What Do H.P. Lovecraft And The Grateful Dead Have In Common?

Not too much. The only things I can come up with are (1) they are both the names of American psychedelic rock bands formed in the 1960s, and (2) they're the subject matter of the two items I have shipping from Amazon.com! (Yes, my life is officially so boring that the best thing I can come up with for a blog post is something about items I'm getting from Amazon. Look for Art's next post, in which he enumerates his favorite breakfast cereals!) Specifically, I'm getting copies of An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia by S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz and Live/Dead by the Grateful Dead. (I'm actually listening to the Live/Dead version of "Dark Star" on Rhapsody as I write this.)

I actually had a fairly tough time deciding what to get. The Lovecraft encyclopedia was a gimme, 'cause I use the (incomplete) online version of it at Google Books all the time. (This brings me to important (albeit discursive) point I wanted to make. To wit: ATTENTION PUBLISHERS/ AUTHORS/ EVERYONE AT GOOGLE BOOKS: Having your books available on Google Books is an excellent marketing tool. Even if I can read your book online, if I find it useful and/or entertaining, I still want to own a copy of it. I don't really like reading books on a computer, so if there is a book that I find online that I use all the time or that I am pretty sure I will read in its entirety, I will probably end up purchasing it. I am sure there are lots and lots of other people that feel the same way I do.) The Dead CD was a little harder - I had another 7+ bucks to play with 'cause I decided I wanted to be eligible for Super Saver Shipping, so it was between the Dead CD and A Game Of Thrones (the first book in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice And Fire series, which a friend described as "turning the fantasy genre upside-down"), as they were each a little over 7 bills. I finally decided on the Dead CD simply because although I'm a long-time fan (saw my 1st show back in '87), I really don't have a lot of the band's stuff on CD and I've wanted Live/Dead in particular for a very long time.

Ah, the joys and agonies of capitalism. Did I make the right decision? I'll have a better handle on that once I actually obtain said items, but, in the meantime, what do you think?

Heroes In The Wind - Robert E. Howard

I was just looking at the Wikipedia entry for Heroes in the Wind: From Kull to Conan by Robert E.Howard, which I see is being put out under the Penguin Modern Classics imprint. Wow - the guys that my D & D-playing friends and I used to read in high school sure have moved up in the world. First Tolkien gets a multiple Academy Award-winning film made based on his work, then Lovecraft gets a volume of his fiction published by the Library of America, and now Howard has his own Penguin Modern Classics volume. I guess it really is respectable to be a geek these days.

Anyway, here's the book's table of contents, according to Wikipedia (the notes in brackets are mine).

Acknowledgements
Introduction (John Clute)

Prelude
"Recompense" [poem]

I Black Dawn
"The Shadow Kingdom" [a Kull story]
"The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune" [Kull]
"Kings of the Night" [Bran Mak Morn]
"Worms of the Earth" [Bran Mak Morn]
"The Dark Man" [Turlogh Dubh O'Brien/Bran Mak Morn]

II Dark Interlude
"The Footfalls Within" [Solomon Kane]
"Pigeons from Hell" [a Weird West story]
"Graveyard Rats" [a Steve Harrison story]
"Vultures of Wahpeton" [Western fiction]


III High Noon [all the stories in this section are Conan tales]
"The Tower of the Elephant"
"Queen of the Black Coast"
"A Witch Shall Be Born"
"Red Nails"

Dennis Hopper 1936 - 2010

This is a couple of days late, but I didn't want to let the holiday weekend to end without taking a moment to recognize the passing of one of the great talents of American cinema, actor, director, and writer Dennis Hopper. Though he'll probably be remembered best for his higher-profile work in films like Apocalypse Now, Cool Hand Luke, and Rebel Without A Cause, I personally will always recall him first in his magnificent (Tarantino-scripted) scene with Christopher Walken in Tony Scott's True Romance (which you can watch here), which just might be the greatest moment in the history of American movies, full stop.

My sympathies go out to Dennis' family and friends. He will be missed.

Current Reading: "The Monster Of The Prophecy" by Clark Ashton Smith

(Note: This is the first post in an occasional series where I'll write about books or stories that I'm currently reading, rather than books that I've finished reading like I do at Amazon.)

Right now I'm reading "The Monster Of The Prophecy" by the great weird fiction author Clark Ashton Smith. The reasons I'm posting this are: (1) I'm a huge CAS fan and will use any excuse whatsoever to drop his name; and (2) I think the cover of the original Weird Tales magazine in which it first appeared (pictured below) is pretty freakin' cool.



Cover of the January 1932 issue of Weird Tales. Art by C.C. Senf


I'm about halfway through it right now. So far it's pretty interesting - sort of like one of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom stories as written by Charles Baudelaire. I'll let you know what I think of it when I'm done.

UPDATE (5/23/10): Well, I finished it tonight. An odd mixture of decadent and twee, but the language and imagery are beautiful, as always. 4 stars out of 5.

In Memoriam: Steve Tompkins

I just came across a great tribute to the late Robert E. Howard scholar Steve Tompkins over at the REH: Two-Gun Raconteur website and thought I'd post a link. Why? Simply put, it's because I believe that Tompkins was a great writer and amazing critical thinker whose work deserves to be more widely read than it is, which, outside of the Howard fandom community, it largely is not. Tompkins was an intellectual whirlwind whose essays slalomed breathlessly from topic to topic - he could veer from Quentin Tarantino to Stephen King to Herodotus and then back to his original subject (usually Howard, less often (but just as ably) J. R. R. Tolkien or Charles R. Saunders or Ian Fleming), leaving the reading's head spinning trying to keep up with him. If you care about great writing (and particularly if you are as dismayed about the ghettoization of genre fiction as I often am), you should check him out. Click on the link above, or, better yet, take a look at his archived posts at The Cimmerian, which remains some of the finest work of his I've seen on the net.

H.L. Mencken Was Right

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people... or, it would seem, the book-purchasing public.

Alphascript Publishing sells free articles as expensive books

I'd get mad if I could stop laughing.

Notes On Cornell (Grateful Dead - 5/8/77)

Well, it's happened again.

About every 4 - 5 years I get on a kick where I am intensely into the Grateful Dead for about 6 months, to the point where I want to listen to little or nothing else. I don't know why this always happens to me with the Dead; I go through similar phases with the Stones and AC/DC, but I also listen to them during "down times". With the Dead it's strictly feast or famine - I'm either listening to them all the time or not at all.

These "Deadhead periods" (if you will) are usually triggered by seeing a show or a film that features the band - this time, it was actually through discovering the live music section of the Internet Archive. Holy shit! If you are remotely interested in the Dead (hell, if you're remotely interested in live music period), you needed to check this out. I got to listen to the famous Cornell University show from 5/8/77 (embedded below) & thought it might be interesting
to post some notes on where the different songs performed come from. So... here 'tis.



(Note: if the player isn't working, you can access the page for the Cornell show at the Internet Archive directly by clicking here.)


- "New Minglewood Blues", originally by Noah Lewis, is from Shakedown Street (1978)

-"Loser" is from Jerry Garcia's album Garcia (1972)

-"El Paso", originally by Marty Robbins, first appeared on the live album Steal Your Face (1976)

- "They Love Each Other" originally appeared on the Jerry Garcia album Reflections (1976)

- "Jack Straw" originally appeared on Europe '72 (1972)

- "Deal" also appeared originally on Garcia (1972)

- "Lazy Lightning" appeared originally on the Kingfish album Kingfish (1976). "Supplication" originally appeared on this album also.

- "Brown-Eyed Women" is also originally from Europe '72

- "Mama Tried" is a Merle Haggard song. Its 1st appearance on a Dead album was on Grateful Dead (aka Skull And Roses) (1971)

-"Row Jimmy" is from the album Wake of the Flood (1973)

- "Dancing in the Street" was, of course, originally recorded by the great Martha and the Vandellas in 1964. The Dead actually started performing it way back in 1966, but it did not make an appearance on one of their records until Terrapin Station (1977). It has also been covered by the Everly Brothers, the Kinks, the Mamas and the Papas, Van Halen, and about half of the other artists in the fuckin' universe.

-"Scarlet Begonias" is from the album From The Mars Hotel (1974)

- "Fire On the Mountain" is from Shakedown Street (1978)

- "Estimated Prophet" is from Terrapin Station (1977)

- "Saint Stephen" is from Aoxomoxoa (1969)

- "Not Fade Away" was originally recorded by Buddy Holly and the Crickets in 1957. Its 1st appearance on a Dead album was on Grateful Dead aka Skull & Roses in 1971. Much like "DITS", its been covered by about a bazillion other artists, including the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen. It was also issued as the 1st single by Rush.

-"Morning Dew" was originally recorded by Bonnie Dobson. It made its Dead vinyl debut on The Grateful Dead (1967). It was also covered by Fred Neil, Tim Rose, The Jeff Beck Group, and Devo(!), amongst others.

-"One More Saturday Night" is from Bob Weir's album Ace (1972)

Many thanks to the fine folks at Grateful Dead Family Discography and Grateful Dead Lyric And Song Finder for making the researching of this post a whole hell of a lot easier.