In the liner notes to Up on the Roof: Songs From the Brill Building, Neil Diamond writes about how he got started in the music business. He sold songs for $50, sang backup on dozens of records, and he hung out with the top songwriters of that era. Diamond includes stories about Carol King and Gerry Goffin, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, and, of course, Neil Sedaka. Diamond learned about record production from Phil Spector and Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and all the talented artists working in or near the Brill Building.

Up on the Roof is a tribute to the songwriters and producers who worked at the hit-making machine that was the Brill Building. But, as earnest as Diamond is, the result is a bit mixed. Surprisingly, Diamond does a nice job with “Love Potion Number Nine” and the Bacharach/David songs “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” and “Don’t Make Me Over.”

Diamond is less successful with “Don’t Be Cruel” (who can surpass Elvis!) and “River Deep.” Still, it’s great to hear these wonderful songs. I have reviewed Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era by Ken Emerson (you can read my review here). And I have a couple Brill Building collections around here somewhere. But, until then, I’ll play Diamond’s Up on the Roof again. Do you remember these songs? Do you have any favorites? GRADE: B

Track Listing:

I was 14 years old when I first read Groff Conklin’s 12 Great Classics of Science Fiction back in 1963. In fact, I read a number of Groff Conklin anthologies during the 1960s and enjoyed them all. Conklin had a knack of assembling a group of stories with a little bit of something for every reader.

I loved “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell,” one of Cordwainer Smith’s most affecting stories. I didn’t know a lot about Love at that point in my Life, but I did know this story really moved me back when I was 14! I had read some A. Bertram Chandler novels in various ACE Doubles so I was prepared for Chandler’s sleight-of-hand in his puzzle tale, “The Cage.” Classic story!

Robert Sheckley’s “Human Man’s Burden” features a Mail Order Bride and snarky robots. Robert F. Young also uses a robot teacher to make a wise point about education.

If you’re looking for entertaining Science Fiction stories with a wide range of subjects, Conklin’s 12 Great Classics of Science Fiction will delight you! GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• “Introduction” (Groff Conklin) — 5
• “Due Process” (Algis Budrys) — 9
• “Earthmen Bearing Gifts” (Fredric Brown) — 27
• “Things” (Zenna Henderson) — 30
• “The Top” (George Sumner Albee) — 38
• “My Object All Sublime” (Poul Anderson) — 48
• “Human Man’s Burden” (Robert Sheckley) — 57
• “On the Fourth Planet” (J. F. Bone) — 72
• “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell” (Cordwainer Smith) –89
• “Thirty Days Had September” (Robert F. Young) — 110
• “The Cage” (A. Bertram Chandler) — 126
• “Star-Crossed Lover” (William W. Stuart) — 138
• “Immortality … for Some” (J. T. McIntosh) — 157

James Lapine has been nominated for 12 Tony Awards and won on three occasions for Best Book of a Musical–for Passion, Falsettos, and Into the Woods. Lapine has also won five Drama Desk Awards, a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and a Peabody Award. So who would be better to write a book about how to put a Broadway musical together?

I’m always curious about how artists, performers, and singers are directed to produce a musical. Lapine goes step-by-step through the process of coming up with a concept, designing the sets, establishing the characters, determining the music, making key casting decisions, technical rehearsals, and previews.

In the case of Sunday in the Park With George, it was the idea to write a musical inspired by Georges Seurat’s 19th Century painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Latte. Lapine uses transcripts of conversations with Stephen Sondheim, photographs, script notes, sketches, and sheet music to show how things came together for an opening on Broadway on May 2, 1984.

I watched the DVD on Sunday in the Park With George and enjoyed Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters sing and dance across the screen. If you’re a fan of Broadway musicals, the book will show you how the magic is created and the DVD will show you the result. GRADE: A (for both)

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Prelude — xi

Dramatis personae — xiii
From Ohio to Sondheim — 1
Stephen Sondheim — 13
Sondheim goes off-Broadway — 51
Lapine goes Broadway — 137
The Booth Theater — 197
Finale — 351

Sunday in the Park With George — 259

Acknowledgments — 385

Remember the 1980s when all the guys wanted to be cool and all the girls wanted to be hot? Remember the heavy metal and big hair bands of that era? Nothin’ But a Good Time captures the craziness and weirdness of that decade with over a hundred interviews with band members, agents, record executives, promoters, producers, engineers, publicists, stylists, costume designers, photographers, journalists, magazine publishers, video directors, club bookers, roadies, groupies, and assorted hangers-on.

Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock present the changing world of rock music at the beginning of the 1980s with groups like Twisted Sister, Motley Crue, Guns N’ Roses, and Van Halen. It was a time that excess led to success with huge arena concerts.

The effect of MTV on the industry was massive. Every group had to issue videos of their songs to get airplay. Touring increased. And as the decade ended, so did the popularity for this kind of music. Grunge Rock was on the horizon and many of these groups crashed and burned. Record companies wanted the next New Thing.

My favorite chapter in Nothin’ But a Good Time was Chapter 50: “Send the Check for the Nelsons–They’re Ready.” I knew Gunnar Nelson and Matthew Nelson were sons of Ricky Nelson, who died in 1985. But, I did NOT know how dire their predicament was: “Our father died when we were 18 years old. It was devastating. He was our best friend and our mom was a horrible excuse for a mother. She basically shot us out into the world. So when he died, it was literally like the rug was pulled out from under us, and we spent a year of our lives spending money we didn’t have, impressing people that didn’t matter, and just trying to medicate over our grief. We were sleeping on friends’ couches and living out of the trunk of a beat-up car.” (p. 357)

What music were you listening to in the 1980s? Were you a fan of heavy metal music? Did you have a favorite Eighties group? GRADE: A

Table of Contents:

Foreward by Corey Taylor — xi

Cast of Characters — xiii

Introduction — 1

PART I: EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!
CHAPTER 1: “The Pussy-Plucking-Posse Pocket of Hollywood” — 7
CHAPTER 2: “Dinosaur Music” — 15
CHAPTER 3: Interview: Michael Anthony of Van Halen — 20
CHAPTER 4: “Just Because Someone Says You Suck Doesn’t Mean You Don’t Suck” — 24
CHAPTER 5: “Rhymes with Rockin’ ” — 33
CHAPTER 6: “Blue-Black Hair and High Heels” — 42
CHAPTER 7: “Ratt ‘N’ Roll” — 52
CHAPTER 8: “Don’t Just Tackle the Quarterback—Break His Arms and Legs, Too” — 58
CHAPTER 9: “The Yellow and Black Attack” — 68
CHAPTER 10: “It’s Male Dominating. Macho-ism or Whatever” — 73
CHAPTER 11: “We Prayed in the Limo, Sure” — 83
CHAPTER 12: “We Know What We’re Doing, Fuck You!” — 88
CHAPTER 13: “Okay, Where’s the Knives?” — 91

PART II: FEEL THE NOIZE
CHAPTER 14: “Anthem Participatory Rock” — 98
CHAPTER 15: “This Is Gonna Go” — 105
CHAPTER 16: “Then I Got the Ozzy Gig…” — 113
CHAPTER 17: “When You’ve Got Nothin’, You’ve Got Nothin’ to Lose” — 117
CHAPTER 18: “I’m Not Running Any Fucking Circus!” — 124
CHAPTER 19: “You’ve Gotta Meet My Friend Axl” — 130
CHAPTER 20: “We Just Made It a Friggin’ Party” — 138
CHAPTER 21: “It’s Hard to Believe, But at that Time Jani Was Really Kind of Shy” — 144
CHAPTER 22: “Everybody Would Be Throwing Up, Passing Out, Hallucinating or Banging Outside” — 148
CHAPTER 23: “Pop Songs with Heavy Guitars” — 151
CHAPTER 24: “I Broke Nikki’s Nose. I Broke Tommy’s Nose. I Punched Poor Mick Just for the Heck of It” — 158
CHAPTER 25: “I Believe Our Bus Got Crabbed Out” — 164
CHAPTER 26: “George and Don Hated Each Other…Really Hated Each Other” — 169
CHAPTER 27: “Guns and Rose” — 177
CHAPTER 28: “For One Thing, We Never Wore Any Fucking Lipstick!” — 184
CHAPTER 29: “The Poison Thing ” — 192

PART III: KNOCK ’EM DEAD, KID
CHAPTER 30: “What? A Chick in Our Band?” — 203
CHAPTER 31: “The Girls Were Just, Like, Melting” — 208
CHAPTER 32: “People Didn’t Know Whether to Fuck Us or Fight Us” — 213
CHAPTER 33: “How Do I Get a Record Deal?” — 223
CHAPTER 34: “Our Hero is Gonna Fucking Split His Brains Open in Front of Us Right Now!” — 232
CHAPTER 35: Interview: Alan Niven, Guns N’ Roses and Great White Manager — 243
CHAPTER 36: “And We’ve Got the Pictures to Prove It” — 247
CHAPTER 37: “The Horniest Band in L.A.” — 255
CHAPTER 38: “Flyer Wars” — 263
CHAPTER 39: “If They Had Cameras Back Then That Whole Scene Would Be in Jail” — 271
CHAPTER 40: “It Felt Like Beatlemania” — 283
CHAPTER 41: “Garden State Music” — 287
CHAPTER 42: Interview – Dave “Snake” Sabo of Skid Row — 293
CHAPTER 43: “You Mean Slash Coulda Played the Chris Holmes Part?” — 297
CHAPTER 44: “We Never Even Knew We Had Money in Our Bank Accounts” — 309

PART IV: YOUTH GONE WILD
CHAPTER 45: “You Just Signed Kip Winger!” — 315
CHAPTER 46: “Michael Jackson Saw the Value in Poison” — 323
CHAPTER 47: “If You Put Tits on Him, He Could Run for Miss Texas” — 330
CHAPTER 48: “If You Look at the Clothing It’s All Pretty Outrageous, Innit?” –340
CHAPTER 49: “Saving Whales Doesn’t Sell Albums; Leather Pants Do” — 354
CHAPTER 50: “Send the Check for the Nelsons—They’re Ready” — 356
CHAPTER 51: Interview: Rick Krim, MTV Executive — 362
CHAPTER 52: “We Call Them, Uh, ‘Panty Wetters’ ” — 367
CHAPTER 53: “Fucked If I’m Gonna Do This Every Night.” –376
CHAPTER 54: “Tommy Lee Came to Our Room With a Plate. And He Had Shit on It.” — 379
CHAPTER 55: “Bon Jovi, Jr.” — 384
CHAPTER 56: “It Was Like Being on a Plane with 200 Gremlins” — 394

PART V: THE LAST MILE
CHAPTER 57: “Is It a Gun Problem or a Bat Problem?” — 405
CHAPTER 58: Interview: Steve Brown of Trixter — 411
CHAPTER 59: “The Scorpions Wanted Us Off the Tour After the First Night” — 415
CHAPTER 60: “Cherry Pie Guy” — 421
CHAPTER 61: Interview: Brian Baker of Junkyard — 427
CHAPTER 62: “What Comes Around Goes Around” — 431
CHAPTER 63: “It Was a Total Scene Out of Gunslinger or Something” — 441
CHAPTER 64: “The Girlfriends and Wives Didn’t Want Us There” — 452
CHAPTER 65: “The Party Cost a Quarter of a Million Dollars” — 457
CHAPTER 66: “It Was Like, ‘Fa-an-nu-no-nu-sh-abba-abba’ ” — 462
CHAPTER 67: “You’re Gonna Lose Half Your Audience” — 469

PART VI: SHUT UP, BEAVIS
CHAPTER 68: “38 Guns N’ Roses, 20 Ratts, 14 Warrants…” — 480
CHAPTER 69: “We Said, ‘Fuck It’ and Hung It Up” — 482
CHAPTER 70: “I Don’t Think Nirvana Ever Wanted to Kill Anyone’s Career” — 500
CHAPTER 71: “All of a Sudden You Were Radioactive” — 503

PART VII: EPILOGUE
CHAPTER 72: “This Is What We Do” — 512

Acknowledgements — 527

Notes — 529

I’m open to trying new flavors of coffee so this Starbucks Signature Collection intrigued me. My favorite is the Cinnamon Dolce which is mild with a hint of cinnamon flavor. I also liked the Hazelnut coffee with its rich flavor.

I was not too keen on the Carmel or Toffeenut brews. The Vanilla and Toasted Graham coffees were just okay. But, I’ll continue to buy Cinnamon Dolce and Hazelnut. Do you like flavored coffees? Do you have any favorites?

Jerry House mentioned that he loved Other Inquisitions in his comment on Jay Parini’s BORGES AND ME. I read Other Inquisitions in the late 1960s and didn’t fully appreciate it because I hadn’t read many of the books Borges wrote about.

Now, decades later, I reread Other Inquisitions and many of Borges’s essays make a lot more sense because of my years of reading the books he refers to. I took a doctoral seminar on Nathaniel Hawthorne, but Borges’s “Nathaniel Hawthorne” introduces more facts and analysis in just a few pages. That is the genius of Borges: he can distill mountains of books into a pithy essay. Highly recommended! GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction — ix
The Wall and the Books — 3
Pascal’s Sphere — 6
The Flower of Coleridge — 10
The Dream of Coleridge — 14
Time and J. W. Dunne — 18
The Creation and P. H. Gosse — 22
Dr. Americo Castro is Alarmed — 26
A Note on Carriego — 31
Our Poor Individualism — 33
Quevedo — 36
Partial Enchantments of the Quixote — 43
Nathaniel Hawthorne — 47
Note on Walt Whitman — 66
Valery as a Symbol — 73
The Enigma of Edward FitzGerald — 75
About Oscar Wilde — 79
On Chesterton — 82
The First Wells — 86
The Biathanatos — 89
Pascal — 93
The Meeting in a Dream — 97
The Analytical Language of John Wilkins — 101
Kafka and his Precursors — 106
Avatars of the Tortoise — 109
On the Cult of Books — 116
The Nightingale of Keats — 121
The Mirror of the Enigmas — 125
Two Books — 129
A Comment on August 23, 1944 — 134
About William Beckford’s Vathek — 137
About The Purple Land — 141
From Someone to Nobody — 146
Forms of a Legend — 149
From Allegories to Novels — 154
The Innocence of Layamon — 158
For Bernard Shaw — 163
The Modesty of History — 167
New Refutation of Time — 171
Epilogue — 189
Index — 191

Last week I reviewed Lionel White’s marvelous Steal Big/The Big Caper. You can read my review here. Reading Lionel White was so much fun, I decided to read and review Coffin for a Hood/Operation–Murder for this week’s FFB.

Lionel White is best known for his caper novels, but he had the capacity to write suspenseful crime novels, too. Coffin for a Hood (1958) features two hired killers who arrive at a tiny coastal town called Arroyos in the Florida Keys by plane. Who are they going to kill? Is alcoholic Dr. Martins–a man with a dark past–their target? Or is it Socks Schroeder, the basketball player who refused to throw a game and later turned state’s evidence? Corrupt Deputy Flack had mob membership before he killed a rival and now he’s hiding behind a badge in a small Florida town fearing retribution. Wealthy Richard Fullbright, who swindled his partners to gain his money, fears that the professional killers are after him. Meanwhile, Hurricane Bettina has Arroyos and the Florida Key’s in its sights for a direct hit. White ratchets up the suspense as the storm gets closer and closer! GRADE: B+

White returns to a caper in Operation–Murder (1956). An embittered Korean War veteran named Frank Scudder, who is suffering from acute tuberculosis, plans for one big score so he can retire with his disability. While Frank was convalescing in a hospital, he met a lovely nurse named Tina. Tina falls in love with Frank and the couple get married. But Tina doesn’t know about Frank’s plan to rob a train.

Set in Colorado, Operation–Murder shows how a determined team of thieves can execute a plan to rob an armored caboose carrying a million dollars as its train winds its way through the Colorado mountains. A complicating factor: the heist is scheduled during a vicious blizzard. If you’re a fan of caper novels, Operation–Murder provides thrills and chills and surprises galore! GRADE: A

This Sony 3-CD collection (40 songs!) from 2002 includes plenty of songs I like starting with Mtume’s sexy “Juicy Fruit” and continuing with one of my favorite Luther Vandross songs, “Stop to Love.” Isley Jasper Isley’s classic “Caravan of Love” and Teena Marie’s “Lovergirl” (produced by the infamous Rick James) rub up against the too infrequently played “Shake You Down” by Gregory Abbott. Disc One concludes with the Philip Bailey/Phil Collins duet, “Easy Lover.”

The surprise (to me) on Disc Two is Stanley Clarke’s haunting “Heaven Sent You.” I associated Clarke more with the Jazz world, but here is a bona fide pop song well worth listening to. Shalamar’s “Dancing in the Sheets” is another song that seems to have disappeared from the radio airwaves.

Disc Three features one of my favorite Regina Bell songs, “Show Me the Way.” This disc is jazzy with Herbie Handcock and Grover Washington, Jr. represented. All in all, Soul Hits of the 80s contains enough good songs to make it very listenable. Do you remember these songs? Any favorites here? GRADE: B+

TRACKLIST:

Disc 3

1. Rockit — Herbie Handcock
2. Summer Nights — Gover Washington, Jr.
3. Wishing Well — Terence Trent D’Arby
4. Oh Yeah! — Bill Whithers
5. Save the Overtime (For Me) — Gladys Knight & The Pips
6. Sweat (Till You Get Wet) — Brick
7. Hydraulic Pump — The P-Funk All Stars
8. Love Attack — Isaac Hayes
9. It’s Gonna Take a Miracle — Deniece Willians
10. Show Me the Way — Regina Bell
11. Nights (Feel Like Getting Down) — Billy Ocean
12. Just Got Paid — Johnny Kemp
13. Fake — Enchantment
14. It’s No Crime — Babyface

I’m a fan of Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya Universe stories, but one look at the dust jacket illustration on Seven of Infinities by Maurizio Manzieri was enough for me to order this book from Subterranean Press.

Aliette de Bodard follows up her award-winning Xuya universe novella, The Tea Master and the Detective  (you can read my review here), with Seven of Infinities set in the orbitals of the Scattered Pearls Belt.

The story centers around Vân, a scholar from a poor background who is eking out a living as a tutor to a rich family, while hiding the illegal artificial mem-implant she manufactured as a student.  Vân teams up with Sunless Woods, a cunning mindship who is a notorious thief and a master of disguise. She’s come to the Scattered Pearls Belt to retire, but is drawn to Vân’s stolid personality and integrity.

When a mysterious corpse is found in the quarters of Vân’s student, Vân and Sunless Woods find themselves following a trail of greed and murder that will lead them from teahouses and ascetic havens to the wreck of a mindship–and to the devastating secrets they’ve kept from each other. If you’re in the mood for a mystery with intriguing aspects and marvelous surprises, I recommend Seven of Infinities. GRADE: A

CODA is the best movie I’ve seen in 2021 so far. The title has a double meaning. Usually, a “coda” is a musical term referring to a certain type of ending to a piece of music, but it also stands for “Child of Deaf Adults.” This movie centers around a family of three deaf adults and their teenage daughter who can both hear and communicate with American Sign Language. In essence, she’s their interpreter.

Sian Heder wrote and directed this film based on the 2014 French movie, “La Famille Belier.” The teenager named Ruby, played brilliantly by Emilia Jones, wakes up each morning to go on her father’s fishing boat with her brother. But Ruby’s love is singing, something her deaf family can’t related to.

Ruby signs up for Chorus as a High School Elective to get close to a boy she likes named Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) and encounters a gifted teacher, Bernardo (Eugenio Derbez). The choirmaster recognizes Ruby’s singing talent and encourages her to prepare for an audition for the Berklee College of Music scholarship.

CODA swings between the problems Ruby’s father, Frank (Troy Kotsur) and brother, Leo (Daniel Durant), encounter in their fishing business in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and the difficulty of Ruby’s mother, Jackie, (played by Marlee Matlin–the only deaf person to win an Oscar), in accepting that her daughter might leave home.

I was moved by the portrayal of a family that clearly loves one another confronting problems and dealing with disabilities. My advice is to watch CODA with some Kleenex nearby. GRADE: A