teenage, and adult years (from her memoirs, respectively, To the Is-Land, An Angel at My Table, and The Envoy From Mirror City).

Frame was born in 1924 in New Zealand and grew up at a time and in a place where mental illness was poorly understood. She was withdrawn, introverted, and shy, lost in the fairy tales, poetry, and stories she started reading and writing from a young age. Eventually, as a young adult training to be a teacher, she had a breakdown when an inspector visited her classroom. One thing led to another and then she was diagnosed (incorrectly) as schizophrenic, given electroshock treatments into the 1950s when the treatment was not understood well but administered frequently, and spent some eight years in and out of institutions, often returning voluntarily. An Angel at My Table tells much the whole sad and alarming story (albeit one with a happy ending).

16. Darkside, All That Noise (1990)

[2016 review here]

The Darkside (not to be confused with the 2010s electronica act DARKSIDE) was a spinoff of Spacemen 3, orchestrated by bass player Pete Bain (known as Bassman) with drummer Sterling Roswell (known as Rosco) and others. The Darkside had a vocalist, but he had split by the time this album was being put together, the band’s first of three. Bain steps up to the mic as necessary. His singing is subdued, closer to a plainsong style in effect. Maybe it’s the mix. At any rate the vocals do not matter here at all. What I appreciate most is the naked, almost spiritual fealty of the band and the album to electric guitar, the master of this house. It’s all so obscure I’m really not sure who is playing it—Bain? The internet doesn’t seem to know. But in a strange way the anonymity works to abstract and distill a pure form of psychedelia, the wandering spirit of electric guitar. Electric Guitar, we may as well call this player. Electric Guitar broods and lords its powers and struts about the stage of this soundscape. The album’s 6:19 instrumental opener, “Guitar Voodoo,” sets the tone and hits the high point: name-checking a few of Jimi Hendrix’s greatest hits in the title, with a rumbling ominous bass and snarling fuzzed-up guitar working out with wah-wah effects. Several songs on All That Noise are under three minutes, and several are duds, it must be said. The title tune is a sliver at 1:45. But the mood is consistent, somber and church-like. The tempos are sedate. Electric Guitar is the weapon of choice, pushed front and center. The best songs tend to be the longest, including a seven-minute cover of “Soul Deep,” which incidentally reminds us that the album is from the early ‘90s, when Alex Chilton was (rightly) being sanctified as an indie saint. The 6:10 “Love in a Burning Universe” is a variation, working more toward a hypnotic drone—it may be the track most reminiscent here of the drifting, dream-like spells of Spacemen 3 (and, later, Spiritualized, another spinoff). Electric Guitar more gives way to a keyboard organ, pointing the way for the swirling magnificence it achieves. But “Guitar Voodoo” remains the high point and signature song on All That Noise, announcing intent from the first notes of the bass, the first squall of Electric Guitar waking and coming to life. Picking out the notes by feel, sneaking in the wah-wah effects, and ultimately taking full command of the song. Another magnificent high point. Play loud.

Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

My Halliwell’s Film Guide is quite firm on this picture. “Exceedingly silly on every level,” it notes, “particularly in its supernatural dabblings.” Zero stars. For good measure, it tacks on a blurb from Variety: “Dull, unimaginative and pretentious.” Well, I admit the word “pretentious” did occur to me the first time I saw this, when it was new. I was dragged there by a friend who had already seen it and was nutty about it. I wish I could remember what he said he saw in it. At the time it was not hard to give it up for Adrian Lyne’s ‘80s version of sexy stylish direction, which he had already established with Flashdance, 9½ Weeks, and Fatal Attraction. It also has puzzle-box movie elements, particularly in the way it ends, which is more confusing than surprising, but you still may not be able to expect it. Jacob’s Ladder is a mashup of deranged Vietnam vet movie and paranoid antigovernment thriller with several kitchen sinks strewn in for texture and stuff. It’s exciting and well edited, with some good car chases and explosions—fetishizing cars this way already feels like a dated relic of the 20th century. But at the same time I’m boomer enough to get a kick out it (which reminds me, I need to check out The French Connection again). Friendly golden retriever guy Tim Robbins, then in his imperial phase and doing movies a mile a minute, has the lead here and galumphs along as an empty movie star shell, the way he does. Among other things the movie is a certain experiment in how far charisma can take you—YMMV. He is yuppie Vietnam vet Jacob, who has been having flashbacks or delusions lately, or, yes, there are vague hints of demons and such. More explicitly Jacob and his band of brothers, rounded up for the occasion, try to recall the details of a fierce firefight they were involved in in the war. They can’t seem to remember it very well and ultimately they come to believe they must have been being experimented on by the government. Bingo!—apparently. The case never goes to trial, not least because it is outlandish and they have only their own flashbacks as evidence. The obviously low-rent shyster lawyer they turn to is played by Jason Alexander, who is not bad but also unshakably George Costanza. Poor guy. Ruined his career with a brilliant turn in a sitcom. May the residuals carry him forever. As for Jacob’s Ladder, I don’t know. It’s cheesy entertainment, worth it if you can find it free and feel like zoning out for a couple of hours. Some good action stuff in here.

Armchair Theatre (1990)

In the ‘70s, I must say I liked Fleetwood Mac a lot more than the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO for those with no time for the syllables). But playing through Armchair Theatre lately, ELO principal Jeff Lynne’s first solo album, I kept thinking of the parallels with Lindsey Buckingham I never noticed before: Lynne is a natural pop tunesmith, with a fearlessness about going for open-hearted and unabashed heartstring sentiments, and actually a pretty good guitar-player too. He was also good in the studio, responsible for most of the ELO product and collaborating with the Move, Dave Edmunds, and others. But the Traveling Wilburys in the late ‘80s and all that followed—including this album—were a certain zenith. I’m not sure this work has ever got its full due. Not only did Lynne have a hand in producing that exquisite first Wilburys album, The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1, but in the aftermath he also worked with Roy Orbison on Orbison’s much-lauded comeback album (Mystery Girl) and with Tom Petty on Petty’s best album (Full Moon Fever), plus Armchair Theatre. I thus declare Jeff Lynne, aka Otis Wilbury (or Clayton Wilbury?!), to be the most underrated Traveling Wilbury of them all. (I also know who’s the most overrated, but I won’t say.) Exhibit A is this album, which followed two years on from the frisson of that first Wilburys album. It’s a solid set and better than you probably think. The sound is fat and saturated, sweet and sauntering, with thrilling musical effects. Every track has the goods. I pulled it out of an office slush pile in 1990 and listened to it a lot, thinking it couldn’t possibly be so good. Couldn’t get anyone to bite on a review anyway. (Now that I think of it I had a lot of luck with office slush piles in that period: Full Moon Fever, Green, Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814, The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste, The Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Rose, etc.) Those inclined to complain may note that three of the 11 tracks on Armchair Theatre are covers: “Don’t Let Go,” a rock ‘n’ roll standard first recorded by Roy Hamilton in 1958, Kurt Weill’s “September Song,” and the Tin Pan Alley standard “Stormy Weather.” But all three are worthy additions to much-covered material. Armchair Theatre is an essential part of any Wilburys collection.

Erpland (1990)

Every now and then I get sentimental and like to recall the origins of this blog in 2006 and 2007, as an "MP3 blog" with dangerous illicit downloads and such. Google delisted me along with all the rest of us and I'm not sure I've ever made it all the way back. But don't worry, that's all behind me now. I pay Napster $10 a month to do it for me (≠ endorsement). Ozric Tentacles was one of the bands I had never heard of until these downloading days, which introduced me to many acts I had never heard of, for example Spock's Beard, 8 Days in April, and Chicken Shack. Most seemed to fall close to prog and/or metal designations, which says something that still surprises me about my taste as filtered by the internet. Many of these strangers were better than I expected, sometimes by a good deal. But mostly I was busy at the time with other priorities so it took me a while to get to them. I still don't really know Ozric Tentacles well. On this early album they are a synthy instrumental British prog unit playing somewhat in the tradition of Genesis (minus the folklore elements). The obvious peers are more from central Europe, notably Mannheim Steamroller and Tangerine Dream. At 73 minutes, Erpland is plainly a product of the optimistic new CD era. With 12 tracks averaging over six minutes each, it's heady and indulgent. At its best it is like a psychedelic Steely Dan without the sneering cynical lyrics (arguably the Dan's best point), or aimless and freewheeling jam fragments like the Todd Rundgren's Utopia album. At its most pablum Erpland is easy listening elevator stuff, a little too close to Mannheim Steamroller for my comfort—actually, I just learned this minute, Mannheim Steamroller is a US act from Nebraska. Don't be fooled like me by the German word. Erpland has been a fun album to finally get to but I must say it's not giving me a lot of incentive to pursue Ozric Tentacles further. I can report I had the same experience with Spock's Beard, which leans more into metal. I'm sorry to report 8 Days in April (krautrock) has never been available on streaming as far as I know—I happen to know it's the best of this bunch. But Chicken Shack is on Napster—I took a couple songs and may be able to report back more later. Meanwhile, this blog turned 15 this month. Happy blogiversary to me!

Hopeful Monsters (1990)

I didn't know much about this novel or its author, only that it was recommended urgently by blogger and RogerEbert.com contributor Sheila O'Malley. It's dense and fairly long, written by the son of British fascist Oswald Mosley, which may account in part for its general obscurity. Nicholas Mosley obviously has little sympathy for fascists himself, but perhaps more equanimity about their existence than we might like. The story covers a 20-year period between the world wars, following the lives of and relationship between a young German woman and British man. Both are intellectuals and lifelong students of science. Physics, biology, and the ideas explored in those fields—notably evolution and quantum mechanics—are major themes. Implications of the dual nature of light and the origins of mutation are returned to continually, as is the political history of Europe in this period. The rise of fascism figures large. I probably haven't read as much European history as I should (or maybe Hopeful Monsters is as good as I think it is) but I've never seen the rise of Nazis in Germany detailed so vividly before. The significance of the Communist Party and its historical movement figures large as well. The volatile years considered here were a crucible for modern social structure, as monarchical ideas fell to the side once and for all (we hope). The two lovers in this story—Eleanor and Max—want little to do with these strains of history, though Eleanor does spend time as a Communist involved in bombings and other violence. I never understood so well how the conflict between Nazis and Communists played out as constant violent street brawls—with bombs and drive-by machine gun shootings limited only by the ability of activists to get their hands on ordnance. But that's just a piece of this novel, which inevitably drives to its remarkable climax in the Spanish Civil War. Eleanor's mother is Jewish and after the Nazis come to power Eleanor finds it expedient to leave Germany and travel to Africa for anthropological work on a voluntary mission project. While she's gone both her parents disappear and she realizes she can't go back, with laws in Germany dealing so harshly with Jews. At that point the novel turns into a glorious and amazing adventure story, as both Eleanor and Max make their separate ways into Spain. Dense with intellectual currents, Hopeful Monsters seems to have an energy all its own with swift-moving incident and a constant brooding for sense. Definitely worth a look—I'm only scratching the surface of all that's here.

In case it's not at the library.

"Aunt Granny Lith" (1990)

Story by Chris Offutt not available online.

Chris Offutt is a native son of Kentucky, which is a good thing because events here traffic dangerously with white trash caricatures. Casey is a moonshiner and maybe a drunk too. Beth is his third wife—his first two died of freak accidents on their wedding days. Casey is not under suspicion for anything. It's not that kind of story. It is, in fact, more the kind of story tempted to poetic flights like portentous wedding days. The deaths are symbolic of Casey's star-crossed fate and/or Beth's ability to back it off with brute strength and courage. Offutt has written that this story "is a hybrid of the Book of Ruth, an eastern European folk story, and the Eleusinian Mysteries from ancient Greece." I guess I'm happy to know it. Offutt also mentions that "two of the female names—Lil and Lith—form the name of Adam's first wife," which I found interesting because I didn't know Adam had a first wife. I read the story first without benefit of any of this, and was entertained by the febrile vibe. It opens, for example, with an energetic brawl between two women before breaking off into the extended flashback that provides most of the action. Knowing the literary sources makes me think I might get more out of it another time, but didn't inspire an immediate revisit. It's rich with detail and swift-moving events, and everything seems to add up. The stuff about Ruth and Adam only packs in more meaning. But hold on a second. Setting aside the thing about Adam having a first wife, how in the world are we supposed to take this stuff about Casey's first two wives? It's so ridiculous as to call attention to itself. Is it a comical transport? Some kind of literalism beyond my ken? As a teen and young adult I snorted at the very idea of symbolism in literature as a lot of preening mental masturbation. I'm more willing to accommodate it now (and good old ham-handed allegory too!) though I remain a little dubious. They still seem a little too easy. Of course, nothing is simple about this story, so there's that. And it's perfectly engaging on the surface, with lots of dialogue, action, and short paragraphs. Maybe I resent that it's making me work so hard after it promised so much fun. More likely, I really don't have much sense of what just happened when I read this story. At a time like this, I miss belonging to a reading group.

The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, ed. Tobias Wolff

Close-Up (1990)

Nema-ye Nazdik, Iran, 98 minutes
Director/writer/editor: Abbas Kiarostami
Photography: Ali Reza Zarrindast
Cast: Abbas Kiarostami, Hossain Sabzian, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Abolfazi Ahankhah, Mehrdad Ahankhah, Monoochehr Ahankhah, Mahrokh Akankhah, Hossain Farazmand, Hooshang Shamaei, Mohammad Ali Barrati, Davood Goodarzi, Haj Ali Reza Ahmadi

I debated about whether or not I should classify this critical favorite by Iranian director, writer, and editor Abbas Kiarostami as a documentary. Wikipedia calls it "docufiction," which is reasonably close to "docudrama," my first inclination. It's based on true events, with real people from the story, but the scenes are mostly (or sometimes) reenactments, cunningly devised to make points about truth and reality. Then I noticed that in the titles Kiarostami credits himself for "screenplay." Somehow, in my mind, that settled it. A screenplay signals fiction for me, whereas a simple "written by" might have still kept it plausibly in play as a documentary. It's a shady line.

And it doesn't help that the documentaries ranking highest on the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? (and its companion 21st-century version as well) already tend to be unusual versions of the mundane fact-based form we usually think of, even operating at highest levels (say, Frederick Wiseman). You might even want to rule them out altogether for various formal infractions. I mean, look: Man With a Movie Camera (too evangelizing), Shoah (too long), The Gleaners and I (too personal), Tie Xi Qu (also too long), and now Close-Up, which I am tentatively calling too meta or postmodern to be a documentary.

Graffiti Bridge (1990)

By the time Prince died—on April 21, 2016—I had mathematically spent more of my life living in Washington state than Minnesota. But that didn't blunt anything for me about his passing. He was one of those people who wasn't supposed to die before me. I never met him—well, I literally bumped into him a couple of times at the First Avenue nightclub in Minneapolis. Somehow it still felt a little like a death in the family. I was surprised, when I went to my CD stacks (which I have been systematically downsizing for more than 10 years), to find I had everything but two albums from Dirty Mind to Emancipation (1980 to 1996, including every title from his extraordinary dump of product in the mid-'90s). The two that were missing, Around the World in a Day and Parade, I had bought as vinyl and they are lesser efforts by my lights anyway. (I think this is also the place to say how much I resented "D.M.S.R." being dropped from the CD version of 1999.) Eventually, over the last year, much of his catalog has made it to Napster too, at least into that mid-'90s dump. There's still little beyond anthologies for the last 20 years of his life, though he remained about as prolific. It's probably going to stay like that a while as legal issues are sorted out. On the bright side, we're likely to see new Prince music before we see new J.D. Salinger novels.

Graffiti Bridge was Prince's first album in the '90s and his first with the New Power Generation (NPG), and also includes a reunion with the Time. In my listening that followed his death (normally I put away albums after an artist dies, but this is another area where Prince was different for me) I noticed the albums I was quickest to reshelve tended to be his widely accepted best and/or personal favorites of mine: Controversy, 1999, Dirty Mind, Sign O' the Times. Call them all used up at least for the time being. With the exception of Sign O' the Times, which has never seemed more to me than the sum of its impressive (but inconsistent) parts, I would still rank them high, but more based on what I remember of listening to them and/or seeing him at the time. I did find a good deal of life remaining for me in Purple Rain—particularly the title song, which I never before heard with so much clarity, and the more obscure numbers (especially "Take Me With U" and "The Beautiful Ones") still sounded great or even better. On the basis of this, I would probably call Purple Rain his greatest album if forced to make a single choice.

Law & Order, s1 (1990-1991)

USA, TV series (NBC)
Creator: Dick Wolf
Cast: George Dzundza, Chris Noth, Dann Florek, Michael Moriarty, Richard Brooks, Steven Hill

I've been meaning to make a project of the original Law & Order TV show, a daunting task, not least because it's one of the longest-running shows ever, after only The Simpsons (still going) and tied with Gunsmoke. Interestingly, or not, its longevity is currently being stalked by one of its own spinoffs, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which has now gone 18 seasons, compared with the original's (and Gunsmoke's) 20. The Simpsons, by comparison, has now gone 28. I say "or not" because, to be clear, I don't consider the spinoffs, any of them, in the same league. Law & Order, the flagship, had a purity of abstraction the others ultimately never came close to—really never tried, as they were intended as more conventional TV drama in their conception. Indeed, even the flagship series eventually succumbed to TV's institutional pressures, most notably in its prolonged unlovely affair with Sam Waterston.

But all that is far in the future for this first season, which brings me to my other reason for putting it off so long. When I first discovered Law & Order, in syndicated reruns in the mid-'90s, it was easy to spot the earliest episodes. No, it was not just the presence of George Dzundza as detective Max Greevey, who appeared only in this first season, as partner to Mike Logan (Chris Noth, still with baby fat). Many episodes in the first season are qualitatively different. The characters are slightly out of key, their interrelations have not jelled yet. There's even one District Attorney who is not Adam Schiff (let alone Arthur Branch).

"Chopin in Winter" (1990)

Story by Stuart Dybek not available online.

Stuart Dybek's story is a smooth and accomplished slice of ethnic life from a postwar Polish neighborhood in Chicago. It's told first-person, as a memory of the narrator when he was a young boy, perhaps 10. It's winter. The daughter of the landlady of the building the boy lives in, Marcy, is the first of her family to go to college—the first even to finish high school. But now she is pregnant and making the decision to be done with school. She won't tell anyone who the father is or speak about her plans for it. She had been studying music in college and she still practices on the piano now, living at home again. Meanwhile, in the boy's household, his grandfather Dzia-Dzia soaks his feet in the kitchen and listens to her play through the walls. He is an itinerant figure in the boy's family, disappearing and reappearing for months and years at a time. Dzia-Dzia recognizes that sometimes Marcy plays "boogie-woogie" music, and he speculates aloud that the father of her child is black. In fact, they are the first words he speaks weeks after his most recent return. He is prone to long periods of silence. Later, he recognizes Chopin, and we are privy to his swooning over the music, which overall feels more like Dybek, or someone other than any of these characters. This goes on for some time—Marcy plays music, Dzia-Dzia swoons over it. Eventually, Marcy begins playing less. As spring approaches, she moves away and disappears. Much later, the boy finds out she is living with a black man in a black neighborhood and has a boy named Tatum. I like the details of the building and the people living in it more than the business about music in this story. It's competent music writing, inventive and alive to the difficulty of expressing the effects of hearing music and of describing it. We've already seen James Baldwin take on the problem, in "Sonny's Blues"—and much more successfully overall, I think, weaving it more artfully and tightly into the narrative. I like the plot point, in "Chopin in Winter," that Marcy goes a typical second-generation way of embracing Americanism and rejecting the values of her parents that brought her to the privilege. It's poignant and believable. I got the sense, maybe I went looking for it, that Marcy is talented and self-possessed enough that she will do all right. But it's not certain. I also get the sense there's enough for a novel here—with these characters and all their connections and intricate relations and histories—but paradoxically not enough for a short story, no sharp focus place to land on, just a general bittersweet coming of age. Focusing on the music looks like an attempt to universalize a familiar straightforward story in a new way, but I don't appreciate Chopin enough to connect with the flights here. I have to admit I also don't appreciate bebop, the Charlie Parker style, that much either. But in Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" that doesn't matter to me, which is approximately the difference between the two stories.

The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, ed. Tobias Wolff

"Tall Tales From the Mekong Delta" (1990)

Read story by Kate Braverman online.

Kate Braverman's story is so strange and powerful, yet so full of such familiar elements, that already it feels like some classic of the post-Carver story era. The unnamed woman at the center of it is 38 years old, a creative writing teacher, and a recovering cocaine addict. One day, on her way to an AA meeting, a man approaches her and makes blunt overtures. "You're bad," he says. "You're one of those bad girls from Beverly Hills. I've had my eye on you." His name is Lenny, he says he is a Vietnam veteran, he wants to go out with her, and it turns out he has been following her for two weeks. He knows all kinds of things about her life. To us as readers, he is instantly, unnervingly creepy. But the narrator appears susceptible to him, which creates a wonderful gnawing tension. Every time she gives him another inch we want to scream. She gets rid of him but he always shows up again, within days or weeks. He's got a slick line of talk, says he can show her the "other side" of life. He says he works with Colombians as a drug runner, flying in product twice a month. She gets rid of him but he always shows up again. Gradually, Lenny is getting her to go along with him somehow, and everything he does for her is for the worse. He starts her up smoking cigarettes again. He is working on her to use cocaine again. He seems to have no compunctions, though he's also smart enough to hang back and let her have her way when she asserts herself. Then he just goes to work on her again. It's unpleasant and sickening to watch her give in to him, yet we're helpless to do anything but keep looking. Lenny is such an unlikely monster, or I am so naïve, that I think the story amounts to an allegory, with Lenny as the embodiment of addiction, something like that. It's perhaps trite, taken that way, yet Lenny and the woman's response to him are so compelling it doesn't really occur to us until later. He has an extraordinary power that reaches out and affects us too. He may be unbelievable, but he is believable in the moment, and that's enough. The woman is likable on the merits: single, nearing 40, teaching creative writing, leading an independent life, taking care of herself. But she is also, as events show, a real addict battling real addictions, which are battles not always won. In the end she's buying cigarettes by the carton and drinking again. There's no sign this one is anything but a loss, and somehow it's heartbreaking.

The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, ed. Tobias Wolff

"The Darling" (1990)

Story by Scott Bradfield not available online.

Scott Bradfield's story is little more than 25 years old but already it feels a little dated, working from the fascination with serial killers then entering its glamour phase in popular culture. The operative comparison is probably Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho novel, which came the year after. It's likely enough neither writer was particularly aware of the other. That was the time when serial killer trading cards came along, recall. It was just in the air. On a more conscious level, Bradfield is looking to Chekhov, who also wrote a story called "The Darling," which is also about a woman whose husbands keep dying on her. In the Bradfield story, however, it's because she keeps killing them. Bradfield is often attempting to have things both ways. It's a comedy more than anything, indulging ridiculous plot developments, yet the star of the show, Dolores Starr by name, is also a victim of abuse and incest, and in fact her father is her first victim. All right, maybe, but when Dolores meets and falls in love with another serial killer (they pull guns on one another simultaneously and it's true love, at least for awhile) you know you're in absurdist territory. And the problem with absurdist territory is that it means anything can happen, and thus nothing has significance. It's all just too easy. Bradfield's language is urbane and vaguely mocking. It's fun to read because he flatters you that you're in on the joke. But it's not a very good joke. As literary exercise it's impressive enough. I didn't know the Chekhov reference, and that story might have the effect of deepening this one, adding resonance. Nabokov would appear to be another obvious source. In the first paragraph, the third-person narrator plays with Dolores's name the way Humbert Humbert plays with Lolita's in that novel, and Lolita's name is also Dolores. So we have a smart and witty writer having some fun, and in fact, Bradfield is among the first to get to this kind of thing. So props to him. He may even deserve more credit than I can say. At this juncture, however, what he deserves credit for is something we're all a little tired of (and have been since approximately Oliver Stone's 1994 movie Natural Born Killers). The story is hampered by other small problems—it's distracting that the rare serial killer who is a woman is the main character, making it even harder to believe, and then there's the enduring problem of one gender writing from the other's point of view. It doesn't tend to go well. Dolores gets away with everything until it is convenient to the story for her to be captured, imprisoned, and become a celebrity. Points for prescience in popular culture trends. Docked for not including zombies.

The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, ed. Tobias Wolff

All That Noise (1990)

The Darkside is not to be confused with a more recent act, DARKSIDE, which is more like electronica and operates out of New York. The band that made this album was a British act, or recording project more like, spun out of the Spacemen 3 complex. It's a bit murky who is involved and to what degrees—for the band generally, Wikipedia offers the names Pete Bain, Sterling Roswell, Nick Haydn, Craig Wagstaff, and Kevin Cowen. My copy of the CD shows a photo of three guys, unidentified. Much of the credit, for songwriting, personnel, production, and even design, simply goes to "The Darkside." If forced to categorize, I'm happiest with labels such as psychedelia, space-rock, or drone-rock, though it also bears some relation to shoegaze. And you might as well categorize it, because it is fairly derivative, with roots in '60s garage and/or various psychedelic high points and obscurities, filtered through infinitely slowing tempos and an ethos they inherited naturally of "taking drugs to make music to take drugs to." The various touchstones can be sensed in the titles: "Guitar Voodoo" (the long opener, which harks at once to both Jimi Hendrix and Shake Some Action), "She Don't Come," "Soul Deep," "Love in a Burning Universe," and of course the title song—which don't believe the hype, this is actually quite gentle music. The songs are primitive, real simple simon met a pie man, involving rudimentary hooks with electric guitar, bass, drumkit, occasional keyboard, and subtle studio witchery. The main point is the mood first, which is somber, quivering toward ecstasy, and then second all the power of the electric guitar inflecting it. The moods are deepened with thoughtfully blistering breaks and textures, stinging little solos, wah-wah notes, tender moues of feedback to affirm points. The singer is flat and restrained but gets the job done nonetheless, sounding slightly put out, which also suits the mood. Indeed, there's a muffled, breathless quality to the whole thing—it sounds as if it were recorded in a chamber from which half the oxygen had been pumped out. This is all by way of elucidating the likely reasons it flopped commercially and remains something of an obscurity. But as an owner since it was practically new (though no longer recalling the circumstances of acquiring it), I have to say it has amazingly enduring charms. The songwriting understands pop fundamentals just enough and the players never forget the power of the studio and electric guitar. Its sweet sounds fill a room so nicely for the 40 minutes it lasts that I often play it back to back.

Vespers (1990)

Vespers fits the model of many of the novels in the 87th Precinct series of police procedurals by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter, which wasn't his real name either), especially those that came along in the '80s: big (300+ pages in mass market size), multiple plot threads, and a title that presents a recurring theme for him to riff on. In this case that theme—"evening prayers," I guess—never entirely works to pull things together (as it does so well, for example, in Tricks). A priest has been murdered and there are multiple suspects, including a neighborhood gang of Italian-American teens, an African-American drug dealer, an abusive member of the church, a Satanic cult, etc. Nothing is as it seems, including especially the priest's private life. The movie Rashomon is invoked by name more than once, as versions of a pivotal event are recounted and revisited, its details altering with each new version. Meanwhile, for no obvious reason connected with the case, the romance between Hal Willis and Marilyn Hollis undergoes a major shift. Willis, you may recall, is the detective always identified as being nearly too short to qualify for the job, and Hollis is his girlfriend who used to be a prostitute in Buenos Aires. I had a hard time believing a lot of Vespers. The Satanic "church," for example, was mostly silly and buffoonish, evidently intended as comic relief (and of course convenient red herring element, as this is mostly a "mystery" type of case). And again the knife fetish is out in all its tedious McBain glory: the priest is stabbed to death, and there is another harrowing scene featuring a knife fight. Even weak McBain is pretty good in terms of readability—by this point I suspect McBain could have put them together in his sleep practically. Which, come to think of it, he might have done for this one. At least that's one possible explanation for the title and chief operating metaphor.

In case it's not at the library.

Sonic Youth, "Titanium Expose" (1990)

(listen)

After Daydream Nation thoroughly crossed my wires, "Titanium Expose" took a while to sneak up on me. I didn't care either way about the major label thing but I was never a particular partisan of its home, Goo, aside from the fact it's square in the middle of their great years. So it's good. In fact, it's very fine. But it's also when it started becoming a matter of sorting out hits and misses. Always some of both in Sonic Youth albums for many years—still, actually. For the longest time "Titanium Expose" was one of those fine points, that song near the end. In the CD era of listening to one-sided or scrambled sequencing it seemed more work always to distinguish one from another, or they could blur. Anyway, this is where I get all rock star-crossed. Swoon, high as a kite, did that just happen? See also The Year Punk Broke, opening shot. What it felt like and what it was like. That's found nearly pure in scattered passages of the 6:25 "Titanium Expose," floating up for maybe a minute altogether, when it's wound up right, when the pounding suddenly turns sublime, ecstatic, throbbing, powerful, etc. Life force, alive. At about the 3:50 mark, and the best of it lasts 20 seconds there—20 seconds good for a lifetime's faith. Here's where the breaking bread happens. All the good adjectives. I've heard it so much I have a hard time hearing it any more. It's already over and done, and I missed again (at least on a conscious level) it. But it's part of my brain or psyche now anyway. "Titanium Expose" will always have a place.

Angelo Badalamenti, "Twin Peaks Theme" (1990)

(listen)

I have a lot of memories and associations with this, not least how much the Pacific Northwest has become my home. I remember how exciting and what a novelty it was at that time for something with such a high profile—and so interesting—to be explicitly set in this region. Then the TV show itself turned out to be such a sensation, so weird and freaky and funny all at once, and became associated with strangely high spirits and anticipation too (compare The X-Files). But my favorite moment with all this happened on a winter night many years later, in those bad Bush years, when I stepped into a late-night bookstore insomniac and bleary and they had just started playing the Twin Peaks soundtrack album. I could not figure out what it was. It was the most beautiful feeling, a prolonged extended déjà vu. I became acutely aware that it was raining outside and very dark, but the lights of the storefronts across the street were visible, bars and a pharmacy and a pizza takeout. And of things like how the rain streaked against the window and what that did to the lights and what it sounded like when cars or now and then a truck drove by. It changed the whole scene and mood and I surreptitiously watched the other patrons, who sometimes seemed to be moving and swaying to the music. I suspect, musicologically speaking, it's pretty primitive stuff. Yet so evocative too. I skulked around the bookstore some 20 minutes and finally gave up and had to ask the clerk what it was. The answer was not surprising.