My first exposure to the music of Martin Denny came at the age of 15 when one of my father's biker friends literally forced me to put on headphones and listen to Exotica from start to finish.The image of this mean motherfucker holding an easy listening LP, insistently reiterating that it was "the best fucking music on the planet" is one that won't soon be forgotten.Nor will the sounds I heard that day.Haunting sounds,mesmerising rhythms and texture unlike anything I'd ever heard.
Bonus Books featured this issue,with thanks to the original sharers:
10 Himes titles new link 15/05/14
Open almost any book by him and the steely spark of his prose rips through the air like a pure untamed thing! A far cry from the dead dog pap you get nowadays.Sure, all his books are partially hit and miss, after all , the guy wrote quickly and it's clear that some things fascinated and perked him up more than others, yet when he hit that high note - he really wailed! No other writer could capture the sizzle, sweat and menace of a larger-than-life Harlem than he could. In Himes' books you could smell the food, taste the liquor and feel your eyeballs bend with indecent enjoyment. Himes' Harlem was a place full of 'noise, heat and orgiastic odours', a place where white folks feared to tread
Say, is there anyway the link to those 8 Himes titles could be refreshed, reshared, renewed?
ReplyDeletemandotodd,
Deletehave just put a new Himes link in the main post
Thanks!
Delete