Every month, Cosmik Debris brings you many CD and record reviews, but the writers manage to find a little time for other pursuits, like reading, going to movies and watching videos. That's where Everything Else In Review comes in.


Book: On The Bus
By Paul Perry & Ken Babbs
Thunder's Mouth Press
DETAIL
Reviewed by Shaun Dale

Most people know the story of Ken Kesey, the Merry Pranksters and the fabled bus Further through a filter, whether it's the shaded view picked up from Tom Wolfe's sixties classic, The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, or the tie dyed vision of the Deadheads. This is the straight stuff.

On The Bus is an oral history of the original outing of Further, the vehicle for the metaphor "You're either on the bus or off the bus" for the counter culture of the sixties and beyond. For those of us who have been "on the bus," it's kind of a family history. For those of you that haven't, it's a ticket on the clue train, a glimpse into the mindset that would lead a group of grown men and women to call themselves the Merry Pranksters and take off cross country in a converted school bus with a beat icon, the immortal Neal Cassady, at the wheel.

Ken Babbs was there from the get go, and his interludes (naturally credited as "flashbacks") are the heart of the direct memories, but there's much more. Paul Perry sought out as many of the principals as possible to get the story as straight as such stories can be. The forwards by Hunter Thompson, Jerry Garcia and Ken Kesey set the cultural context of the original trip and the many trips (of many kinds) that it inspired. The historical photographs alone are worth the price of admission.

This is a must-read for survivors of the sixties counter culture and those they inspired.


(C) 2000 - Shaun Dale



Video Review: The Harmonists
Starring Ben Becker
Director Joseph Vilsmaier
released on video by Miramax Films
Originally released in 1997. In German with subtitles.
Reviewed by Rusty Pipes

This is an excellent movie, a knockout in several ways. It tells the true story of a popular German singing group in the 30's called The Comedian Harmonists. They had six members, including their pianist, and were at least half Jewish by ethnicity. That never got in the way of their making great music, but it's a fact which came to plague them. Ben Becker, who looks a little like Italian actor Roberto Begnini, plays Harry, the man who brought them together. The film is an absorbing chronicle of their lives as they came to fame and eventually broke up in the years before World War II.

I'd never heard of the Harmonists before but their vocal style is impressive and many consider them to be the best vocal group of the Twentieth Century. Much more than an update on a barber shop quartet, they had complex five part harmonies that worked particularly well over the limited bandwidth of early radios, so it's not surprising they became so popular. Listen to the soundtracks of a thousand Disney cartoons and other productions of the period and you'll hear male chorus stylings influenced by the Harmonists. They also combined their harmonies with comedic schtick that kept the audiences well entertained and coming back for more.

Director Vilsmaier, his sound editor and the looping vocal performers have done excellent work in recreating how the group must have sounded. It so authentic I wanted to think that it actually was the Comedian Harmonists singing but I realized that no recording from that era could be so technically flawless.

Perhaps even more impressive is the telling of the story itself. Not only is The Harmonists musically and historically accurate, it's also interesting because it's the first all-German production I have ever seen that deals with pre-WWII Nazi bigotry. The group was able to deal with a quick rise to fame, two prominent members involved with the same woman and the trying economic times of that era, but unfortunately the group's several Jewish members came under official sanctions as Hitler's thugs came to power. Not even their huge popularity could save them. It's got some aspects of Cabaret in that respect, but this is a real story and all the more gripping for it.

The singing and acting is first rate, the writing is superb. The video may be a little hard to find but it's well worth it. I watched it a second time immediately.


(C) 2000 - Rusty Pipes



Book: Better To Burn Out: The Cult Of Death In Rock And Roll
By Dave Thompson
Thunder's Mouth Press, ISBN 1-56025-190-5
272 pages, $17.95 US
Reviewed by Bill Holmes

Rock and roll death books are like Roger Ebert's movie guides and baseball annuals by The Sporting News. Someone wrote the first one, and then someone updated it, and in each successive year you know a few more musicians will check out, so each is only as good as its latest flavor, not to mention that dead subjects cannot defend themselves. Combine this planned obsolescence with the dregs of humanity like Guiliano and Goldman, and you can understand why "rock" and "journalism" rarely occur in the same sentence.

Dave Thompson did ink The Kurt Cobain Story among his many works (and yes, the title is probably a subliminal plug), but this collection of vignettes profiles some of the bench players of rock and roll, as opposed to just the superstars. Each chapter weaves the stories of two or three (Rob Tyner, Richard Sohl and Fred "Sonic" Smith, for example) and bypasses the ghoulish approach for an objective sketch of the subject. Even when the names and the stories are higher profile, Thompson will use an anecdote or an uncommon source for an entertaining viewpoint. Because of this, I found myself as interested in Darby Crash and Alex Harvey as I was in Mick Ronson and Stiv Bators. (Although I must draw the line at Shannon Hoon, just like I always did when he was alive). The stories about Joe Meek and Ian Curtis were especially good. With sixty stories in twenty chapters, the book can easily be read on a long plane flight but could also be considered (and I say this will full manly reverence) an ideal bathroom tome.

The index contains a calendar of "death days" along with notes expanding tangential references from the chapters, both entertaining reads on their own. Better To Burn Out is dedicated to the legendary British rock manager Tony Secunda, who later turned publisher and represented Thompson among his stable or writers. In the two and a half page dedication, his summary of Secunda's career and personality manages to at once sate the reader's immediate curiosity about the man while planting enough seeds to encourage further research on the subject. Ironically, perhaps unwittingly, Thompson set the tone for his book at the same time.


(C) 2000 - Bill Holmes



Book: Shrub - The Short But Happy Political
Life of George W. Bush
By Molly Ivins with Lou Dubose
Random House
Hardcover, 224 pages, $19.95 US
Reviewed by Rusty Pipes

I can't of think anyone more appropriate to write about George W. Bush than Molly Ivins. I've read a lot of her columns in Mother Jones, Funny Times and The Progressive over the years and I've decided Molly is a national treasure. She's an astute observer of politics, especially her native Texas issues, but she also has a great sense of humor about the whole thing, playing up the ridiculousness of it all instead of wallowing in acidity. Like fellow Texan Jim Hightower, she's one of only a handful of true left-wing biased journalists around today. The rest are just a figment of the Christian Conservatives collective imagination.

This book isn't very big mainly because George Dubya really hasn't been in politics that long. It's definitely a thorough investigation into whether he is fit to be President. Not surprisingly, Molly is saying, "No." Make that a Texas-sized "HELL NO!"

If you are looking for tawdry specifics about George's party years, it's not here. That doesn't really matter anyway, hell, yours truly had party years too that I've risen above. But at least I took my chances on the draft during the Vietnam years. The section on Bush's entry into the Texas Air National Guard sounds a lot like Dan Quayle's story--Dad got me out of the draft.

If you thought Clinton's Whitewater deal was scandalous, wait until you read about Bush's Arbusto oil company trading on access to his Dad's presidential back door and losing millions, but with George selling his stock just in time to make profit. Enough to invest in the Rangers baseball team, wrestle a new stadium out of Texas taxpayers and come out about $15 million ahead.

That's all interesting stuff, but mostly you should read this book to get the real lowdown on George Dubya's "compassionate conservatism" in action as Texas Governor. Shrub proves it's one of the thinnest political shams in history. There's also plenty of detail about George's terrible track record on the environment, getting tough on welfare, blocking gun and hate crimes legislation, his connections with the Christian right (more expedient than fanatic) and generally just being a bagman for moneyed interests everywhere. You thought his dad had a problem with the Vision Thing! Dubya's got no vision at all he just parrots what his handlers tell him to say.

I'm sure Shrub is required reading at Al Gore's campaign headquarters. I wish it was required reading for everyone even considering voting for this paper figure of a man for President.


(C) 2000 - Rusty Pipes



Game: NBA Live 2000
EA Sports (Electronic Arts)
For PC
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

I still wasn't the least bit bored with EA Sports' Triple Play Baseball when I picked up this incredible game, but as it usually goes, the obsession set in and Triple Play is temporarily collecting dust. This game features the same kind of high-quality graphics and even more realism. For fanatics like me, there's nothing quite like a game that lets me draft my own team, but NBA live takes it several steps beyond that. You can play in franchise mode, drafting your team, signing free agents, and doing the things a general manager does to keep the team humming along.

At the end of the season there is a new draft in which you and all the other teams (which are computer-run) select new players that the game has generated (although you begin with every player in the NBA during the 1999 season). Some drafts will be deep, some weak. My first season, in which I only had nine wins, ended on a sour note, but the next season I had the first pick and was able to chose the ONLY player I've yet seen with no weaknesses in the scouting report. Six seasons down the line, my team has only made the playoffs once and then gone straight down the toilet again the following season. See, I didn't realize I needed to re-sign Shaq O'Neil and he left for Vancouver, and... well, never mind.

You have salary caps to deal with, unhappy players who want to go elsewhere, hot and cold streaks, and just about everything else that really happens in the NBA. If you don't want to deal with all of that, you can just play a game without the headaches of leadership. There is also a 3-point shoot-out competition that can be pretty addicting, and one-on-one street court basketball with a choice of day or night settings. Besides all the current NBA teams and players, there are all-star squads for the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. It would be nice if they could be included in the draft pool, but unless I've missed an instruction somewhere, they're simply not. You CAN build a custom team, and the all-stars can be added to that, but it's not a draft situation, and they can't be used in franchise mode.

The absolute coolest feature, without a doubt, is called "Face In The Game." It allows you to create a player to represent you. Now, that's not a new thing, I realize, but now you can import an image of your face to the game. The game will then create a reasonable facsimile of your face on that player. And then you can see the look on your face when Larry Bird goes over you for an easy two. Neat! There are many more features that I haven't even studied yet because, hey, the game is packed and there are only so many hours in the day. But I can tell you this: so far, this is the best sports sim I've ever played, and I've played many. I can also tell you that my top ten would have about eight EA Sports games. Nobody out there can touch 'em.


(C) 2000 - DJ Johnson



Book: The Outlaw Bible Of American Poetry
Edited by Alan Kaufman
Thunder's Mouth Press
DETAIL
Reviewed by Shaun Dale

Whatever you think poetry is, somewhere in the nearly 700 pages of this new anthology it's going to be something else. Whoever you think poets are, somewhere among the hundreds of poets represented here they're going to be someone else. However you think, you're going to be challenged to think harder and wider to get through this one.

Alan Kaufman has collected an encyclopedic overview of modern American poetry, using a broad definition and an open mind. The poets represented range from Allen Ginsberg to Tupac Shakur, from Bob Dylan to the cutting edge artists of the slam scene. The subjects they cover range from sentimental to sensual to sick. They caress, attack and ignore their readers. From page to page, you'll find yourself amused, educated, entertained or repelled. You'll likely find your definition of poetry and your image of poets challenged, and hopefully enhanced.

If you haven't read a poetry book since school days, and only because you had to, this is the one you need to catch up and find new poetry to read because you want to.


(C) 2000 - Shaun Dale