A Green Man Review

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?

Robert Burns

Shhh… We need to be more than just a wee bit quieter than usual as a lot of the residents of this Estate were up very late greeting in the New Year properly and some I know are regretting that they overindulged on potent spirits. I was tending bar as was Finch and Ingrid, my wife who’s the Steward here, so we’re both feeling fine, but not so Iain, your usual host here, and that’s why I’m doing the hosting duties this lovely snowy morning.

But first breakfast. For me, coffee with a splash of cream, eggs with applewood smoked bacon and Riverrun Farm feta along with a blueberry muffin grilled in Riverrun butter on the stove. That should do nicely. Just ask the staff for whatever you want as they’re used to personal requests.

I see that there’s several musos playing quietly in the sitting nook here in the Kitchen — that’s a Mícheál Ó’Domhnaill composition called ‘The Cricket’s Wicket’ which he composed for Nightnoise. They’re playing on a violin and a viola which I must say sounds very sweet.

So shall we see what’s in this edition?

I was thinking about fiction where music plays a strong role in the story with the prime example being Charles de Lint’s The Little Country where the protagonist, Janey Little plays smallpipes in the style of Billy Pigg, the Northumbrian piper. The back of the novel has the tunes that the author composed for this novel.

Music is also central in de Lint’s Greenmantle, although its effects can be somewhat of a mixed bag: it’s about a piper in a hidden village, and a Stag, and the Wild Hunt, and how music brings out what is deepest in our souls.

Emma Bull’s War for The Oaks with a battle between the Fey and some of we mortal humans that is settled using music on Midsummers Eve. It also features music from Cats Laughing, or perhaps Cats Laughing plays music from the novel. I’ll need to ask Will Shetterly which it is… Ahhh he says the band comes after the novel. Oh and we’ve got the trailer made for a film version of the novel didn’t happen which has some of the music in the novel.

Of course Patricia McKillip’s The Riddle-Master of Hed has harps and harpers at the centre of its story. And it won McKillip a World Fantasy Award as it bloody well should’ve given how good it is!

Music is even more important in McKillip’s The Bards of Bone Plain, as Robert makes clear: ‘I’ve noted before the importance of music in the works of Patricia McKillip. I’ve probably also said something about the poetic quality of her writing. I know I’ve mentioned the way magic infuses her stories, context rather than event. That’s all here, in The Bards of Bone Plain, a story about poetry and music and magic.’

Steven Brust, a musician himself, brings us, in collaboration with Megan Lindholm, The Gypsy, which — well, as Robert puts it: ‘There are three brothers who have become separated. They are the Raven, the Owl, and the Dove. Or perhaps they are Raymond, Daniel, and Charlie. They are probably Baroly, Hollo, and Csucskari. One plays the fiddle, one plays tambourine, and one has a knife with a purpose.’ There’s a lot more to it, of course, so check it out.

Finally I’d add a mainstream affair of which Gary says the central character of  the novel, Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet, is the music. Sounds interesting to me!

April has two recordings to recommend to you: ‘One of Scotland’s more endearing — and enduring — bands, Capercaillie (named, curiously, for a particularly large species of Scottish grouse) has been making beautiful music for nearly twenty years now. Formed in 1984 by Donald Shaw, Karen Matheson and Marc Duff, Capercaillie has seen a few line-up changes, and some adventuresome musical wanderings (club remixes and world music!), yet has remained true to its Scottish roots. Capercaillie’s work has been heard not only on the radio, but in the movie Rob Roy, and in a host of BBC television series. Their 1998 compilation CD, Dusk Till Dawn, and vocalist Karen Matheson’s 1996 solo effort, The Dreaming Sea, are the perfect introduction to the band’s sound and history.’

It seems only fitting to take a look at Boiled in Lead’s Songs from “The Gypsy”, seeing as how we’ve discussed the novel itself. As Robert puts it: ‘Boiled in Lead‘s Songs from The Gypsy is a collision, of sorts. That’s a metaphor, of course, but then, if you can’t speak in metaphor, you can’t talk about music.’

We seem to have several artists who are showing up in more than one category today — Charles de Lint is a musician as well as a writer, as witness his Old Blue Truck. Robert says: ‘I’m not sure what I expected Charles de Lint to sound like as a singer. Whatever it was I expected, it wasn’t what I got. We’re calling it folk/trad-singer/songwriter music, and I suppose that’s as good a description as any. There are echoes of all sorts of things. . . .” Read on to see just what he means by that.

Next is MaryAnn Harris, wife of de Lint and a most talented artist and musician in her own right, released her own EP, Crow Girls: ‘Having heard Mary Ann Harris’ backup vocals on husband Charles de Lint’s Old Blue Truck, I still wasn’t prepared for her singing on her own EP, Crow Girls. The element of surprise seems to be something the two have in common.’

Stephen finishes off our music reviews with a look at Fest Vraz: ‘Anyone who claims to love traditional music, but owns nothing from Brittany, has a gaping hole in his or her CD collection. The thirty-six tracks presented here surely represent the most complete and consistent collection of Breton music ever assembled in a package of this type. The obvious precedent and comparator for Fest Vraz is Green Linnet’s Twentieth Anniversary Collection, which assembled the likes of Altan, Silly Wizard, Dick Gaughan and The Bothy Band under one roof. While the names of the Breton artists may be less familiar to non-mainland Europeans than their Scots and Irish brethren, the diversity of this music and the sheer talent of its practitioners is every bit as jaw-slackening.’

Our What Not comes courtesy of  the American Songwriter where Geoffrey Himes has an essay titled ‘Saying Something Human: A Look Back At The Child Ballads’ which has a lovely lead-in: ‘What do Bob Dylan’s “Barbara Allen,” Doc Watson’s “Matty Groves,” Fairport Convention’s “Tam Lin,” the Fleet Foxes’ “The False Knight On The Road,” Tom Waits’ “Two Sisters,” Sam Cooke’s “The Riddle Song,” Dr. John’s “Cabbage Head,” the Carter Family’s “Sinking In The Lonesome Sea,” Jerry Garcia’s “Dreadful Wind And Rain,” Joan Baez’s “The Greenwood Side,” John Wesley Harding’s “Little Musgrave,” Anais Mitchell’s “Sir Patrick Spens,” Sam Amidon’s “How Come That Blood” and Steeleye Span’s “Lord Randall” have in common?’

‘Nghtfaeries’, our coda music this time, comes courtesy of Paul Brandon,  author of one of my favorite novels, Swim The Moon. It’s by Sunas which is one of his bands which he founded in Brisbane, his home city. I do believe it’s a splendid note to end this edition on.

English autumn mornings are often like mornings nowhere else in the world. The air is cold. The floorboards are cold. It is perhaps this coldness which sharpens the tang of the hot cup of tea. Outside, steps on the gravel crunch a little more loudly than a month ago because of the very slight frost. ― John Berger’s A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor

The ground underfoot outside of Kinrowan Hall has taken on the crunchy sound and feel that it gets after the frost has set nicely into the soil. It’s a sure sign that Winter will soon be upon us with the first biting cold, but I and the Irish wolfhounds needed a good walk, so I ate a hearty breakfast, packed a thermos of tea, dressed warmly and set off for a walk to the Standing Stones and back.

I’m now back and am bemusedly watching some of my Several Annies decorating the Library for the Winter Holidays. Another group of them is with Mrs. Ware, our Head Cook, making more of what seems like an endless stream of holiday baked goods including the Jewish treats that Rebeka added this past Winter. I can hear their laughter and smell the Toll House cookies baking in the wood fired oven.

What’s that lovely music I’m playing? It’s the Gjermund Larsen Trio’s ‘Midnattsang’ which was recorded at the Førde Traditional and World Music Festival two years ago. I tend to play a lot of Nordic trad music in the Winter. And I really don’t do conventional Christmas music sticking pretty much to Nordic trad music and classical groups like Les Witches.

Now let’s see what we’ve got in store for you this edition. I’m sure there’ll be books, music and even chocolate that’ll make fine gifts to give this holiday season…

Ursula Le Guin is by any measure one of the best living writers and Cat has a look at something truly awesome that just got printed by Saga Press, which is  The Selected Short Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin: ‘The Found and the Lost is a complete collection of all thirteen of her novellas, while The Unreal and the Real, being published for the first time in a single, hardcover volume, brings together thirty-nine of her best-regarded short stories.’

Gary has some thoughts about Wayward Heroes, the 1952 book by Halldór Laxness recently published in an English translation for the first time. ‘Halldór Laxness is, of course, Iceland’s greatest and best-known writer and the island’s only Nobel Laureate,’ Gary says. Wayward Heroes is the mock-heroic tale of two ‘sworn brothers’ who wish to return to the days of Iceland’s epic sagas. ‘Everyone who prizes great story-telling owes it to themselves to read Wayward Heroes and other Laxness titles,’ he concludes.

Robert looks at two related novels by Elizabeth Bear. Of By the Mountain Bound he says: ‘By the Mountain Bound is a prequel to All the Windwracked Stars, and takes quite a different cast. It is a pure fantasy, with none of the science-fiction aspects of the latter book, and leads one to think about possibilities such as “What if Euripides had been a Norse skald?”

And next, of course, is All the Windwracked Stars: ‘Take an event that we know from mythology, although it might have really happened. Let’s call it Ragnarok, just to give ourselves a point of reference, the final war when the Children of Light fought their brothers and sisters, the Tarnished Ones, and only three survived. . . .’

You may remember Garth Ennis’ landmark series Preacher. Well, for our graphic offering today we have a collection of Glenn Fabry’s covers, Preacher: Dead or Alive: ‘You’re an artist, and you’ve been given a very unusual task. Create eye-catching, evocative comic book covers, month in and month out for a new series. The main characters include a hitwoman, a vampire, a preacher possessed by the Word of God, an unstoppable killing machine fueled by divine wrath and mortal hate, a conspiracy to take over the world, and God Himself.’

Dark chocolate bread pudding… Cocoa in oversized mugs with homemade marshmallows… Peanut butter chocolate fudge…  Toll House cookies… We here at the Kinrowan Estate love chocolate in all its guises, so it’s not surprising that we review chocolate here…

April says that ‘I can only speak for myself as a chocolate addict, but I loosely categorize chocolate into three general categories: cheap chocolate to be scarfed as needed, mid-grade chocolate that’s to be enjoyed more slowly . . . and then there’s the really good stuff, chocolate to be savored and hoarded and mourned when it is gone. My guilty pleasure, Reese’s, falls into the first category. Ritter Sport, Godiva and Ghirardelli fall into the second. And the third … well, it’s sparsely populated, but now includes, courtesy of Green Man Review, Amano dark chocolate bars.’

Camille looked at three bars from Chocolove (orange peel, toffee almonds and raspberry) which she summed up thusly: ‘All in all, three delightful chocolate bars if one has a particularly sweet tooth. Pleasant finish and texture to each, and a variety of interesting flavors to choose from and dead poets to sample.’

Robert got the chore (right) of reviewing three Green & Black’s bars — Organic Milk Chocolate, Organic Maya Gold and Organic Bittersweet Dark Chocolate and he has this crucial note about the company: ‘The provenance of the name, “Green & Black’s,” should be obvious: organic chocolate with a dark, rich color and flavor.’

Cat has a choice recording for us  from the B-52s: ‘If you’re a fan of  the band, you’ll definitely want Live! 8.24.1979, because official live recordings of this band are scarce. The liner notes are both informative and entertaining — kudos to Real Gone Music for these. Oh and ‘Rock Lobster’ is wonderful played live!’

Who else but Deb should have the honour of reviewing this recording: ‘I’m just on my third listen to Steeleye Span’s Dodgy Bastards. This latest offering from a band I’ve loved since their earliest albums is a mixed bag. Fortunately, the contents are largely on the side of excellence. There is very little here that doesn’t work for me, but what doesn’t work for me really doesn’t.’

The musical style known as sevdah is sometimes called ‘the blues of the Balkans’. Gary says Damar, the latest recording by Amira Medunjanin, perfectly fits the description of sevdah as ‘songs of secret love and sublimated melancholy’. He notes that her songs feature non-sevdah-style arrangements that include elements of jazz, flamenco, and even Japanese music, and says, ‘This album’s intimate production heightens the impression that Amira is pouring out her heart’s deepest sorrows to you alone.’

Jack has a tasty bit of seasonal music for us: ‘Ahhh, Nordic traditional music. There’s no better to listen to on a cold, snowy day when a good book beckons and there’s no place one has to be. Hambo in the Snow certainly has now made my list of Nordic music for a winter’s day. And I must say that Garrison Keillor has good taste in music! Hambo in the Snow is from a trio of Minnesota Nordic musicians that have, according to the liner notes, performed on Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion.’

Robert takes a look at three collections of (more or less) traditional Scandinavian music: ‘ Now, “traditional” in music can mean a lot of things — ethnographic recordings of Appalachian grannies singing songs they learned as children, work songs and spirituals turned into political anthems, real traditional songs cleaned and neatly pressed for a contemporary audience, sometimes to the point where they don’t have a lot to do with their origins, and songs that may have been traditional once upon a time, or at least in a “traditional” vein, but that not only acknowledge influences from around the world, but happily assimilate them. As far as I’m concerned, these are all legitimate forms of “traditional” music, although I suspect the Appalachian grannies are going appeal mostly to anthropologists.’

There is a connection between that last set of reviews and Robert’s next offering, although it may not seem plausible. Robert says of Tummel’s Payback Time: ‘Be advised that this disc does not in any way fall under the category of Nordic roots. No chance. This collection is very much “anything goes.”’

Our What Not this time is Jack on his favourite reading place, which befitting him, is our Pub:  ‘The overstuffed chair near the fire’s close enough to the Neverending Session to drown out conversation from the bar proper so I can read while listening to the music, there’s always a cat or two sleeping near the fire to keep me company, and one can’t beat the company when I want to put aside reading for a bit of conversation and a pint of something tasty!’

Gillian Welch, one of the leading lights of Americana music, just released an official ‘bootleg’ record of demos and outtakes from her first album Revival. Sit here by the fire with Jack and listen to this unofficial bootleg of Welch and Dave Rawlings singing the chillingly sad ‘Snowin On Raton’ by the late great Townes Van Zandt.

At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost. ― Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters on Cézanne

The season we call Autumn starts in a scant few days, even though British Summer Time doesn’t ’til the end of October, but the meteorological Autumn season’s been here for several weeks now and the cooling weather with a bite in the evening air makes it apparent that Summer’s really over.

Gus, our Estate Gardener and Groundskeeper par excellence, has been checking if the fire wood (cut, stored and dried for three years before burning) is sufficient for the coming Winter;  Mrs. Ware and her Kitchen staff are processing peppers, string beans and other tasty fruits and veggies; and Reynard’s assisting our brewer Bjorn in the cider pressings.

However I’m in my hidden office with a pot of Darjeeling tea and some chocolate biscuits (that’s cookies to you Yanks) to nibble on along with music playing on my earbuds (Irish trad group Bua’s ‘Within a Mile of Dublin’, ‘Leslie’s Reel’ and ‘John Broslin’ is currently playing — it’s from their concert at the Lowell Folk Festival, Massachusetts, July 24, 2010) as I put this edition together, so let’s get started…

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Brendan found a fascinating book: ‘Reading Allen Lowe’s book American Pop from Minstrel to Mojo: On Record 1893 to 1957, I found myself agreeing with the late Tupac Shakur’s vision of the afterlife. Heaven would simply be a large night club filled with all of the late, great musicians of yesteryear. For eternity, all you need to do is stroll through and listen to the fine music… Ironically, if someone told me some years back that this vision consisted entirely of American pop music, my younger self would have concluded that they were describing Hell, but this book — among other influences — has convinced me of my folly. Early American pop music in any of its known forms — jazz, blues, ragtime, vaudeville, country or rock — is truly one of the highest achievements of the American culture.’

Cat looks at The Mystery of Grace, a novel by Charles de Lint, the second ghost story Cat believes that that author has written. Set in a small city somewhere in the Southwestern USA, or perhaps California, the story of Grace, the woman who can cross back and forth, gets a sterling review from Cat. (I’ve been informed by de Lint that Cat’s wrong as he’s written many ghost stories.)

Down the decades, we’ve reviewed most everything Patricia McKillip has published, so it’s only fitting that we finish off this time with a review by Richard of her latest book: ‘With Dreams of Distant Shores, Patricia A. McKillip delivers something that is not quite your typical short story collection. While the point of entry is a series of shorter pieces, the collection builds to and is anchored by the lengthy novella “Something Rich and Strange”, with an essay on writing high fantasy orthogonal to the usual tropes. The book then ends with appreciation of McKillip’s work (and the stories in the collection) by Peter S. Beagle, an elegant coda to a warm, thought-provoking collection.’

Richard rounds out our book reviews with the first new novel in a long time from a beloved writer: ‘Peter S. Beagle’s latest, Summerlong is an exercise in masterful, hopeful heartbreak. Deeply steeped in mythology yet relentlessly modern (if a bit sentimental), it tackles the big questions of love, compromise, dreams, and what you might do – or forgive – in the face of the sublime.’

Robert takes a look at a film that shook audiences up when it came out, for good reason: Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain: ‘I remember seeing Brokeback Mountain at its first showing in Chicago. I sat through it, along with a fairly substantial audience, which surprised me a little — it was an 11 a.m. showing on a Friday morning, but the house was nearly full. No one was talking much as we filed out. I walked around for about an hour in the snow and the wind. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.’

As an indicator of what a break-through film Brokeback Mountain was, Robert has an observation on Jonah Markowitz’ Shelter: ‘Before I get to the film itself, one observation: I don’t think this movie would have been made five years before it was. It could have been, but it wouldn’t have been – we are without doubt in a post Brokeback world. The reason I say this is because the film is virtually free of stereotypes. More on that later.’

Our resident Summer Queen says ‘Melinda is Neil Gaiman and Polish artist Dagmara Matuzak’s first collaboration, and the resulting illustrated poem is a unique literary work. According to the press notes accompanying this release, Gaiman wrote the text specifically for Matuzak to illustrate, hoping for a few drawings and perhaps a painting or two, and she responded with forty-eight stunning black and white drawings and eight colour plates that delineate the harsh world Gaiman’s seven year old Melinda inhabits.’

Alan Lowe’s amazing American Pop book obviously needs a companion musical offering, which is what it gets in American Pop: An Audio History. Brendan reviews it for us and notes that ‘Music and Arts of America released this companion 9-CD collection. Containing almost all of the singles described by Lowe in his book (the set ends at 1946), this gargantuan group of CDs (almost 11 hours of music) turns out to be just as important a musical document as Lowe’s original book. Some of these tracks are unbelievably rare; and more importantly, one would be hard pressed to find another document that presents the accomplishments of the American musical culture of the early Twentieth Century as well, as thoroughly, and as enjoyably as this collection.’

We noted sadly last week that the last member of The Weavers, Fred Hellerman, had passed on. Well, Gary has a look for you at one of their many recordings, The Best of the Vanguard Years. He says that they ‘helped wake Americans up to the wonderful folk music that was all around them, and helped get America singing. Perhaps we could all use a reminder of those times that maybe weren’t so much more simple after all, and a refresher course on the power of three chords, four-part harmony, acoustic instruments, and a few verses and choruses about common folks and their concerns.’

Joe K. Walsh, a talented mandolinist, singer and songwriter in the progressive stringband vein, has released his debut solo CD. ‘Borderland is full of excellent ensemble music all around, with solid contributions from all involved,’ Gary says.

British folk singer Billy Bragg and American singer-songwriter (and producer) Joe Henry have teamed up on a field recording of sorts, Gary reports. Shine a Light features the two playing and singing American folk songs on the theme of trains, recorded on trains and in stations as they rode the rails from Chicago to Los Angeles. Like the alternative Great American Songbook it is drawn from, he says, ‘It’s about trains and the people who traveled on them and the reasons they traveled.’

Robert brings us another installment in John Noise Manis’ series of Central Javanese gamelan, a volume of musical treasures from the court music tradition of Surakarta, and a volume of songs that transform some traditional modes in amazing ways.

A Welsh band live caught the ear of Vonnie: ‘Crasdant plays music to warm your heart and tells tales to tickle your funnybone. This Welsh band played on a wet windy night that, they said, reminded them of home. The two sets of instrumental music for flute, harp, fiddle, and guitar, with an impressive bit of clog dancing thrown in were varied and fascinating, and the evening was over too soon. The concert was part of the excellent Celtic music calendar put together by Music-For-Robin, in the same venue as Pipeline.’

Our What Not is from Kage Baker who was a  storyteller beyond compare, be it in emails as Cat can well attest, at Ren Faires with her sister Kathleen serving up ale, lovingly critiquing quite old films, writing stories of chocolate quaffing cyborgs, whores who decidedly didn’t have hearts of gold,  or space raptors who are actually parrots now. So it won’t surprise you that was a master narrator of her own stories as you hear as when she reads for us  ’The Empress of Mars’, a novella she wrote.

Now let’s see what we’ve got got a performance recording for you his time… Hmmm… That’ll do nicely. Here’s Iron Horse, the great Scottish sort of trad group, performing ‘The Sleeping Warrior’ at the  Gosport Easter Festival in  April of ’96.

I can remember the title, author, and location of every book in this library, Matthew. Every book that’s ever been dreamed. Every book that’s ever been imagined. Every book that’s ever been lost. Millions upon millions of them. That’s what I remember. It’s my job. Other things… I forget sometimes. — Lucien in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman’s ‘The Kindly Ones’

If you look down to the bottom floor of the central well of the Library, you’ll see our card catalog on the wall nearest the circular staircase. Yes, a physical card catalog, as I feel it’s important for the Several Annies, my sort of Library Apprentices, to understand the relation of books to each other and nothing does that better than a physical tracking system. The card catalog represents one hundred and seventy years of the constant evolution of this Library and the entire Kinrowan Estate by extension.

Got a subject you’re interested in? Oh, cider making? Our card catalog has a précis of each book on that subject, the year published, the author(s) and of course where it’s located, as the Library has myriad locations, from the cookbook collection housed just outside the Kitchen to the botanical books that Gutmansdottir, the naturalist studying The Wild Wood, has in her work space, and the extensive fiction collection on the wall behind us.

A good review works like that as well. It, when done right, not only helps you in telling if you’ll be interested in seeking it out (and some of our reviewed books take a bit of effort to find as many are long out of print, or are of works done on presses long gone) but also places it within the greater landscape of literature itself.  And our music reviews also do this, so that you know where Dexy’s Midnight Runners falls in the history of the 70s Birmingham, England, music scene and why Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ ‘Come On Eileen’ caught on with the MTV listening public.

David looks at a long-running series: ‘If Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of Robicheaux (from the film of Heaven’s Prisoners in 1996) is your only introduction to Dave’s career, then forget everything you know and start at the beginning and work your way through one book at a time. You will be immersed in a world as exotic and as violent as your imagination can create; you will meet characters as real and fully drawn as your next door neighbor; you will never forget the world created by James Lee Burke.’

Jayme reviews a novel that had dire consequences: ‘Flanders is, simply put, a marvelous work filled with bleak imagery and raw emotion that garnered wide acclaim and landed on many best-of-the-year lists when it came out. It also killed Patricia Anthony’s career as a novelist. Ace, her publisher, specialized in straightforward science fiction and struggled with the marketing of Anthony’s previous novel, God’s Fires. Flanders was, if anything, an even worse fit for that publisher, and things, as they say, went rapidly downhill from there’

Richard says ‘The key to Lauren Beukes’ fiction can be found in the non-fiction short pieces at the back end of her new collection, Slipping: Stories, Essays and Other Writing. Beukes’ background is in journalism, and these shorts – some of them little more than brief gut-shots – she takes the reader where her profession took her, into places that are dangerous or forgotten or abandoned by the powers that be, often at the same time. And once there, she zeroes in on that notion of observation, of reporting – on the sheer necessity of the portrayals in the media of incidents and places, in order to get the public to pay some attention and not to ignore, or to swallow easy pre-fab narratives that bear little to no relation to the truth.’

He notes that  ‘The blurb on the back cover of John L. Lansdale’s Zombie Gold comes from a movie personality, and it’s easy to see why. Stripped to its bare bones, this story of a couple of well-meaning Pennsylvania cowboys – Will and Chris, largely interchangeable – who accidentally stumble through time to the Battle of Gettysburg and get mixed up with some gold-stealing zombies along the way sounds like a fun high-concept pitch. Give it visuals, add some cinematic panache, and it could be a great popcorn flick if handled right.’ Read his review to see why it really didn’t work for him.

Firefly, an sf series with a strong Western motif, created a lot of criticism about the cultural assumptions underlying it, as you can see here in a review by Will in the guise of Finding Serenity: Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds and  Space Hookers: ‘Because Firefly mixes traditional western and science fiction elements to tell an adventure story, the essays collected in Finding Serenity are an examination of the nature of genre storytelling. But the writers appear to have been told to write whatever they wanted, so that examination is accidental. It comes from confusion: Is Firefly more science fiction or more western? Is it sexist? What is freedom, and how do power structures work? The collection is not a scholarly examination of a piece of art. It’s a group of fans praising and griping about a show that they clearly love as much as I do. And therefore the examination of genre is often superficial, but occasionally brilliant.’’

GRØD is a Copenhagen restaurant that only serves porridge. Yes, a porridge only restaurant. We eat a lot of porridge here on this Scottish Estate, particularly during the Winter, as it’s a filling, comforting meal for breakfast. Reynard and his wife Ingrid, our Estate Steward, found this restaurant when they were in Copenhagen the past January. GRØD, Swedish for porridge, does serve rossito in the evening but otherwise just has porridge. Lots of porridge.

They had the signature porridge, havregrød, which is topped with dulce de leche they make in-house , apple slices and roasted almonds, which has been cooked in half water and half whole milk. (Our Kitchen only cooks it in whole milk.) Reynard said it was most decidedly comfort food of the highest order and got them in the mood for walking in the chill Winter air and shopping.

The Faeries of Spring Cottage, a  delightful collaboration between Brian Froud and Terri Windling, is reviewed by Matthew: ‘Regular readers of Green Man Review probably have already figured out, simply by the authors listed above, that we have before us yet another adventure of Sneezlewort Rootmuster Rowanberry Boggs the Seventh (known as Sneezle for short), tree faery of an old hawthorn clan, and a relative youngster, being only 201 years old. For this third outing with Sneezle (the first two were chronicled in A Midsummer Night’s Faery Tale and The Winter Child), we are treated to a tale of Sneezle’s encounter with the world of humans. The story begins with Sneezle out collecting sticks for a friend when he is suddenly set upon by mysterious creatures made of sticks and mud. Sneezle holds his own against the stick monsters, but is not able to overcome them until it starts to rain and the monsters dissolve.’

Howlin’ Wuelf Media passed on this sad news: ‘Fred Hellerman, the last surviving member of The Weavers has passed away. The NY Times ran a lovely and informative account of his and the band’s career mentioning the role Alan Lomax played in their ascent from playing at left wing rallies to headlining Carnegie Hall.’ You can read the rest of his message here.

Richard looks at This House Will Stand: The Best Of Oysterband 1998-2015: ‘I begged GMR to let me review this 2-CD compilation by Oysterband because I’ve been a committed Oysters’ fan for many years and possess almost all their recordings.“Who better,” I asked myself, “to review this collection of their songs than someone who has known and loved the band’s work for decades?” At the same time, of course, I was determined to listen critically and throw brickbats if required.’

Gary reports from one of the far frontiers of popular music, where he found a new record by sonic experimenter Daniel Lanois. ‘Goodbye to Language is made entirely of sounds produced by steel guitars – his own pedal steel and the lap steel of collaborator Rocco Deluca, both of them at times processed and manipulated nearly beyond recognition.’

Ojos del Sol is the latest offering from the Portland, Oregon artist Luz Elena Mendoza and her ensemble called Y La Bamba. Gary says it is ‘an arresting album,’ combining singer-songwriter folk music with Latin rhythms and personal lyrics that explore complex issues of spirituality, love, mortality and family. ‘Mendoza’s insistent delivery of her lyrics, which are at once personal and broadly universal, pulls you into her world where songs and mysterious spiritual connections have the power to heal.’

Robert brings us a look at a new recording from ECM, Arvo Pärt’s The Deer’s Cry: ‘I find it more than a little ironic that, in an age marked by secularism and materialism, among the most compelling music to come out of Europe and America is what I call, in general, “church music”: it can be works as monumental as Krysztof Penderecki’s St. Luke Passion or Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, as outrageously unorthodox as Terry Riley’s Requiem for Adam, or as focused and sometimes as intimate as the music of Arvo Pärt.’

And, after digging around a little, Robert came up with this review of Pärt’s Passio: ‘Arvo Pärt’s Passio was the first recording of his music that I owned. It may very well have been the first available in the U.S. For one entire summer it was my beach music — I tended to go to the lake shore early — the combination of Pärt’s magnificent oratorio and the early morning sun is very hard to describe.’

Our What Not this time is a place, and Robert tells us about it: ‘Lincoln Park Conservatory is another one of those nineteenth-century treasures still to be found in Chicago. It’s a glass house built between 1890 and ’95, located just east of Stockton Drive about a block south of Fullerton Parkway, off the northwest corner of Lincoln Park Zoo. The west side of the Conservatory proper and its support buildings is graced by a series of small gardens featuring pines, spruces, junipers and other conifers from around the world, interspersed with deciduous shrubs and trees. These gardens continue around to flank the entrance.’

The traditional song ‘Moonshiner’ is one of those that’s been done by lots of folks, from Bob Dylan to the Clancy Brothers to Roscoe Holcomb, The Punch Brothers, Uncle Tupelo and more. Here’s a version of it by the on-again off-again Denton, Texas, band called Slobberbone, recorded at The Barley House in Dallas on 25th of November, 2001. Frontman Brent Best sings ‘Moonshiner.’