A Green Man Review

There’s nothing for your comfort in the place where I was born 
Someone’s got the roses ’cause my people got the thorns; 
My people are the poor ones, their country made of stones 
Their wealth is in persistence, in stories and in bones

Oysterband’s ‘One Green Hill’

Autumn will be soon upon us –  Summer’s already waning as the plants in our gardens are just now showing their form of botanical entropy, which puts them on their last legs before first frost kills them off entirely. So Gus, our Estate Head Gardener, and his staff has been drying beans and apples, preparing root cellars for carrots and the like, braiding strings of onions and garlic, sending cornucopias of produce to the Kitchen for Mrs. Ware and her staff to pickle, can or freeze as they see proper.

And you want to know about all the banners flying high in the rafters of the Great Hall? They represent some of the ‘lost’ nations of Europe, such as Alba, Andalucia, Breizh, Catalunya, Crsu, Cymru, Eesti, Elsasz, Euskadi, Føroyar, Friesland, Gallega, Jura, Kernow, Mannin, Northumbria, Occitania, Samiasne, Savoie, Ulster, Vlaanderen, and Wallonie. These all have delegates here, as do some newly re-emerged nations such as Slovenia and Kosovo, for The Devolving Europe Festival, which is being held here for the next two weeks.

(One of our reviewers, Richard, looked at a fictional take on a very fractured Europe in reviewing David Hutchison’s Europe in Autumn and its sequel, Europe at Midnight.)

Now, these are not advocates for violent overthrow of the existing order, but rather like-minded folks who know that keeping their local cultures alive in an age of an increasingly homogenized European society is a matter of food being prepared and shared, ale brewed and drunk deeply, literature being written and read, plays being performed, and music being played long into the night.

Un Lun Dun, a fantastic look at a London that is just out of sight, gets a very detailed review by Kathleen: ‘China Mieville (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, The Iron Council) is renowned for the world he has created around the great, multi-species, many-storied city of New Crobuzon. Those are adult works, beyond a doubt: ferocious and frightening, full of the incandescent mysteries and fatal sins of maturity. At the same time, one of the conundrums of Mieville’s style has been the sense of a small boy peeking through his writing; the kind of little boy who delights in snot and crawly bugs, who chases his sister with a frog and forgets to take that interesting dead bird out of his lunch box. Sometimes this gleeful grossness amuses the reader in turn. Sometimes it seems unnecessarily provoking. But it has always reminded me of how young Mieville is.’

Richard finds another book in that genre: ‘Hidden, magical London is all the rage these days. First there was Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, then China Mieville’s Un Lun Dun. And now there’s Mind the Gap, a collaborative effort between American novelist and comics writer Christopher Golden and British horror novelist Tim Lebbon. To be sure, that’s fast company for any book to be in, but Mind the Gap manages it more than respectably, and is an enjoyable, engrossing read that delivers plenty of thrills while deftly avoiding the numerous clichés lurking in wait for it.’

Rebecca likes Celtic Memories, a collection of stories, songs, blessings and charms retold by Caitlín Matthews and illustrated by Olwyn Whelan. Rebecca thinks this book would work wonderfully for reading aloud to children, and ‘Whelan’s pictures are charming, with bright, bold colors and a very Gaelic fondness for spirals and swirls.’

Robert was appreciative of booth the content and the cover art of Glen Cook’s A Cruel Wind: ‘Many years ago I read Glen Cook’s first Dread Empire trilogy, A Shadow of All Night Falling, October’s Baby, and All Darkness Met. I was impressed. Here was a heroic fantasy that cast aside the mold of Tolkien and Andersen, incorporated what was useful from Leiber and Moorcock, and then struck out on its own. Night Shade Books reissued the trilogy in an omnibus edition, graced with another of Raymond Swanland’s expressionistic covers, A Cruel Wind, and believe it or not, it’s better.’

The Robin Hood legend has been used for better worse times in print and video including a memorable retelling in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but Cat found a possible unique telling in the Robin of Sherwood series: ‘If the Robin Hood that had Patrick Bergin at its centre was a telling of Robin Hood as the embodiment of the Saxon/Norman conflict, Richard Carpenter decided to make his series an explicitly Celtic telling. ‘Celtic’, you ask, ‘How so?’ Well, let’s start with Robin having as his Lord, Herne the Hunter! Yes, The Hooded God Himself! OK, so how did Carpenter get to this vision of Robin? Why Robin as the Hooded Man?’

A book by Evan McHugh on Irish pubs and drinking Guinness really, really disappointed Gary: ‘I love good beer, and I love to travel. I also enjoy reading about both. I find beer writing more interesting than wine writing, because beer experts tend to be less stuffy about their craft than wine experts. And a good travel writer can make you feel almost as though you were along for the ride. So I jumped at the chance to review Pint-Sized Ireland: In Search Of The Perfect Guinness. Writing about travel and beer! What could be better?’ Now read his review to see why this was not sorority him.

Robert brings us a look at several takes on Neil Gaiman’s The Books of Magic. The first is Gaiman’s own: ‘Neil Gaiman’s The Books of Magic — the original story, not the series — began when DC Comics approached Gaiman about doing a series that would bring together the “magic” characters of the DC Universe. Gaiman created the character of Timothy Hunter, a twelve-year-old boy who has the potential to become the greatest magician of the age — our age.’

And we continue with John Ney Rieber’s continuation of the series: ‘John Ney Rieber’s continuation of Neil Gaiman’s The Books of Magic is a complex, multilayered story that focuses not so much on Gaiman’s mythic connections (although they are there in full measure) as on Tim Hunter: finding his magic, and his bearings in the world(s) he inhabits is intimately tied in with growing up, which Tim does a lot of in this series.’

And finally, Robert brings us his take on the “update,” Si Spencer’s The Books of Magick: Life During Wartime: ‘Life During Wartime represents a distinct break with The Books of Magic as it had been developed by Neil Gaiman and John Ney Rieber. Si Spencer, working with Gaiman, “updated” the characters and took them into a new set of trials that speak strongly to a contemporary audience.’

Alistair looks at a release from the Celtic Fiddle Festival: ‘Play On is the fourth release from a group of musicians who had no real intention of continuing as such beyond a one-off concert series in 1993. The enthusiasm, both on and off stage, generated by that project, which featured three of the Celtic world’s most noted fiddlers, Irishman Kevin Burke, Scot Johnny Cunningham, and Christian Lemaitre from Brittany has resulted, twelve years later, in hundreds of performances and numerous successful international tours.’

David sees Jean-Paul De Roover at the Pearl Company: ‘It was a quiet Thursday, and my wife was having some friends over. I had received an email about a last minute concert at The Pearl Company, but with such short notice I couldn’t find anyone to go with me. Rich couldn’t make it, Ralph wasn’t home, Jesse was away, and so on. I had to go out to allow the ladies space, but did I want to go to a concert alone? I could just go to the bookstore, have a coffee, browse for a couple of hours. Ah, what the heck, it’s five bucks, and maybe it’ll be good — after all, the review online compared this guy to Robert Fripp.’

Gary found ‘moody, dynamic music’ played by Norwegian jazz bassist Mats Eilertsen’s septet on their album Rubicon. It ranges from the klezmer-influenced opening track “Canto” to other types of contemporary jazz, including the ‘atmospheric noir jazz’ of a tune called ‘March’ that Gary likes very much.

Bassist Mats Eilertsen also plays with the Nils Økland Band on their album Kjølvatn, which Gary says is ‘an acoustic, tradition-based project by (the) Norwegian hardanger fiddler.’ The band is a mixed folk and jazz ensemble making contemporary music that sounds ancient, blending folk and Baroque sources, ‘and always with a distinctive Nordic feel to it.’

Gary also reviews another recent jazz release, the Peter Erskine Trio’s As It Was. It’s a box set that collects all four of the trio’s albums released from 1993 to 1999, featuring Erskine on drums, Palle Danielsson on bass and John Taylor on piano. Gary says ‘It’s four hours of music that covers nearly all the bases of contemporary piano trio possibilities, from sublime ballads and melodic post-bop, to a bit of swing plus lots of abstract contemporary works.’

It won’t surprise you to discover we’ve all got favorite reading places, mostly in the Kinrowan Hall (mine is my hidden space behind the Bar). So it didn’t surprise me that Zina has a cool place, one I hadn’t thought of: ‘The landing on the staircase on the first and second floors, with the window seat. I tend to disappear into my books, so noise and people walking past is never a problem. Maeve is not a ‘drape yourself across the reading material’ sort of cat, so as long as I’m not taking up her favorite pillow, she’ll deign to let me sit with her for a while and sometimes will even purr for accompaniment.’

As you might have guessed from the lyrics at the top of this edition, the song this time, is ‘One Green Hill’ as recorded off the soundboard on Bremen, Germany on the 3rd of April 1996′. There’s a splendid version of it on their Alive & Acoustic album which I think is the same cut on their Granite Years and Trawler collections.

To the people who insist they really do have a great idea but they just can’t write, I’d say that given some of the books I’ve read, or at least started to read, it would appear that not being able to write is absolutely no obstacle whatsoever to writing a book and securing a publishing contract. Though becoming famous in some other field first may help. ― Iain Banks in Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram

If you’re looking for Iain, our Librarian, he’s off again on a vacation trip, errr, I meant another short concert tour with his wife, violinist and vocalist Catherine, in the Baltic nations. While he’s gone,  Gus has the Library Apprentices, the Several Annies, assisting him with much needed gardening work, so I’m writing up What’s New this edition without their usual assistance as well.

I just remembered that I’ve got a tale of how Karen Wynn Fonstad’s The Atlas of Middle-Earth came to be a learning lesson for a group of Several Annies which  you can read here. For just how important Tolkien thought maps were to creating his world, go read our review of his epic work, The History of Middle-earth.

Cat looks at a classic SF novel: ‘Until the likes of Iain M. Banks with The Culture series and Neal Asher with the Polity series came along, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s The Mote In God’s Eye was quite possibly the best space opera of all time. This forty-year-old novel that took the space opera novels of the 1930s and 1940s and very, very nicely updated them.’

Speaking of Iain M. Banks’s Culture series, Gary read recent editions of the first and third books in that series, Consider Phlebas and Use of Weapons. It wasn’t the first time he’d read them, but he still found both gripping, as he says in his dual review.

Kathleen has the fortunate luck to review a work by an author who passed on far too soon: ‘Terry Pratchett began his series of Discworld stories for younger readers in 2003, with the marvelous Wee Free Men. There he introduced Tiffany Aching, shepherd’s daughter and witch-in-training. Her adventures continued in A Hat Full of Sky (2004), likewise excellent. These books are technically juveniles — the publisher recommends them for 6th grade and up — but they are as good or better than Pratchett’s adult novels. They are full of beauty and wisdom. They are hilariously funny. They have the characteristic Pratchett sense of justice, honor and wonder. Wintersmith is the third entry in Tiffany’s saga: and it is grand.’

(Steeleye Span’s Wintersmith is their musical take on this novel as Kathleen says here: ‘It would be easy to say that a collaboration between Steeleye Span and Terry Pratchett was always inevitable, given their respective histories and their proclaimed admiration of each other’s work.  It may be an example of retrospective inevitability now that it has actually happened in the form of the Wintersmith CD, however.  In any case, the end result is one that is overwhelmingly a credit to all concerned; worthy of the names involved and their reputations.’)

Michael looks at a centuries old opera: ‘First put on in 1728, The Beggar’s Opera set the stage for centuries to come, revitalizing the comedy genre, and recreating the musical comedy genre in a new light. John Gay’s work borrows from a variety of sources, starting life in the concept of “Quaker pastorals” or “a Newgate pastoral, naming the whores and thieves there.” Posing in various forms as social commentary, a satire on Italian opera, a ballad opera, and a musical comedy, there’s no doubt that The Beggar’s Opera has inspired playwrights and composers ever since, and its popularity has never been in doubt.’

Robert had to rethink his idea of “dark fantasy” after encountering William Schafer’s anthology Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 2: ‘I don’t think I’m alone in thinking of “dark fantasy” as a sort of combination of urban fantasy and horror: vampires, werewolves, ghosts, zombies, and less pleasant creatures confronting more or less normal people who may have the resources, or just the dumb luck, to survive the encounter. Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 2 is not that.’

Michelle starts off her look at American baseball films this way: ‘In the big inning, God created baseball. Or perhaps it was Loki, patron of athletics and other tricks; the origins are shrouded in antiquity. There is also debate about which mortal first received the divine inspiration. Abner Doubleday often gets credit, though some historians claim the game was played in England in the 1700s. What is known is that, in 1845, a team called the New York Knickerbockers adopted the rules of the game we know as baseball. In New Jersey that summer, they played the first organized baseball game, and America acquired its own pantheon.’  You can read her delightful essay here.

A guide by Hong kong based food writer Liza Chu gets an appreciative write-up by Richard: ‘Dim Sum: A Survival Guide is roughly half as useful as its author intended, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not useful. As a basic overview of popular dim sum dishes, bracketed with some supplementary historical and other content, it’s a great introduction to the topic. Where it falls down is in the commentary the author and a few of her friends provide on the dishes in question.’ This book was sent to us from the publisher in Hong King making it the longest a book travelled to get to us!

Robert takes a look at yet another comics reboot, Green Arrow: Year One: ‘To re-invent an ongoing character who has been in existence since 1941 is no small undertaking, although in the case of Green Arrow, a/k/a Ollie Queen, there was a lot of history to draw on — this is not the first time Green Arrow has been re-imagined, not to mention resurrected.’

And, as part of yet another reboot, Robert brings us his take on the distaff side in Gotham City Sirens: Union: ‘Gotham City Sirens is another installment of Batman Reborn and, like Batman and Robin, it seems to be marking time until something significant happens, somewhere.” Hmm — maybe you should read his whole commentary.

Scottish-born singer and cellist Robin Adams wrote a song called ‘The Devil’s War And God’s Own Deep Blue Sea’ in early 2015 when most people were barely aware of the Syrian refugee situation. It has now grown into an international crisis and Adams has turned his single into a compilation to benefit a refugee aid organization. Gary says Refugee is a mostly somber collection of songs, all new or unreleased, by musicians including Linda Thompson, Bonnie Prince Billy, Alasdair Roberts and more.

Michael in his review of C’Mon notes they broke up after recording a single album. Well the same is true of Mackeel, the band they came out of, as Jack notes here in reviewing Plaid: ‘You’ll never hear them live, so buy this CD to hear how good they were. Rumors are swirling on their list that the band is reforming with new personnel, but I doubt it will happen. And if it does, they won’t sound the same — even if a red-headed banshee of a fiddler replaces the present fiddling banshee!’

Michael states what he thinks of most Celtic music in his review of C’mon: ‘To my pleasant surprise, he was right. I didn’t just like Rook, I loved them. And coming from me, that’s high praise indeed. You see, I have a somewhat unfortunate flaw. I don’t like Celtic music on the whole. Oh, sure, I’ve been known to enjoy specific bands, or certain songs, or some styles. But on the whole, I’m not really a Celtic music fan. I don’t know why, but after a while, it all starts sounding the same to me.’ Sadly this would be the only disc from Rook as they too broke up shortly after releasing it.

Robert noticed Michael’s review of The Beggar’s Opera (the book), and thought we should run a review of the actual opera — which in this recording comes with highlights of Edward German’s Tom Jones: ‘According to Wadham Sutton’s commentary, we have Jonathan Swift to thank for Gay’s ballad opera – he had written to both Gay and Alexander Pope suggesting “a Newgate pastoral, among the whores and thieves,” opining that it “might make an odd, pretty sort of thing.”’

And guess what — as long as we’re doing ballad operas, how about a Singspiel? It just so happens we have a review of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte for you. Says Robert: ‘I love Mozart. His music is one of the things I’d insist on if I were going to be stranded on a desert island. Otherwise, I’d just refuse to be stranded. Among my favorite works by Mozart is The Magic Flute.’

Mavis Staples marked her 77th birthday a week ago on July 10. What better time to listen to a recent live performance in Canberra, Australia, in April 2015. And, for better or worse, what better time to hear her sing Stephen Stills’ landmark song about unrest in the streets, ‘For What It’s Worth‘?