Regular readers of the PS Newsletter (and that’s fifty-some weekly editions annually going out to many thousands of tried’n’true believers) will surely by now know that I’m pretty keen on music.
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Oh, sure, I luurrv books and I surely do dig old TV shows and I near on fade dead away at the sight of golden and silver age comicbooks when somebody slaps a pile of ‘em on my lap. And hey, if you don’t, then boy oh boy, have YOU done got yourselves a hefty wedge of musical pie, cos we’re gonna mention one of the greatest albums from the wild, wacky and wonderful 1968. Play this while you’re trying to figure out what’s happening. And then come back and tell me.
Okay, you’re back again. First steps first, you warriors.
We’re talking about a group called THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA who put out their single album, self-titled, way back in 1968. Here’s this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
aka ‘Love Song For The Dead Che’
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But just in case we get split up at the exit.
Stay close because we’re going to be talking some more about the band and a whole heck of a lot more about—and from—the writer Tim Lucas (pictured left) and his remarkable novella, THE SECRET LIFE OF LOVE SONGS, plus the haunting voice of Dorothy Moskowitz.
Let’s go over to Tim (whose book went to print today). Take it away, Tim.
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Essays by Tim Lucas
with some closing thoughts by Dorothy Moskowitz
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1. THE NOVELLA
My novella THE SECRET LIVE OF LOVE SONGS
may be only 80 pages long, but the story of its creation and fulfillment covers more actual time and endeavor than most other fiction I’ve written to date, including my two published novels.
Oddly enough, it was not an idea that came to me of its own accord. It was sparked by a fortuitous email sent to me on May 24, 2008 by a new acquaintance—Kyle Johnson—who invited me to write a short story for an anthology he and his partner were planning, a compendium of original fiction inspired by the music of Nick Cave. I was unfamiliar with Nick’s solo work at that time, though I’d heard and enjoyed his earlier group, The Birthday Party; so I set to reading about his solo work and listening to as much of what was considered the best of it as I could find. Impressed, I submitted to Kyle three song titles I felt might generate stories; I remember two of them were “Red Right Hand” and “The Mercy Seat,” but these had already been claimed by other writers. Digging deeper, I discovered a lecture Nick had done entitled The Secret Life of the Love Song, which had been issued on CD. On it, he discussed the history and many different forms of the Love Song, interrupting himself at various times to perform five originals (most if not all taken from his acclaimed 1997 album The Boatman’s Call) and explain how each of them came to be written. This suggestion got me the go-ahead.
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Passing through this open door led me to something far more profound and involving than I’d anticipated.
As I began to imagine what I might say, the stories I might tell, the songs I might write and “perform” in the place of my Lecturer, I found myself writing something that was both fiction and non-fiction, prose and verse, imaginary and autobiographical, and it was all uniquely tiered with input from my memories, my dreams, and my imagination. I rewrote everything to an unusually high polish and soon realized I was exceeding the perimeters of story and just getting started as my deadline loomed near . . . but these concerns melted away when Kyle wrote to share the disappointing news that our anthology had been cancelled by its publisher. So I continued working at it—at a time my magazine Video Watchdog was publishing on a monthly schedule!—until I completed a first draft sometime in 2012. It was not as long then as it is in its final form, but it was already four years’ labor.
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I pay a courtly homage to Nick Cave in my description of my Lecturer . . .
. . . but any homage ends there and in the general format shared by our respective performances. I don’t want to say too much about the lecture itself, or the stories it encompasses, but the novella is presented in the form of a lecture, as an evening at the theater. I’ll say upfront to PS subscribers (and those familiar with my own past fiction) that it is not horror, though some of it is surreal and unnerving; it might pass for fantasy or magic realism, but it’s also true to life—my life, as it was during a dark period following the completion of my book Mario Bava—All the Colors of the Dark—which had been a journey of some 32 years. Finding myself suddenly emptied of that lifetime of deep and metaphysical occupation, I drifted outside the perimeters of what had always been a very controlled and somewhat sheltered life and discovered another realm in the rind around my known reality, a realm of fantastic, even occult substance. It is a novella, so it contains metaphors for things that really happened as well as some unvarnished truth from both dream and waking reality—and it all somehow emanated from the poems I presented as my “songs,” rather than vice versa.
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My initial draft was originally built around five such “songs,” in keeping with Nick’s original lecture. Their musical dimension at that time was entirely imaginary—and, except for some description on my part, left to the imagination of the reader. It was in this form that my manuscript was originally submitted to (and promptly accepted by) Pete Crowther of PS Publishing back in 2017. Pete told me up front that the book would probably not appear until 2019—well before COVID-19 had its impact on the book industry—but what became several extra few years of delay provided a fortuitous opportunity for my half-written love songs to ripen fully on the vine.
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2. THE SOUNDTRACK
Thanks to Facebook, it’s been my joy and privilege to form friendships with several of my musical heroes. Particularly rewarding has been the relationship I’ve fostered in recent years with Dorothy Moskowitz Falarski, who, under her maiden name, was once the lead vocalist with one of my favorite bands, The United States of America. The USA, whose only album was first released in 1968 on the prestigious Columbia label, was a collective of classically trained musicians who set out, under the guidance of Joseph Byrd, to record—without traditional rock instrumentation—an album of storming, coruscating psychedelia. Dorothy’s remarkable voice—sometimes metallically processed through a ring modulator—was incredibly versatile, capable of evoking a warm sensuality, a heavenly weightlessness, a siren-like contralto à la Grace Slick, and an almost synthetic twist on Astrud Gilberto’s deadpan restraint. No one who’s ever heard her sing “Love Song (for the Dead Che)” can forget it. She’s been one of my favorite singers since the first time I heard her—on December 26, 1970, a date I can remember because it was at a Boxing Day party where I was surprised by the experience of my first kiss—which, once you’ve read THE SECRET LIFE OF LOVE SONGS, becomes remarkably relevant.
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I first contacted Dorothy on Facebook in 2009 . . .
. . . when I was first writing the novella, to ask her a couple of questions about the USA but we didn’t become friends until 2014, at which point I had finished my first draft and put it aside. I had no intention at that time to make anything more of my “songs” than the poems they were. After getting to know one another better, a trust formed between us and Dorothy began to share with me some of her latest compositions, which I found very jazzy, witty, and enjoyable. On September 27, 2017, she sent me one such song called “Pass It On,” about trees gossiping with one another. Aside from being delighted that her voice, while obviously more seasoned, was still highly flexible and identifiable, the humor in her woodsy fantasia reminded me of one my Secret Life songs, “The Smell of Cedar”—a novelty love song in which nearly every line contains a pun related to wood. (The idea, along with its opening verse and refrain, had come to me in a dream I’d had back in 1995, sung from a spinning 78rpm record on a Victrola in a forest clearing.) I sent her my lyrics along with my thoughts on her song. Amused by their word play, she asked “Is there a hint of melody in mind?” Indeed there was, but how to convey melody to her in words?
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After some hapless attempts . . .
it became obvious that I would have to hook up the studio-quality mic I use for recording Blu-ray and DVD audio commentaries and sing it to her. The prospect was mortifying; I speak very little in my own daily life, much less sing, and DOROTHY MOSKOWITZ was asking me to sing to her—not just any song, but my own song, and at that, a love song ending in a proposal of marriage! Sometimes you have to go way out on a limb for life to open a door to its next level, and so I began—miserably at first—to warble away.
Without waiting for an invitation, I went ahead and showed her the more serious lyrics I had written for “Trust In Love,” to show her that I wasn’t just a comic lyricist. From then on, it was “Pinch Me” time. Within four days, we were embarking on a bonafide collaboration, spitballing ideas and discussing the matters of publishing and copyrights. As her melodies, harmonies, and arrangements took form, Dorothy also coached me as a lyricist, pointing out words and beats that might pose difficulties to singers, and each of my five original poems underwent some cosmetic adjustment that, indeed, made them sing. I was initially very private about what we were cooking up (I refused to record any vocals for Dorothy when my wife Donna was in the house), but when I first played Dorothy’s original SmartPhone demo of “Trust In Love” for Donna, I saw her eyes fill with joyful tears. That’s the power of music; writers rarely, if ever, see their work induce such a physical, emotional response. It was then we knew we were creating something special.
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But wait! Time for a reality check!
When Pete Crowther accepted my novella, he didn’t sign on to include music—so I wrote to let him know the serendipitous turn things had taken. He couldn’t have been more wonderful. He wrote back: “I’m an old hippy (born 4 July 1949) and my music collection is second only to my books. I love that old USA album, which is crazy! Superb! (The deluxe edition came out a year or two back—did you get it?) I just called my old friend Andy Richards, a book dealer and a fellow USA enthusiast. Before I’d finished speaking, Andy was singing [“Love Song (for the Dead Che)”]!!!” So we had his blessing to proceed; he would be glad to include a bonus CD with the book’s initial run, so long as it didn’t cost him anything more than he’d originally agreed to.
And so we moved beyond the stage of piano and Smart Phone. At the end of March 2018, Dorothy officially embarked on a new home studio adventure with a new studio-grade microphone and the wise counsel of her friend, electronic composer John Tenney. She acquired a Keystone Keystation 61 M-Audio keyboard and set about learning Garage Band. Apart from contributing the odd guide vocal (meant to be erased later), I became Dorothy’s de facto producer, nudging her as near as possible toward the instrumentation and stereo details I was hearing in my head.
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Mike Fornatale
With no real budget at our disposal . . .
I began to think of other collaborators I might tempt aboard with the opportunity to work with a West Coast rock goddess legend. I immediately thought of Mike Fornatale, a brilliant multi-instrumentalist and outspoken USA fan whom I’d known online since the late 1980s, when we were habitués of an early AOL Jefferson Airplane discussion group. Within minutes of sending my invitation, I had his reply: “Well, HELL yes!”
We sent him the work sheets of all the songs, and he gravitated to “Under The Nine” and “The Smell of Cedar”—which were the two most in need of a full band sound, albeit from very different eras. Working from Dorothy’s original piano demos, Mike layered on scads of instrumentation, production gloss, even background singers. “Under The Nine” became the blazing rocker of the set (and the longest track), and “The Smell of Cedar” unwittingly became my singing debut as Mike insisted he could not improve on my original guide vocal. I thought I might improve on it myself, once I had become more practiced in my singing voice, but Mike’s computer crashed shortly after he sent us his final mixes, making the miracles he had worked for us all the more precious.
In the meantime, Dorothy had become friends with another Facebook friend of mine, virtuoso guitarist Gary Lucas, best-known for his work with Jeff Buckley, Gods and Monsters, and the final incarnation of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band. Even in our wildest dreams, we hadn’t dared imagine attracting Gary to our project, but—on the night of January 11, 2020 having heard of our collaboration, he emailed me with “Hey, Dorothy M says you guys need some guitar?” Just to place this moment historically, 11 January was the very day the first coronavirus death was announced in China, and just a dozen days away from the first confirmed case in the United States. As a performing artist, Gary had spent years in near-perpetual motion giving solo performances in packed clubs, auditoriums, even embassies all over the world. Looking back, I’m sure that the imminent lockdown on live performances and international travel played a significant part in making him available and we’re forever grateful. Gary ended up adding his six-string stardust to a few songs, which he got into our hands by early July.
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Gary Lucas
By the time our “soundtrack album” was completed in late March 2021 . . .
The novella’s original set of five songs had become nine, a number which numerology tells us represents completion, but not finality—the very meaning underlying our song “Under The Nine.” Dorothy felt that a Thomas Hardy poem quoted in its pages might be converted into a proper song, which led to “Broken,” an absolutely shattering vocal performance that sounds to me native to the stage. Then, to our mutual surprise, one last song (“Fertile Baroness”) just happened, clearly belonging to the story though I could find no proper place for it in the existing narrative – which prompted me to add a brief coda to my Lecturer’s performance, in the spirit of an encore. It’s presented on the CD as a bonus track, preceded by Dorothy and Gary’s magical reprise of “Under the Nine,” which is where I most recognize something approximating the sound and spirit of the original United States of America. Feeling that the encore demanded a counterweight, we ended by concocting “Secret Life,” a corresponding Overture with the two of us adding vocals as if from the subconscious of the story about to be told.
We started out with no greater ambition than to give my readers some illustration, however basic, of how The Secret Life…’s
love songs “went.” We did that. Hell, we did much better than that. But what ultimately brings me the most joy about this book, this project, this collaboration is that it produced a long-awaited Second Act for one of experimental rock’s most singular voices, and an album I would cherish had it appeared under the aegis of complete strangers.
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3. SOME CLOSING THOUGHTS—From DOROTHY MOSKOWITZ
I think it’s fair to say that Tim Lucas holds multiple places in my heart, not merely one. I’ve had the great fortune to work with skilled lyricists, composers, stage directors, record producers and radio personalities over the years. They were all good friends, either at the outset, or after we began projects together. I met these people either in the music industry or in my later, less public educational venues.
When I met Tim online, I had outlived so many of these dear friends that I was struggling with both their loss and the lack of artistic support I’d always enjoyed as a collaborative artist. After all, I’d never been a “one woman band.” People advised me to find younger people. One such younger connection was unraveling when I sent Tim that piece about talking trees. I wasn’t inviting collaboration, simply a nod of encouragement. He responded with his works-in-progress and soon we were writing together, or to be clear, I was shaping ideas he had already invented. I added harmonies, sharpened melodies and phrasing and strengthened his form.
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Image: "Paper Sea” (2010), painting by Diane Pfister
I never dreamed that the Lucas/Moskowitz songwriting team would become so much more to me.
With an unfailing ear, Tim inspired me to be more inventive and to risk more. He evaluated my demo performances with tact and kindness. He was the patient witness to my emerging tech skills. There’s no way to replace the artistic friends I’d lost, but Tim has such deep talent in so many areas that I don’t seem to miss them as keenly. Yes, he’s indeed my friend.
I close with a little anecdote about one of our best tunes:
I had asked my immediate family to take time to listen to recordings of my recent songs as a Mothers’ Day gift this past year. They’d all heard Secret Life repertoire before, so I included only one song that Tim and I had done to end the mini-concert, “Trust In Love.” As it came on, I could physically feel the mood in the room change. No longer was it just family indulging me with helpful feedback, it was an audience, genuinely moved. I could see it in their faces. One daughter muttered “Power ballad!” Another said “Wow!” My husband loved the lyrics. Son-in-law nodded with smiles. The song seemed to hit a nerve. I knew it was good, but didn’t expect such depth of feeling. It was a “bravo” moment and I wished Tim were there for it.
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Well that was such a wonderful piece from Tim and Dorothy I really don’t want to spoil the atmosphere by talking about everyday matters.
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So very quickly. We have prepared all the orders for REVELATION AND OTHER TALES OF FANTASCIENCE by Albert E.Cowdrey. They will all be posted by the beginning of next week, if not before.
We also took a delivery of the trade paperback of RAMSEY CAMPBELL CERTAINLY edited by S.T.Joshi. It looks fantastic! Copies will be prepared and posted next week.
More news in the coming weeks.
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We've had another two glowing reviews for Steve Volk's UNDER A RAVEN'S WING.
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"A masterclass in how fiction of this kind should be written: stories of striking ingenuity, whose turns have at times taken me by surprise in a very satisfying way . . . Volk conjures images that, even if unsettling, tragic, or downright macabre, have a haunting beauty" —Matthew G Rees, Horla
"Mysteries laced with a high degree of gothic elements like insanity, disfigurement and deception . . . A deliciously dark trip through the 19th Century City of Lights . . . The book would be a perfect gift for any Sherlockian who likes a touch of the macabre" —JoAnn Alberstat, Canadian Holmes (The Journal of the Bootmakers of Toronto)
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Nicky and I are heading for the hills tomorrow . . . Yaaah-hoo-hooey! . . . and will be spending the coming week in the splendour of the Yorkshire Dales and all of the joys that will bring. But fear not mon braves, the rest of the gang will be on hand to help you out if needs be.
So, have a wonderful weekend and hugs from the greensward.
Pete
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