Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts

Thursday, October 9, 2025

ANDREW DARLINGTON's Review of ‘Down River: In Search of David Ackles' by Mark Brend



DAVID ACKLES: THE OTHER ‘RIVER MAN’


Book Review of:

‘DOWN RIVER: IN SEARCH OF DAVID ACKLES'

by Mark Brend

(2025, Jawbone Press)

http://jawbonepress.com/down-river/

ISBN 978-1-916829-22-0, Softback, 148pp+8 photo plates


To follow their hit single ‘This Wheels On Fire’, Julie Driscoll with the Brian Auger Trinity recorded a superb five-minute take on David Ackles’ ‘Road To Cairo’. It failed to chart. Later, the Hollies – with Mikael Rickfors, covered Ackles touching ‘Down River’. Spooky Tooth also recorded the same song. Born in Rock Island of ‘Rock Island Line’ fame in Illinois (20 February 1937), David Ackles was a songwriter who never wrote a hit. He released four albums, three for prestigious Elektra Records, with fan-man Bernie Taupin producing his brooding, elegant and eclectic masterpiece American Gothic (1972), after which there was a final Five & Dime LP in October 1973, for Columbia. 


He family moved to LA, but he didn’t live a Rock ‘n’ Roll life. He wasn’t cool. While other kids were out rocking around the clock he was listening to clunky old musical The Desert Song. Raised in a Presbyterian religious theatrical family he did Hollywood toddle-on parts in six Rusty movies – a kind of low-budget Rin-Tin-Tin variant billed as ‘Great Kids… A Wonder Dog!’. Out of step with teen-trends he favoured all-round variety to the Twist or the Boogaloo. If Bob Dylan referred to himself ironically as a ‘song-&-dance man’, David Ackles started out as the real thing.


Intending simply to demo his songs for other’s consideration, Ackles accidentally fell into recording his eponymous debut album (1968, EKS-74022). He’d already turned thirty and had yet to play a single solo live date. Jac Holzman’s Elektra was likely the only label with the open foresight to sign him. Producer David Anderle used session players, including former Iron Butterfly and future Rhinoceros musicians. They may simply have overdubbed Ackles existing demos without Ackles even being present, on songs such as the thumb-tripping screenplay ‘The Road To Cairo’; or the warm-voiced conversational piano-led ‘Down River’ – which he performed for a DJ John Peel Radio session. It tells the tale of a freed prisoner who returns to his hometown to find his girl has found someone else, yet he accepts the situation with sad grace. ‘Blue Ribbons’ controversially – at the time, is about a white woman pregnant by a black man. Then there’s the liturgical organ that complements the ‘arms of grace’ lyric of ‘His Name Is Andrew’ (covered by Martin Carthy on his 1971 Landfall album). 




Despite writer Mark Brend’s scrupulous research, which considers unreleased outtakes and lost songs, the session details remain uncertain. Yet Brend perceptively writes, Ackles ‘wrote as a dramatist or an author, creating songs like one-act plays or short stories,’ while under the influence of the Brecht-Weill partnership. It was difficult to place Ackles in context, he was not quite Randy Newman, neither was he a darker Harry Nilsson, he might have been chanson, Jacques Brel, or maybe even his Elektra labelmates Tom Rush or Tim Buckley? To journalist John Bauldie Ackles’ songs are ‘often dark vignettes of the sorrows and inevitable seriousness of experience, poetic sketches of not-so-beautiful losers and unlucky lovers, hopeless vagabonds and embittered misfits, set to tapestries of tune. It’s grown-up stuff’ (‘Q’, February 1994).


After failed sessions with Al Kooper and Don Ellis, the eight tracks that make up Subway To The Country (1969, EKS-74060) use lush widescreen Fred Myrow settings – an arranger who’d worked with Jim Morrison and would score Charlton Heston’s Soylent Green (1973). The title-song has a ‘got to get back to the land’ father-to-son brightness, other tracks such as ‘Mainline Saloon’ – with its dubbed-on ambient lowlife Bar sounds, and ‘Inmates Of The Institution’ with its chilling atmosphere of community derangement, in particular are disquieting and deeply unsettling. While the macabre character-sketch ‘Candy Man’ about maimed war-veteran Oscar, jailed for unapologetic peado offences, is possibly his bravest song, in that it adds psychological depth to a disreputable individual. But where Jim Morrison or Lou Reed were writing from their own life-milieu, good church-going David Ackles appears to be assembling his cast in the way that a playwright creates characters. His songs are story-songs.


He was still playing shoes-optional Folk-dens supporting Tom Rush or Joni Mitchell… such as the ‘Bitter End’ on NY Bleecker Street, until he played a support slot at the ‘Troubadour’ on Santa Monica Boulevard to an audience of the counter-culture glitterati there to witness rising star Elton John. It was 25 August 1970, and although Ackles performance was overshadowed by Elton John’s career left-off, there was rapport between the artists that led to Ackles crossing the Atlantic to live at ‘Farthings’ in Wargrave on the Thames at Berkshire, from where he could commute, scoring his own arrangement charts, to record at the IBC studio at Portland Place with Bernie Taupin producing. 


‘It seems like you get a sharper perspective on your own country when you’re away from it’ Ackles explains on the sleeve-notes of American Gothic (USA Elektra EKS75032). This time there were eleven tracks with a full 43-minute playing time including the 10:05-minute ‘Montana Song’ which is a search for rural ancestry roots taking him to a ‘long abandoned farm,’ all interpreted through diary entries. But there was still what Brend calls not ‘enough of the familiar’ to hit mainstream preconceptions. No chorus. More string quartet, piccolo and cello than Rock guitar. Even Brend concedes that ‘it is also the most inaccessible of his records’ which requires repeated plays and close attention to yield its rewards, ‘it’s not a record for the streaming age.’ For Ackles himself, he’s quoted as saying ‘I like parables, little morality plays.’ 


Critically the album was well-received, from Stephen Holden in Rolling Stone to Derek Jewell in the Sunday Times, drawing comparisons as diverse as Aaron Copland and George Gershwin. Chris Van Ness, writing in the Los Angeles Free Press, announced it as ‘the Sgt Pepper of Folk’. But as Brent admits ‘critical acclaim doesn’t always sell records.’ After it peaked at no.167 on the Billboard album chart, Ackles amicably parted company with Elektra. Only to be picked up by Clive Davis of Columbia, for a more modest low-budget album project.


The newly married Ackles produced Five & Dime (1973, USA Columbia KC32466) on a four-track TEAC machine in his Pacific Palisades home, inviting guest musicians – including Dean Torrence of Jan & Dean (on ‘Surf’s Down’) to visit in various combinations, before the tapes were mixed and mastered. Inevitably, the resulting album got lost within label and management politics. It was what Mark Brend calls ‘a more personal, intimate record – a step back from the big statement of American Gothic.’ Twelve tracks this time, including the black horror of ‘Aberfan’, which records the events of 21 October 1966 when a small Welsh village was engulfed in a landslip of saturated slag with a tragic loss of life. Ackles succeeds in riding a precarious edge between being maudlin or exploitational.


By now, ‘the fissure between talent and sales that was a feature of Ackles’s recording career from the start became a chasm.’ There were no more albums. But he wasn’t in it for stardom. He was in it for music. With the advent of CD there was a mild ripple of approving reappraisal with the reissue of his Elektra albums. A 2CD compilation There Is A River (2007, Rhino 8122-74884-2) included all three Elektra LPs plus ‘unreleased songs & rarities’ with Bernie Taupin and Elvis Costello liner-notes, although the edition was subsequently withdrawn due to legal conflicts with Ackles’ estate. And there were nay-sayers. Some reviewers considered that after such doses of intricate prettification it was necessary to syringe the ears with the Ramones or Motorhead!


A tall dark-haired affable man, David Ackles didn’t die a Rock ‘n’ Roll death. After retiring from Pop he wrote TV scripts, enjoyed a long academic career while writing and producing low-key musicals and ballet scores. His ambitious musical projects ‘Allendor/ Prince Jack’ and ‘Sister Aimee’ remain unstaged, while his collaboratively scripted Word Of Honour was filmed as a TV movie starring Karl Malden and a young John Malkovich. David Ackles survived having part of his cancerous left lung removed, but died of a relapse 2 March 1999 in Tujanga, California, aged sixty-two. Yet his reputation persists. Elton John and Elvis Costello sing his praises. Mark Brent’s book is a personal quest to discover the truth about the man he got to speak to once, on a single phone call.



 Ensorcelled by the September 1955 mystical vinyl codex ‘a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom’ at age eight, Andrew Darlington embarked on a lifetime quest to decipher the magical incantation’s profundity, traipsing in not entirely straight lines of zigzag wandering across decades of enchantment, yet is still no closer to the true enlightenment revelation must bring. 


As of now, the seeking continues across a proliferation of platforms, including EIGHT MILES HIGHER .


44 Spa Croft Road, Ossett, 

West Yorkshire WF5 0HE

ENGLAND (Tel: 01924 275814

Email: andydarlington@talktalk.net

Twitter: @darlingtonandy

Website: www.andrewdarlington.blogspot.com)



Thursday, September 18, 2025

Su Zi's Review of Father Tectonic by Robert Frede Kenter



When the Book Itself is Art


While the history of the artist book may have begun, as Wikipedia states, with illustrated manuscripts, and continued into our times with citations that include major art movements, discussions of art books contain two crucial elements: the object is a deliberate artistic creation, and the object is intended to function as a readable entity. Oftentimes, the experience of seeing an artist book might be in a restricted situation such as a museum, where the object itself is displayed but not touchable. Oftentimes, the lack of tactile interaction with the object lessens the experience of engaging with an artist book, as it is possible that the tactile experience is a significant part of experiencing the art. However, historical artifacts are fragile, and our experience of them must allow for respect and reverence to still the fingers’ lust to experience materials perhaps no longer available. Contemporary artist books are also rare, but still available, and any bibliophile with a personal library ought to include such entities in their collection.

Of the artist books available, one consistently delicious producer of artists books is Ethel, which reliably produces poetry chapbooks of extraordinary beauty. Typically, an edition of any book in their series will feature a cover involving physical collage that involves actual stitching, and editions tend to stay under one hundred copies. While it is true that many editions from the press are rightfully held in special collections, it is also possible to own a copy, to have one in hand, to touch the art.

In the case of a book called Father Tectonic, with text by Robert Frede Kenter, the book’s cover itself requires consideration: on a base of mylar, the work’s title and author have been printed, with the book’s cover image physically sewn to the mylar base...one can touch the delicacy of the threads rising above the smooth surface. The cover has additional stitching in varying colors of thread that form a grid column between the cover image and the spine, which is hand sewn—hand sewn in “toji”, a type of traditional Japanese binding where the stitching itself is a part of the aesthetic. Most stunning to this edition is a tiny pocket sewn on top of this collage, that contains a single yellow button. Thus, the book exists as a work of fiber art, as a kind of quilt, in that it is a sewn collage.

Artist books often contain text, and Kenter’s Father Tectonic is a full-length poetry work in and of itself.   The poems are muscular, with a maturity of voice that pleasures the ear. In “Milk River”, the poem opens with: “metal taste     methane/ his military   chest medallion” (16) and continues with irregularly lined stanzas that nonetheless have the fluidity of  speech. Kenter’s ear is impeccable here, with phrases such as “Ambling toward comatose” that are both macabre in semantics and lovely to the ear.

Experienced readers of poetry ought to take especial note of the poem “21 Investigations”, a long poem in sections that is the book’s physical centerpiece(pages21-30). The text here also employs irregular stanzas, numbered sections and the use of both italics and quotation marks, as well as open spacing with the text of the poem itself.  The sections vary in length, but each exists as a poem in itself, making the piece itself a quilt. The sort of quilt that Kenter is constructing contains some lovely fabric:

6

Mother when you came home from work


we went to the library

your black hair falling into your eyes

the light a certain quality of light

between maples and oaks the sidewalk

a vision through dusty glass windows. 


In the car your arthritic hand held the wheel

you read to me quietly as rain

falls between the cedars.  (24)


The emotional tone of love despite pain is a consistent element throughout this work. While the characters are recognizable as both specifics and symbols—a family—Kenter’s language mixes the violent or painful with language sensitivity. In this section above, each stanza functions on an assonant repetition: the o for “mother/home/work”, the  i for “library/eyes, light/ quality light/ sidewalk’ before the slant shift in “vision” to the sound of “arthritic hand”, the poem’s climax. Since this poem exists as an element in a poem series of twenty other sections, it is a poem within a poem, genre-bending in itself.

What we have thus at hand is an artistic consideration of no small weight, despite its  physical ability to fit into a simple mailing envelope. Given the temporal limitations on the availability of the object, it’s a wonder that art of such gravatas can be ordered and held at hand as prosaically as any kitchen subscription. That one can actually subscribe to the press and get such wonderful books for less than a pizza is a wonderment of our times.





Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago.

                     

Check out her author page on Amazon.



Thursday, August 21, 2025

Su Zi's Review of BLACK LESBIAN IN WHITE AMERICA and Other Writings

 

What is it to hold a life in one’s hands in the form of a book, of a selected works of a writer, the entirety of their writing life nestled as comfortably in the hand as if holding the writer’s hand, ghostly as it might be, along this journey. Such seem to be the case of the Sinister Wisdom series Sapphic Classics, whose website lists a dozen titles, a dozen women’s lives memorialized, archived for readers beyond their own lifetimes. While any selected works of a deceased writer does offer up a life’s work in memento mori, the authors represented in this series might have otherwise been erased from our cultural conversations. A Siri overview defines sapphic classic as “influential works of literature featuring lesbian or sapphic relationships, themes and characters” and goes on to cite Radclyffe Hall and Rita Mae Brown. 

Once, it might have been that there were whole areas of scholarship devoted to the greater lights in sapphic studies, but such programs are under demolition now. There are those who feel these losses deeply, who hope to rebuild after the dark ages, and such series as this one will again become foundational. 

This life we have in hand is that of Anita Cornwell, Black Lesbian in White America and Other Writings (2025) and edited by Briona Simone Jones.  In the foreword, Jones describes Cornwell as

At a time when she was the only out black lesbian writing [...] in the 1950s, she named how pervasive sexism and homophobia were [...]; at a time when she was the only black lesbian in the women’s movement in the 1970s, she cited their antiblackness [...] ; at a time when she longed for connection [...] the chokehold of Christianity and the myopic belief [...]not only stifled their relation to each other, but also made the critique of black patriarchy inconceivable (9)

The text also has an introduction made by Cornwell in 1981 as the work was originally from another small press and is now held in estate. In that introduction, Cornwell mentions the central section of this work, and interview with Audre Lorde. It is quite possible that some readers ought to house this work for that alone.

Cornwell’s introduction also mentions the fourth section in the text Lament for Two Bamboozled Sisters wherein writing “The fate of the womyn [Cornwell’s spelling] may strike some as being too stark, but i think most will have to agree that that reality is still a possibility for all womyn in a patriarchal society regardless of race or class” (12). This sequence is told in a series of letters, first to Bonnie, with the closing of the sequence to Bonnie’s daughter Chrisse. The letters are an exhortation of love to a friend:

Consequently, for the sake of all those nameless silent Sisters who have been sacrificed on the altar of male supremacy throughout history, don’t let your life be added to the list [...]

We Sisters must save ourselves. The sisterhood is Powerful. So Power to the Sisterhood (141)

The letter sequence continues with a break-up letter of some detail that includes

“But I fail to understand why you think that racism of some white womyn should make me want to endure the blatant sexism of most black men. Or any men for that matter. Which is not that racism is any less evil than sexism[...] (145).

There is another letter to Bonnie, written while on the way to the visit and in response to a phone call. After this, the sequence has the two letters to Bonnie’s daughter, Chrissie:

“Your letter, coming as it did on the fourth anniversary of your mother’s death, has rendered my pen well-nigh immobile” (153)

The reader becomes aware of having been privy to an entire life told in six letters—a terrifying compression of our lived experiences—yet, if not for those letters, that life would be, yes, another of the “nameless, silent Sisters” about whom Cornwell says that “And I have been driven to the point of madness [...]when witnessing such human degradation” (141).  That the original publication dates of these pieces are from 1971-1977 speaks to a conversation now both a half a century ago and painfully contemporary.

While some readers might find Cornwell’s insistence on philosophical consistency and egalitarian rights to be uncomfortable, or the romances on the excepts from the autobiography to not be resonant to anyone in any dating scene, or even that the work would have otherwise been out of print and thus lacks contemporary market appeal, let us remember that lost books are lost lives. While Cornwell’s literary accomplishment is obvious in the letters section alone, the wide ranging nature of the work deserves an equally wide-ranging readership. 




Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago.

                     

Check out her author page on Amazon.










Thursday, July 17, 2025

Su Zi's Review of "Women in Independent Publishing" from New Mexico Press

 


We know that the destruction of a library is a crime against humanity. Even a simple Siri search describes such atrocities as “a way to erase a culture’s history and identity”, and, of course, mentions Alexandria. Those of us not suffering from cultural amnesia might recall news images of dumpsters full of books as libraries were required somehow to destroy entire collections. Memes of flames and swastikas were not an unusual accompaniment. In such a climate, the esteemed University of New Mexico Press published Women in Independent Publishing, a decade long firsthand research project executively produced by Stephanie Anderson. The area of greatest scholarship regards Zine History, an aspect of the literary community that ought to be rightfully revered.


The work is an inch-thick, trade-sized tome that is, frankly, a work of feminist scholarship that ought to be among the new acquisitions for any feminist collection that hasn’t yet been set on fire. Reading the book backwards, the Index alone spans seventeen pages, that includes a heading called “chapbooks[...]rebellious nature of publishing,347-48” (409). Also, most deliciously and impressively is a ten-page bibliography that ought to look lip-licking to any woman’s studies program not already disbanded.


The text itself is introduced with a thirty-page essay, followed by a series of interviews of women who were editing poetry publications during the second half of the twentieth century. This would seem to be an ordinary and interesting sidewalk tour of literary history, if every single premise in the work were not under recent legal human rights attacks. Within the text itself, Margarat Randall states “The cultural blockade, after all, was as important as its economic and military counterparts” (63).  A reader might think she speaks of somewhere in our moment, except she speaks of Cuba and 1963.


Anderson organizes the work by a lineage-- she begins with a refutation of the agreed upon text by Grove, as is standard scholarly procedure. She then proceeds with an onslaught of people and texts that would give glee to any poetry geek...again crucial information to rebuilding libraries. There’s a mention of a collaboration with Anais Nin (3) on a now rare title called “Two Cities” ; overt reference to the work of Alice Notley, and repeated reference to the exclusion and under representation of women, “women used publishing in various ways to push against the sexism and misogyny of literary scenes writ large”(5)-- a tactic also used a generation before so that women could merely vote.


Dismissal of women as critical artists is a reoccurring theme here, often motivating the subjects of the interviews to publish periodicals. In her interview, Susan Sherman makes an interesting remark about poets publishing poets, especially women writers or artists overall, “It’s really very dangerous to depend on someone else to make serious choices, both about your work, and about your life, for that matter” (117) , and makes much mention of collaboration with painters and musicians. 


The work repeatedly discusses technical duties in production and production details and predates the ubiquitousness of computers by decades. There are multiple mentions of group collation meetings, physical typing of manuscripts onto duplicatable sheets called mimeo that smelled and faded, before the ordinary use of copy machines. It was “physically building books” (C.D. Wright interview, 273).  The body of the text concludes with a prose poem by Lee Ann Brown that includes “and that liberation of putting writing into print and changing margins and typefaces probably greatly enabled the possibility of making books” (336).


The crucial nature of this text cannot be overstated, but also its pleasure: among those interviewed might be someone we know, or might have met, or whose edited publication we admire, or who we have read. The value of the work as a reference regarding poetry cannot be overstated, nor can its value as a reference regarding feminism of the second half of the twentieth century. Maybe that’s why it’s so dangerous. The work is a dense reference of information related to all that touched women’s lives during those decades, of publications now rare and valuable, of a compendium of research for rebuilding a history currently under culturicide. 




Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago.

                     

Check out her author page on Amazon.




Thursday, June 19, 2025

Su Zi's Review of Robert Archambeau's "Alice B Toklas Is Missing"


A Summer Fun Read: Robert Archambeau, thank you.


The experienced reader, being well-versed in the greatest hits of most major anthologies, might occasionally have a need to read when concentration is not optimal; institutional wait times can be balanced by the comfort of a book, and the mere thought of a delicious read in a pleasant location is a vacation in itself. Of course, the experienced reader can never be fully oblivious to craftsmanship, and often the seasons hits can have a frost burnt or stale flavor. But here comes Robert Archambeau with Alice B Toklas Is Missing (Regal House 2023), beguiling us to guffaw.

The novel’s protagonist, Ida, “copies old paintings. That was what she did. She copied old paintings for an old lady with old money” (13), appears as part of a Fitzgeraldian duo in a cast of characters that includes a “tallish, trim, and in his mid-thirties, she guessed, dark hair carefully parted and smoothed” (14) that turns out to be “Tom Eliot”.  Archambeau is artful with the layering of amusing characterizations, and is not short of an adept eye

Shelves of books both new and old lined the walls, but the center of the bright little shop was set up like a parlor—low comfortable chairs and rickety occasional tables ringed a large, faded carpet. It was used like a parlor too—at least by one thin man with thick glasses and a grubby black suit, who crossed and re-crossed his thin legs, sipping a cup of tea in one hand, and holding a small, squarish magazine inch from his squinting eyes with the other (34)

This character is introduced a page later “he stood, proffering his bony hand ‘Germ’s Choice, but you can call me Shame’s Voice’     [...]        ‘Mr. James Joyce,’ said Sylvia, by way of clarification “(35).    The cast of characters who make occasional appearances does read almost as a syllabus for the Parisian influence on twentieth century culture, although any fans of Wyndam Lewis ought to note that he becomes, ultimately, the bad guy.

But this novel offers far more than a romp through roaring literary figures. Archambeau’s attention to his setting elevates the work past a light romance with historical characters. Consider these few lines as the author propels Tom Eliot into a chapter of characterization

To enter the Bristol hotel is to enter a world that speaks so quietly it almost whispers. The clerks at the desk do it, and the guests—mostly British—find themselves matching their tones to those of the dark suited staff. Whether you stand on the checkerboard tiles of the lobby or sit comfortlessly in one of the pew-like benches beneath the small statue of Artemis, who might hear the building itself whisper.”(196)

The scene involves an introspective moment of Eliot in memory of his marriage, then shifts in point of view through the hotel room’s open door to the bellhop, who “saw Tom’s quaking back and turned discretely away. A weeping man is best undisturbed (198)” Archambeau posits Eliot as a man haunted not only by his difficult marriage, but by visions of his forebearers—a far more empathetic view than that of any textbook’s formal biography.

Although Claude McKay “rumored to be departing soon for Harlem” (252) makes only that moment’s appearance, Archambeau is intent on a trilogy, with the second title scheduled forthcoming, and readers might hope for more of an appearance by that illustrious and historical community in this evolving series as well. For those needing to review the period, the novel offers a delicious experience. Readers familiar with these literary ancestors will happily devour this tasty offering as from a sumptuous meal, and as  maybe find themselves equally as eager for future feasts.






Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago.

                     

Check out her author page on Amazon.