A Green Man Review

But that is the nature of grammar—it is always tense, like an instrument, aching for release, longing to transform present into past into future, is into was into will. — Amal El-Mohtar’s The River Has Roots

Everything has a story to it. Obviously a written work of fiction is a story such as the very extensive James S. A. Corey’s Expanse series, the first of which, Leviathan Wakes, Gary reviewed for us this week.

So is music, be it with words or not because all music tells a story doesn’t it? Just listen to it and you’ll experience that as in the work of Albanian singer Elina Duni also reviewed by Gary; and I’ve been listening to Congolese music lately, which I have no idea what the lyrics are but it’s still great stuff!

Even food tells a story. Take Lars’ review of Judith M. Bennett’s Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England, as that liquid refreshment has a long and fascinating history, and the review by Lars is also worth reading as it, like all reviews, tells a story of own.

So let’s  consider what happens to a text when it is used as a basis for an audiobook that goes beyond just being a straight reading. The River has Roots has reviewer Paul says was ‘transportative and immersive audio experience’ to him as it was more than a text having music to enhance it and and actual songs as well. Is that the same story, or a different one? You decide.

And film allows us to see and hear a story. So it is with both versions  of The Lion in Winter as Aurora tells us, ‘The title, for those of you rusty with your English history, refers to King Henry II (the lion was his crest) being in the “winter” of his life. At this point in history Henry’s kingdom stretched into France and he was in need of choosing an heir. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry’s wife, was imprisoned in a castle (thanks to Henry who was the key keeper). Goldman’s story is a fictional account of the Christmas court held to determine the future king. A complicated story this is, and the wit in the script combined with the actors’ stellar timing make it worth watching again and again.’

Finally there’s Art Spiegelman’s Maus, A Survivor’s Tale, Vol. I, My Father Bleeds History also reviewed by Gary in which the tale of, as Gary tells us, ‘Maus is the story in comic form of Spiegelman’s father’s experience of the Holocaust. The Jews in Poland are represented as mice, the Nazis as thuggish cats, the Poles as big slow pigs. It’s also the story of Spiegelman’s efforts to retrieve that story from his father. In essence, it chronicles the way in which Art Spiegelman comes to understand Vladek Spiegelman.’

So different ways of telling a story, but still stories all.

Gary greatly enjoyed Alison Bechdel’s latest comic novel Spent, in which a fictionalized Bechdel lives on a goat rescue farm financed by the proceeds of a streaming TV show based on her debut graphic memoir. ‘Lots of little plot strands keep you turning the pages. But mostly it’s Bechdel’s wry but humane observations about humans and human nature that keep you with her. This version of Alison Bechdel really does live in a Fun House.’

Gary finally got around to reading James S. A. Corey’s first book in The Expanse series. ‘I greatly enjoyed Leviathan Wakes, racing through its 500-some pages in near record time, and plan to proceed through all nine of the series novels published so far. (Taking time out, of course, for the upcoming installments in their new The Captives’ War series.)’

He also enjoyed the action and humor in a new book just out this month. ‘Award winning author Suzanne Palmer adds to her growing stack of novel-length SF with Ode to the Half-Broken, an engaging tale of friendship and treachery, adventure and revenge among post-apocalypse AI “mechs” and a few surviving humans in what used to be the United States.

Gary here with new music. I’m always pleased to see another album featuring Albanian singer Elina Duni come over the transom, and Reaching For The Moon, the new one by Duni and guitarist Rob Luft, definitely lived up to expectations. ‘The album’s title sets the mood, and this duo’s cover of the Irving Berlin standard “Reaching For The Moon” that opens the album is deliciously tender and melancholy.’

If you’re hungry for some Latin jazz, you won’t find any better than the tango inflected big band sound of Handmade from the Grammy winning Emilio Solla & La Inestable de Brooklyn,’ as I say in this review.  ‘Solla is a pianist and composer born in Argentina and now based in New York, and Handmade is his 15th album.’

Nashville fixture Jim Lauderdale and red-hot bluegrass band The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys just put out their second album, and The Birds Know is a winner. ‘As you might expect from such luminous company, the music they make together is quite good. Lauderdale wrote these 11 songs just for this session, and, well, it’s for the birds! Including the album title and the song of that name, this musical aviary is packed with feathered friends, starting with the opening track “Two Crows.” ‘

‘This is primarily party music, designed to get you up and dancing,’ I say in my review of the Catalan folk rock band Fenya Rai!’s live disc 10 anys de fenya! ‘This is their fourth record since 2019, but they’ve been together a bit longer, and this big double album with 19 tracks compiles a couple of concerts they at the Festa Major de Sant Joan in their hometown of Valls in June 2025.’

Finally, a bit of new jazz from Scandinavia. ‘Take a bit of Art Ensemble of Chicago, a pinch of Frank Zappa’s 1988 big touring band, and a dab of the Stanford Marching Band, give them some pop-adjacent tunes and turn them loose in the studio, and you’ll have an idea of what to expect from Tales of No Consequence, the fifth album from Bergen, Norway’s avant garde jazz ensemble Whatever Happens Don’t Be Yourself.

Chicago’s ‘Saturday in the Park’ is a song I’ve heard playing off and on over the past forty years . It’s certainly an upbeat, feel good summer song much like ‘Love Shack’ by the B-52s. It was recorded on 6th of August 1982 at the Park West in Chicago.

It was released on Chicago V in 1972 and peaked on the Billboard carts at number three which is quite impressive. It was lovely enough that I never get tired of it, Hutu I’ve prattled on enough about it, so here’s that song for you to have the pleasure of hearing performed live.

There were two things Janey Little loved best in the world: music and books, and not necessarily in that order.

Her favorite musician was the late Billy Pigg, the Northumbrian piper from the northeast of England whose playing had inspired her to take up the small pipes herself as her principal instrument. — Charles de Lint‘s The Little Country

Greetings on this fine post-Equinox day. I’m Gary, the music editor, sitting in. They installed me and my ink-stained fingers here in the unusually quiet Pub while most everyone else on the Estate is out doing useful and needful things involving dirt and stones and various hand tools and such. So naturally, my thoughts turned to the subject of Drink and the many pieces of music and literature on that topic that we’ve covered down the years. I’m not saying I sampled any of the ample wares by which I’m surrounded, but you  may notice that things get a bit confused, with music stealing over into books and vice versa … but well, Art is an expression of the Divine and Eternal, and all categories are but human constructs, right?

A couple of my favorite things are history and alcohol, so you just know I’d enjoy books that combine the two. Here are a couple that I’ve covered:

How would you like to be able to buy a glass of gin from a vending machine on a public street? You could in 18th century London, according to Jessica Warner in her book Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason. It wasn’t a good idea. ‘Warner makes a persuasive case in Craze that the so-called gin craze in London in the early 18th century was the first modern drug crisis. And that the lessons from that period are relevant today.’

I was fascinated by Susan Cheever’s Drinking in America, a social and political history. ‘Cheever traces the pendulum swings of America’s relationship with alcohol, from nearly universal besottedness by the 1830s, through a gradual drying out through the remainder of the 19th century leading up to Prohibition, then another upswing during the Roaring ’20s to a peak in the 1950s and ’60s, then moving in ever-quicker swings to the present day.’

I enjoyed researching and writing this review of Block 15 Brewing Company’s The London Chronicle. ‘This one-off seasonal ale from my favorite local brewery is billed as ‘the perfect dark beer for a warm spring afternoon,’ and I can attest that it is so.’

One of my favorite beer reviews we’ve published was Kelly Caspari’s write-up of Russian River Brewery’s Pliny the Elder. Considering I generally dislike the hoppy bitterness of IPA’s, I’m astonished I enjoyed Pliny the Elder. I shouldn’t be, as the only other hoppy beer I’ve actually liked was another Russian River Brewery IPA, Blind Pig, which displays the same grapefruity character.’

Our much missed Vonnie Carts-Powell attended and reported on a lecture she attended, The Bacchanalian Tradition in British Isles Songs, 1600-1900, by David Ingle of the Folk Song Society of Greater Boston. ‘It’s hard to go wrong when you’re talking about (and singing) drinking songs to a group of amiable and lubricated folkies in a warm room on a cold, rainy night.’

‘This album is like sitting on the perimeter of an after hours fiddle jam at a Scandinavian folk festival,’ I say in my review of Hans Kjorstad’s Dålågjel. That’s a good thing, mind you. ‘Five fiddlers sawing away at hoary old Norwegian dance tunes, each of them occasionally swapping out the fiddle for some kind of percussion, a lute or a lyre, a mouth harp or portable pump organ. A couple of times they even break into song, an old Norse hymn about how good it is to love Jesus.’

‘Some of my favorite jazz music is made by jazz flutists. Or flautists,’ I note in my next review. ‘That’s one of the reasons I’m so happy to have this new one Moder (“mother”) from Norwegian flautist Henriette Eilertsen’s Trio. The other reason is, it’s just great music!’

From the Archives, Chris did a dual review of an album and a book by British singer songwriter David Hughes. First up is the album, Fifty Yards Of David Hughes. ‘This isn’t an album that sounds like dozens of other albums, nor does every track sound like the previous one, nor does it ooze personal angst and sentimentality. The songs are not short on emotion but the overwhelming mood is one of slightly satirical wry humour and wit. The songs are honest, amusing and understanding comments on life’s pleasures, failures and compromises, the sort we all have to make and can relate to.

And then there’s a related book (with its own accompanying CD!) by Hughes. ‘The Fairport Tour is a book made up of David Hughes diary entries during the spring of ’98 when he was touring in the UK as the support act with Fairport Convention. Originally the diary was published ‘in real time’ day by day on the internet and the book collects all the entries together and adds a live CD.’

Lars wrote about a couple of albums of Irish drinking songs, one by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem and the other featuring varioius artists: Irish Drinking Songs, and Whiskey in the Jar: Essential Irish Drinking Songs & Sing Alongs. ‘Irish Drinking Songs steers away from the obvious choices. There is no “Wild Rover” nor “Whiskey in the Jar” there, but you get 14 other great songs, some quite well known, like “Finnigan’s Wake,” “A Jug of Punch” and “The Parting Glass.” ‘

Our choice this is Northumbrian piper and fiddler Kathryn Tickell performing   ‘The Pipes Lament’, a tune written by her,  which was recorded at the Shoreditch Church, London on the 15th of June 2010, should do nicely.

Tickell, by the way, connects indirectly to The Little Country novel as smallpiper Janey Little as noted from the excerpt from the novel lists Northumbrian Billy Pigg as one of her inspirations  to become a musician, something that Tickell also claims.