A Green Man Review

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.

I don’t think humanity just replays history, but we are the same people our ancestors were, and our descendants are going to face a lot of the same situations we do. It’s instructive to imagine how they would react, with different technologies on different worlds. That’s why I write science fiction — even though the term ‘science fiction’ excites disdain in certain persons.

Kage Baker

I was thinking about Kage Baker, who has been  gone 15 years the end of last month, so I decided give a selection of the reviews we have done. Of course she was much more than a writer of great speculation fiction, as she was the companion to a space pirate named Harry, a baker of barm brack,  very fond of Terry Gilliam and perhaps smitten by Bruce Campbell. English cooking with slabs of meats and desserts made with lots of butter by two fat ladies on a motorcycle with a sidecar cruising the countryside? Oh yes! And finally I must mention that she had a deep love for the early years of Hollywood and the film industry in general.

Cat has a neat work for us: ‘At a mere one hundred and three pages, this is one of the best Robert Heinlein works I’ve ever read. Oops, I meant Kage Baker works. Or did I? Ok, let me reconcile the contradiction I just created (somewhat). The Empress of Mars reads like the best of Heinlein’s short fiction from the golden period of the 1940s and 1950s. It is so good that I’ve no doubt John W. Campbell would’ve published it! It would sit very nicely alongside much of his short fiction such as ‘Blowups Happen’, ‘The Long Watch’, and ‘The Green Hills of Earth’, to name but three classic Heinlein tales. It’s that well-crafted. It’s that entertaining. And it’s that rarest of short works — one that is just the right length.’

Matthew looks at a Kage Baker venture into children’s fiction: ‘In comparison to her other works,’ says he, ‘I would consider The Hotel under the Sand to be one of Kage Baker’s lesser works, but it is still highly enjoyable.’

Matthew also reviews Kage Baker’s Not Less Than Gods, her last Company novel which Kathleen, her sister, told Cat that apparently only she and Kage liked. (Cat says he liked it too.) Matthew says of this novel that ‘Ultimately, this is not going to be considered one of Kage’s strongest works. For someone who is a Company junkie, it is a nice installment, but the newcomer would not understand the novel’s position in the entire series. A lot of “inside” knowledge is required to more fully appreciate the novel.’

Gary here with some music. I jumped at the chance to review the new record by Eric Brace and Thomm Jutz; I’ve been writing up Eric’s music — solo, with band, and in various duos — for a quarter century now. ‘Circle and Square is full of gentle but sturdy songs about the human condition and the important role art of all kinds plays in the lives of us all. A good record for now.’

‘If you know the music of Värttinä you have some idea of what Tuuletar sounds like,’ I note in my review of Tuuletar’s third album Maammo. ‘All four of the women of Tuuletar — Venla Ilona Blom, Sini Koskelainen, Johanna Kyykoski and Piia Säilynoja — sing and do vocal effects and percussion, and Blom does some beatboxing as well.’

I also wrote about Tibet: The Voice Of The Tantra, a new two CD set of an old recording of the Monastery Of Gyütö’s monks. ‘The discs preserve a 1975 recording at the monastery and university of Gyütö performed by the first generation of Tibetan monks who went into exile from Lhasa to India with the current Dalai Lama. It’s an astonishing and utterly tranfixing auditory experience, of very high quality for 50-year-old field recordings.’

Lastly for me this time, I wrote an omnibus review of three new jazz releases, Martin Wind’s Stars, Dave Pietro’s The Butterfly Effect, and John McNeil & Tom Harrell’s Look To The Sky. The latter is a reissue: ‘These days I’m all about the trumpet, so I’m totally delighted by this classic reissue from SteepleChase. John McNeil and Tom Harrell are legendary horn players who rose to prominence in the New York scene of the 1970s, and this recording is the only one they made together.’

From the archives, Rebecca enjoyed the Christian Celtic folk pop of Ceili Rain’s Say ‘KAY-Lee’. ‘It is cheerful, enthusiastic, and well-crafted. Those people who are more comfortable with a bleak, cynical view of life will not like it, nor will those who are mistrustful of Christianity. However, those looking for a positive alternative will enjoy it. I think the warmth and optimism expressed here are as valid as any of the darker emotions expressed by musicians today.’

Finally, Richard was highly impressed by Jennifer and Hazel Wrigley’s Mither o’the Sea, one of the earliest recordings by the Wrigley Twins. ‘Most of the pieces played on this all-instrumental CD are composed by the sisters themselves (nearly always by Jennifer) or by other Orkney musicians, and respect local traditional forms. A couple come from mainland Scotland (not to be confused with Mainland in Orkney). To my surprise, a perusal of the booklet revealed that only the very last of the 23 tunes spread over 12 tracks is a traditional piece, a jig from Holm (a Nordic word that simply means “island”).’

I’m going to leave you with the Kage‘s reading one of her own works, that being her Empress of Mars which Cat reviewed anove. It was supposed to be included on a CD in the limited edition version of the story that was going to be published by Nightshade Books but that never happened, so she gave us permission to have it here. So find a quiet place to listen and settle in to hear a most excellent sf story told by a master storyteller!

Kathleen, her sister, notes that ‘she was an old-fashioned storyteller. She loved adding dimensions, and felt that all her stories should be either copiously illustrated or read out to an audience.’