Review: Stone Free: Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966–June 1967

Stone Free: Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966–June 1967 by Jas Obrecht
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As the subtitle suggests, "Stone Free:Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966–June 1967" concentrates on a very specific period in Hendrix's life, from his 'discovery' in New York by ex-Animal, Chas Chandler, until his triumphant appearance at Monterey Pop in June 1967. The nine months between these events, when Jimi left his native USA to come to London, form the Experience, record his first music under his own name before returning to America on his way to global superstardom, are covered in great detail by Jas Obrecht, former editor of Guitar Player magazine. The book takes us on a month-by-month chronological journey as the unknown Hendrix takes 'Swinging London' by storm. The author is thorough if a little dry. He covers the Jimi Hendrix Experience's first gigs, where the guitarist's technique astounded contemporaries such as Eric Clapton and Pete Townsend, the mismatched package tours, with the likes of Englebert Humperdink and the Walker Brothers, which took him around the UK and into Europe. Obrecht lists the recording sessions, locations and numbers recorded, which produced Hendrix's first singles and his debut "Are You Experienced?" album. We also learn where Hendrix lived during the period.

The writing is a little 'matter of fact' but never tedious. The book does appear to be aimed at the 'Guitar Player' crowd rather than a general audience although, strangely given the revolutionary guitar sounds on that first album, Obrecht seems a little unsure how much 'technical' detail to include. There is a detailed analysis of whether the left-handed Hendrix used a right-handed Fender Telecaster on 'Purple Haze' ("the second overdub, at 1:08, is a repeat of the previous motif...") which would certainly appeal to a guitar player but the author only very occasionally revisits HOW Hendrix was playing. Elsewhere, the author touches on potential financial mismanagement by the group's handlers. He also mentions drug-taking. But, by limiting himself strictly to the period in the title, many things are never followed to a natural conclusion.

I enjoyed the book but suspect the readership is going to be fairly limited. It will not attract those new to Jimi Hendrix's music and will not entirely satisfy those familiar with his work. As a fan and a guitarist, I would love an extended examination of the recordings.

Thanks to NetGalley and University of North Carolina Press for the advance review copy.

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Review: Redemption Point

Redemption Point by Candice Fox
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Candice Fox’s Redemption is the second in her Crimson Lake series about mis-matched Australian PIs, Ted Conkaffey and Amanda Pharrell. I have not read the first but that in no way hindered my understanding or enjoyment of this novel. In fact, it feels like the first in a series.

To get the blurb out of the way first, the publisher compares this book to Jane Harper’s The Dry and, while there are similarities - Australia, murder, suspicion thrown on the protagonist - The Dry uses the environment almost as a main character, the oppressive heat is palpable and integral to the story; Redemption is not that novel. But, it is a very good thriller with interesting characters.

Having been aware of the first in the series, I was under the impression that the suspicion of child abduction and rape hanging over Conkaffey would have been dealt with in Crimson Lake, but the crime and its aftermath still follow him and he finds it hard to escape despite moving away from Sydney in an effort to escape those who deem him guilty despite the collapse of his trial. I have to admit, I didn’t particularly warm to Ted. His, first-person narrated, sections of the novel read almost self-serving; he seems to be trying hard to convince the reader that he didn’t do what he was accused of while, at the same time, telling us that he tries to ignore the support he is getting from podcasters championing his innocence. Not particularly liking him is not the same as not enjoying reading about him; I did and the touches such as the podcast are very well done.

Amanda, I did like. Unconventional, a one-off, a little bit weird, she is a convicted murderess, who did do it - although she got the wrong person. I really preferred the sections of the story that tell Amanda’s tale, and that of the police officer, Phillipa Sweeney, with whom Ted and Amanda become involved when investigating the local murder of two late-night bar staff when the father of one of the victims hires the pair to balance his mistrust of the police.

The stories of the local murder and of the attack of which Ted is accused intertwine and overlap and each is brought to a satisfactory conclusion by the author. Redemption is a very good detective novel and I will go back and read Fox’s first book in the series.

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Review: AC DC's Highway To Hell

AC DC's Highway To Hell by Joe Bonomo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One of the more straightforward 33 1/3 books, Joe Bonomo’s Highway to Hell is an examination of AC/DC’s breakthrough album and, while I profess to prefer this type of book to the more fanciful in the series, the real problem is that, while Highway to Hell is an excellent album, there is really not a lot here that requires detailed examination.

The book is split into three ‘chords’ - the first section puts the album in context and then essentially describes the songs in order; the second is a fairly pointless discussion of the album cover and live photos; the third a history of the band following Bon Scott’s death and the author and some of his friends looking back on how much they liked, and continue to like, the album. It’s all fairly inconsequential and very much US-centric but, if it makes you dig out the album again, it’s not a bad read.

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Review: Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV

Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV by Erik Davis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I like the 33 1/3 books and I like Led Zeppelin, although I have never subscribed to the hyperbolic nonsense and mythologising that constitutes the vast majority of the material written about the band over the years. I mean, they were an very good band but they were no Deep Purple…

In the first few paragraphs of his book, Erik Davis describes buying “a copy of that literally nameless slab of luminous rune-rock we must stoop to dub Led Zeppelin IV, or Four Symbols, or Zoso” and I almost stopped reading but, a few lines later, “sure it was cock rock, but it was also a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, stuffed into a cock.” I thought, maybe this is tongue in cheek.

In truth, there is a lot of nonsense in Davis’s book. He decries myth making and then proceeds to tell the story of Zeppelin’s fourth album with the mythical journey of ‘Percy’ which he seems to feel winds through the two sides of the album. He does have a sense of humour but also a tendency to use the purple prose with which the music press used to be filled. But, ultimately, it is a short book and there is enough here to hold the interest.

And Davis does find some interesting ways into the music, despite his concentrating on Page’s preoccupation with magic(k) and Percy’s ‘bona fide quest’ (which, it has to be said, despite having concocted it entirely unaided, he does lighten by comparing it to ‘The Odyssey or The Hobbit or Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.’ He makes interesting observations about the differences between vinyl and MP3 and how consumption of the former made for a more immersive, and yes, perhaps, a more magical experience; the final chapters which take the songs in pairs are very readable; Davis also spends time on Led Zeppelin’s, primarily Jimmy Page’s, wholesale thievery, whether from blues greats or Bert Jansch, which many other authors are too willing to excuse.

Perhaps I just prefer those 33 1/3 books which delve into the making of the albums. I’m glad I finished this but it is not one of my favourites.

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Review: The Winter of Frankie Machine

The Winter of Frankie Machine by Don Winslow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"It's a lot of work being me"

Frank Machianno is a worker, a businessman. He owns a bait shop on San Diego pier, supplies fish to the best local restaurants and has a property rental portfolio. Frank also enjoys the finer things in life. He has season tickets for the opera; he surfs, never missing 'Gentlemen's Hour'; he enjoys cooking in the kitchen he has designed to be just right. He loves his 'cucina'.

'"This is a quality-of-life issue"' and 'quality of life is doing the little things - doing then well, doing them right.'

And Frank is a stand-up guy, a 'sheriff' on the pier, who settles a dispute between a Vietnamese fisherman and a crossbow 'hunter' when the latter 'sees something in Frank's eyes that just makes him shut his mouth.'

Because Frank Macchianno was, in an earlier time, Frankie Machine, top hitman for the San Diego mob. And it appears that someone wants Frankie dead...

I've come late to Don Winslow. I read 'The Power of the Dog' and 'The Cartel', both big sprawling visceral, and brilliant, commentaries on the War on Drugs, and his latest, 'The Force', a stunning 'dirty cop' novel whose central character, and anti-Serpico, vehemently believes that he is the good guy. 'The Winter of Frankie Machine' makes it clear to me that Mr Winslow is the natural successor to Elmore Leonard.

In the first few chapters, we get a clear picture of who Frank Machianno is, and what his life is like. And then all hell breaks loose...

With sharp dialogue, succinct, even laconic, descriptions, flashbacks that serve the plot, Winslow tells a 'hunter becomes the hunted becomes the hunter' story which could easily be formulaic in lesser hands. The novel is reminiscent of the movies of William Friedkin, or perhaps Walter Hill -I'm thinking of the likes of 'The French Connection', 'To Live and Die in LA' or 'The Driver'.

I loved 'The Winter of Frankie Machine' and, as when I discovered the novels of Elmore Leonard maybe 30 years ago, there are many novels to catch up on. And I'm going to read them all....


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Review: The Death of Mrs. Westaway

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Out of money, out of luck and living in fear of the loanshark to whom she is debt, Harriet 'Hal' Westaway, a Brighton pier tarot card reader, receives a lifeline in the form of a letter from a Penzance solicitor informing her that she is a beneficiary of her grandmother's will. Almost immediately, Hal realises that this is a mistake as the dead woman is obviously not her grandmother, but she desperately decides to pretend otherwise in the hope of gaining the few thousand pounds to get her out of the hole she is in. And so Hal travels to the funeral and on to the Manderley-like Trepassen House and secrets of a 'family' she has never met....

I didn't know what to expect from this novel or from Ruth Ware. I had heard good things about her books, 'The Woman in Cabin 10' especially, but had not got round to reading them. 'The Death of Mrs. Westaway' is a gothic mystery which builds suspense and maintains a sense of foreboding throughout. Ruth Ware writes extremely well - one character is described as having "the air fo a man who had eaten a good meal, but would always want more, nibbling at nuts and cheese" - and keeps the tension so that the reader wants to keep reading to see what happens next. That I guessed a couple of the twists didn't matter at all and, while it does get a little frantic towards the climax, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and will be putting the author's previous books on my 'to-read list'.

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Review: The Whisperer

The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Strange one this. Despite being a fan of all things Italian, and despite The Whisperer apparently being hugely successful in Europe, I was unaware of both this book and the author until a friend's recommendation. It is advertised as a 'literary' thriller which sometimes means no plot, but it kept me intrigued to the end. There is a labyrinthine plot involving multiple abductions, and murders, and a team of suitably damaged experts attempting to solve the crimes which appear to be the work of a fiendishly clever serial killer. I felt it was not always plausible and the language is at times, not exactly stilted, but a little cold, a little 'off'. Whether this is the Carrisi's style or a result of the translation, I don't know but it adds a sense of strangeness to the novel which is accentuated by the lack of a sense of place; it is hard to determine where the action is taking place. Carrisi is Italian but the book does not feel Italian, nor do the characters have Italian names. If anything, it feels Scandinavian.

I set this aside to read on a trip to Rome, which is perhaps where my slight unease comes from - but it is not necessarily a bad thing. I will pick up another Carrisi, perhaps the one with Rome in the title - that should be Italian, right?

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Review: Sirens

Sirens by Joseph Knox
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Joseph Knox's debut is excellent. A dark noir set in a dark wintry Manchester, Sirens takes the reader into the city's drug culture in the company of DC Aidan Waits, a user himself, a troubled young man whose police career seems to be on a downward spiral when we meet him and whose prospects aren't improved much by the undercover assignment he 'accepts'. As Waits investigates the disappearance of a politician's daughter, death, both accidental and homicide, is never far away. The violence is sudden and shocking, the atmosphere nihilistic at times. Like the Joy Division albums, whose titles are shared by the sections of the novel, there is little humour here but the writing is gritty and realistic.

Sirens reminded me a lot of two other first novels which took my breath away recently - Dodgers by Bill Beverly & A Lesson In Violence (She Rides Shotgun) by Jordan Harper - and I look forward to reading the follow up, The Smiling Man, soon.

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Review: The Ruin

The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dervla McTiernan's debut, The Ruin, is an excellent addition to the fine run of Irish crime novels published in recent years. Set in Galway, the novel introduces Cormac Reilly, recently transferred from Dublin to a seemingly unwelcoming An Garda Síochána station in the city, who finds that suicide of a local man appears connected to a crime scene to which he was assigned 2o years ago as an inexperienced Guard. The Ruin reminded me a lot of Tana French, which can't be a bad thing. Dervla McTiernan writes very well; the characters are well drawn and the dialogue natural. I enjoyed this immensely and look forward to the next in the series due in 2019.

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Review: Detroit 67: The Year That Changed Soul

Detroit 67: The Year That Changed Soul by Stuart Cosgrove
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Detroit 67:The Year That Changed Soul is an excellent month-by-month chronology of the momentous political and social events which took place in the city in that year. Stuart Cosgrove hangs his history on Motown, the fantastically successful Hitsville USA, which was in 1967 rocked by internal events which mirrored those in the city of Detroit and the wider USA. He concentrates largely on the breakdown within The Supremes and the ousting of Florence Ballard but also covers the sacking of David Ruffin from The Temptations, Holland-Dozier-Holland's divorce from the label and the achingly sad story of Tammi Terrell.

Cosgrove is a very talented writer, particularly when covering the soul music he clearly loves, both the Motown artists and those in the wider Detroit soul scene. He is less convincing when writing about the emerging garage-rock scene and the MC5 - and Jimi Hendrix did not burn the American flag at Woodstock; he didn't need to, his incendiary rendition of the Star Spangled Banner was protest enough against the ongoing Vietnam war. But the book is largely successful and reads at times like a thriller. The sections detailing the murders of 3 black youths and the torture of others by Detroit police officers in the Algiers motel are harrowing.

1967 was the year that Motown began the move away from Detroit to LA and became less the purveyor of 'the Motown sound' but it led to the more overtly political and social commentary of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and the Norman Whitfield era Temptations. I am really looking forward to Cosgrove's take on the southern soul scene in his follow up, Memphis '68.

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Review: Disorder

Disorder by Gerard Brennan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Disorder.
The crowd roars.
Noise.
It crackles like a radio between stations.
Violence.
A troop of civilians moves as one. There's a savage beauty to this chaos. It tumbles like the tide. Crashes into riot shields. Seeks a break in the seal.
It's relentless.
Disorder.

I like Gerard Brennan. His early novellas, like The Point and Wee Rockets, 'crackled and fizzled' with violence and sly dark, very dark, Northern Ireland humour. And, while his 2014 novel, Undercover, felt like he was writing the book he thought he should write, a fairly straight thriller. Disorder is a return to that gritty, wryly funny, Belfast Noir.

Like the best Noir, Disorder is populated by disreputable characters with varying levels of stupidity and sleekedness (look it up..). It's a story of revenge, of drugs, of riots, of political and corporate meddling, all underpinned by a black comedy that perhaps only people from Norn Iron can understand but will hopefully be appreciated further afield.

Published by those nice people at No Alibis, the best bookshop in the world, Gerard Brennan's Disorder deserves to be in the company of Stuart Neville, Adrian McKinty, Colin Bateman and Brian McGilloway whose recommendations all appear on the cover.

Highly recommended.

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