#thrlller

[ninjajustice]

One of my favorite vigilante movies

[myrecordcollections]

Cold Blood

Thriller

@ 1973 Japan Pressing

*****

Thriller! -- Cold Blood's fourth LP -- is a continuation on the brass-intensive funky R&B that drove their previous efforts. In contrast to those discs, however, there is very little in the way of original material here, the singular exception being Max Haskett's rollicking "Live Your Dream," which features the Pointer Sisters on backing vocals. This was not the first collaborative effort between the two either, as the vocal trio had also made a few notable contributions to the Sisyphus album. One of the primary distinctions between Cold Blood and their Bay Area contemporaries the Tower of Power is lead vocalist Lydia Pense. She has developed from simply belting out the blues -- à la Janis Joplin -- to becoming an increasingly sensitive lyrical interpreter without diminishing her prowess or guttural growl. One prime example is her ease and agility on the cover of Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" -- which likewise includes some of the finest and most tasteful contributions from the horn section. The same can also be said of their cover of the Band's "Sleeping" -- retaining much of the same charm as the original. Cold Blood contrasts the mellow with a few loud funkified fusion numbers, such as the lead track, "Baby I Love You," and "Kissing My Love" -- which hearkens directly back to the double-jointed rhythms found in the band's eponymously titled debut album. Another highlight is Raul Matute's Hammond-organ on the classic blues "Feel So Bad" -- which is similar to Ray Charles' original reading.

[lzteach]

Congratulations @amweeks00 on winning “Cemetery Girl” @davidbellnovels please message me your address and voice of coffee @lzagon@Yahoo!.com. My deepest heartfelt thanks to @davidbellnovels for his generosity kindness and thoughtfulness during this Instagram giveaway. Please visit @davidbellnovels website and leave a review on Goodreads Amazon and Barnes and Noble. #cemeterygirl #thrlller #davidbellnovels ty shoutout to @getredpr

[alexdecampi]

A funny thing happened today. I’m in the middle of press for my Mayday series (Cold War spy thriller from @imagecomics; with Tony Parker as line artist and Blond on colour art), as it launches in early November. You can pre-order the first issue here!

Tony and I were scheduled to do a podcast with a comics website and the guy has trouble setting it up. I say, you know you have to upgrade Skype to host conference calls, right? He says no. I say, OK, go do that and come back. An hour drags by as I coach the kid through things like restarting his computer after upgrading Skype. (IT Helpdesk Alex!). We finally get online after cooling our heels all morning amidst a formidable thicket of deadlines, and the guy asks his first question. I start to answer and it immediately sounds like Dresden, a thunderous and constant noise in the background. I fade off. “Uh, what’s that noise?” I ask. “Oh,” says the journalist. “I’m frantically transcribing what you’re saying.” (Never mind that the whole point of Skype is it records the call.) “Um,” I say. “So you won’t be using this as a podcast?” “Oh, nope.” “Ah. Can you email us questions then? Because Tony and I are dying on deadlines.” “Sure.”

So he does. I answer them at about 11pm that night, with two other interviews, after reading a screenplay and ekeing out about 750 words on my novel. I send my replies to the journalist and to Tony (so he can add his). I come home today to find a brusque email from the site’s editor saying he’s decided not to run our interview, and apologies if any time has been wasted. “If.”

Well, after I talk myself down from throwing my laptop out the window (can’t afford a new one, alas), I look at my interview answers. They’re all right, y’know? Especially for being done at fucking midnight. So here they are. Mayday: the untold story, for the unprepared journalist.

Where did this project originally come from? Why the Cold War?

My family has some history on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, and both my mom and my dad briefly worked for security agencies (CIA and NSA). I grew up in the early 1980s with my dad basically commuting to Romania from our home near Philadelphia for a good few years, while he helped set up a joint-venture factory. He also spent a lot of time in Moscow and Leningrad. So I suppose I'm chasing ghosts, in a way. The ghosts of my own past.

Why specifically 1971? Well, it's fun to write about today from the distancing lens of history. There was so much similar. Riots, anger, a feeling of despair and hopelessness after a prolonged period of hope, bad drugs, shitty politicians, worse wars, and rock stars dying.

Tony, when did you get brought into the book?

(I’m answering for Tony here. Normally he’d tell the story himself.) I met Tony at Phoenix Comicon a couple years ago, and saw the original inked pages he was doing for Paul Cornell’s This Damned Band. I was completely blown away by them and thought, “I gotta work with this guy.” So I pitched him Mayday and he loved it. Tony is a delight to work with -- not only one of the most talented comics artists I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with, but always professional, always communicative, always pleasant. 

Where did the decision come from to mix the Cold War and psychedelia? Those two aren’t usually mixed, even though the CIA funded LSD trials.

We do a bunch of things that aren't usually done in spy books. Our spies aren't polished sophisticates in suits whose use of wholesale violence somehow becomes condoned because Upper Class White. Our main operative never wears a suit, is basically a street thug, and when the violence hits it's terrifying and explosive and uncontrollable. Not a neat business of gadgets and Aston Martins. The psychedelia... the book is very much based in the early-70s auteur film trope of a couple on the run against the man: Antonioni's Zabriskie Point; Malick's Badlands; even Easy Rider. Our operatives are young; in their early 20s. They make bad decisions. They take drugs. It's... realistic, in that way, rather than this pantomime of Establishment-sponsored, anodyne violence. 

There’s a funny sort of East Coast/West Coast tension in this series; it feeds nicely into a more global East/West tension. Was that intentional?

Heh. Every time anyone talks about East Coast / West Coast tension I get the chorus from Big Pun's “You Ain't A Killer” running through my head. In the book, it's not actually East Coast / West Coast tension. It's CIA / FBI. Those agencies have... opinions about each other, related to the fact that – so to speak – one is an agency created to guard banks, and the other is an agency that robs them. But the CIA has no police powers, so for any activity on US soil they need to partner with the FBI. The FBI carry the guns, make the arrests, et cetera.

Music is an important part of this series. Mind telling us a little bit about that decision?

It's part of grounding the book in its era, simultaneously exploring the political landscape and the sonic landscape. I don't have to tell you about the anger that's creeping around the edges of the youth scene; I can have you listen to it: Alice Cooper. The MC5. Sabbath. The Stooges. Then I can contrast that with the establishment pop figures, like the Osmonds. You can form your own conclusions. 1971 was the death throes of the sixties and man, you can hear it.

There’s been a serious explosion in Cold War spy series set in the U.S.: The Amerikans, Red One. How does this book fit alongside those series?

Er, one (very good) series on a minor cable channel and a book that's taken two years to get four issues out? Tiny explosion. Red One is lovely, it's a very French adventure-sex comedy, and The Americans is based on the idea of illegals / sleeper agents... which actually didn't do much (if any) damage in espionage terms to the American intelligence effort. The big disasters as far as our secrets were concerned were moles like Ames and Hanssen, and of course the absolute stasis created in CIA activity by Angleton's search for moles a decade earlier. Our book is just... very different from both. It's a realpolitik thriller about Soviet special tasks operatives and the CIA case officers trying to bring them down. It's much more about terrorism, really, which is what espionage is when you take the suits away and put the operatives in hoodies. 

What’s the plan for this title? Is it going to run as a miniseries?

It is a miniseries. Five issues. If successful there will be another miniseries – this is actually the only one we're planning to set in America. After this, West Berlin for the Red Army Faction, then Bucharest for a very dangerous run on the night train to Vienna.

[lecharivariofficiel]

FANFARE - Entretien avec !!! (Chk Chk Chk) à la Route du Rock 2013

Imprononçable. Une triple exclamation en guise de nom, ça promet. Dix-sept ans que !!! prodigue, à chaque sortie d'album, sa dose d'énergie musicale. Leur dernier opus, intitulé "Thr!!!er", ne déroge pas à la règle. Nous avons rencontré Nick, chanteur/danseur fou du groupe, sorte de version 2030 d'Ed Macfarlane, et son compère Rafael, bassiste. Entre deux galettes-saucisses, nous avons discuté de Michael Jackson, de bar VIP et de charivari, pour une interview très "carnival-fun". 

L'interview à visionner ici