Our Founding Fathers, Eighth in a Series

Captain Beefheart - Live at the Radar Station (1980) Part 1
Captain Beefheart - Live at the Radar Station (1980) Part 2

The wonderful world of bootleg recordings is full of highly obsessive people. Thankfully, one of them obsesses highly about the Good Cap'n, Don Van Vliet. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to tell ya'all that this is a live compilation bootleg from different venues and different years, supposedly recorded in the late '70s and early '80s. Though the oldest recording date is 1980, according to the info I was given about it. The information on bootlegs is often highly contraindicatoryful, if ya know what I mean.

(Funny thing I noticed on the home page of the Beefheart obsessatorium, that there's a link to an early interview of the Captain by Rick McGrath, who is another obsessive personality - J. G. Ballard is his thing. I've traded extensively with Rick over the years; got an incredible Fahey recording from Madison in 1984 from Rick that I haven't figured out how to share with you yet. Rick wanted some of my 1960s back issues of New Worlds. But he ain't ever gonna get 'em. Hey, I offered scans! I may be a jerk, but not a total ass. I'm just kinda obsessive myself is all. Anyway, the point is that it's a small, shiny world, kids.)

Personally, the Captain and I met when I bought the rerelease of Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) in the late 80s. Fact, I think I bought it from Ed when he was working at Rose Records. Hey, Ed - do you remember this? You were very excited. Can I say bouncy, even? Previously, I had stared in wonder, horror, awe and cosmic trepidation for several years at a battered LP copy of Trout Mask Replica behind the glass of the counter at Penny Lane Records (I think this was the name of the store) prior to this.

Buy the Captain's shit!

APOLOGIES: 'Tis fixed now, but I forgot to put the download link in when I posted this. That'll teach me to not get enough sleep - stupid monkey!

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Now playing: The Byrds - 5D (Fifth Dimension) {mono}
via FoxyTunes

Rising From the Ashes!

I'd never heard of this before an hour ago, but now I'm in love!

When Mars Attacks - We'll Be Ready!

I've just finished reading The Martian War by Gabriel Mesta (pseudonym for Kevin J. Anderson). It's an amusing piece of Victorian speculative whimsy about the "real" adventures of Herbert George Wells, fighting the good fight for the Empire against the real Martian invaders. Nicely done overall. I liked the inclusion of Thomas Huxley as a main character in particular. One can't say too much about the book without giving things away, but Anderson weaves threads of our Wells' fictional creations throughout his narrative. Should you run out and get it right now? No. But if you like Steampunk or Wells or Anderson (first novel I've read by him), then you may like this.

(If you want to read a really good book with a somewhat parallel premise, search out The Space Machine by Christopher Priest. This novel may have a hint of the 60s New Wave to it, by association more than anything, which puts some folks off, but it's one of my favorite Priest novels. Of course, if you think "New Wave" only refers to late 70s/early 80s pop music, this reference is going to really confuse you, ain't it?)

The point of this post is actually to link you into this neat new world I found - the world of Victorian Science Fiction as acted out with homemade and storebought miniatures! Tiny things are really neat already, but tiny little ironclad tanks battling tiny little Martians in people's basements is so cool! Model railroading has nothing on this. I'd much rather paint a tiny lead figurine called "Masked Minion with Diabolical Weapon" than the caboose of a train!

A Correction, Decades Late:


Mr. Christopher Priest was kind enough to check out my blog today and his response to my categorization of The Space Machine as New Wave is thus:

"I've never heard anyone say that before!...I always thought of Space Machine as a sort of personal revolt against the dogma of the new wave, then current. I wrote it in the early 1970s, at a time when the main proponents of the new wave (Moorcock et al) had become decadent, orthodox and self-gratifying. I never did have much to do with it, although it was huge at the time I started writing. I could understand why you might say that about a couple of the novels that preceded it, but not The Space Machine..."

And he's right. I was writing about the book through the distorted lens of teenage perceptions, lumping it in with all the "dangerous" New Wave I was reading at the time, hence the continuing taint it has suffered in my sorry brain ever since. My younger self can't apologize, but I can. Sorry, Mr. Priest! And thank you for helping me to see my younger self in a new light. It was very interesting and refreshing.

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Now playing: Teenage Fanclub - Neil Jung (Alternate Version)
via FoxyTunes

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Now playing: Fairport Convention - If It Feels Good, You Know
via FoxyTunes

A Fall of Moondust (1917-2008)

Arthur C. Clarke is dead. He was one of the last great voices of science fiction's Golden Age (1950s). It's quite likely you've never read anything by him unless you're a real SF geek, though he wrote dozens of books and hundreds of stories. But you've been influenced by him. Thank Stanley Kubrick - also dead - for that.

Maybe you know him from Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World television series, one of my favorites as a teenager. Arthur would introduce a strange and mysterious topic in each episode from his Sri Lankan home and then off you'd go with a wonderfully pretentious narrator who made every little thing sound so mysterious and exciting. Fun stuff.

Only a few weeks ago I picked up a Clarke book for the first time in, well, decades - the great Tales from the White Hart (1957), a collection of very short stories set in the White Hart pub, populated with scientists and science fictioneers always willing to tell or hear a strange tale. Good stuff, very good stuff.

If you haven't read it, get yourself to your local library and grab a copy of Childhood's End (1953). If you like that, try Rendezvous With Rama (1972) and The Fountains of Paradise (1979) (I am head over heels in love with the idea of giant elevators to space thanks to this book!). Great stuff.

Arthur had that sense of wonder we science fiction readers love, in spades. I'm sure there's many a NASA tech, JPL wunderkind, science teacher, ditch digger and garbageman out there who owes Arthur a huge debt. I do.

Thanks, Arthur.