#Last Exit

[st-just]

In some moments, you could not deny the grinding force of history at work. Most days, you convinced yourself that you were a single clearly outlined person with wants and goals and needs, like a character in a comic panel with a flat color background, but from time to time your eyes opened and you realized your hands were not your own but wielded by a great groaning lurching process. You were a clockwork monkey atop a music box. If you could ask the monkey, no doubt it would believe that it wanted to play the cymbals. The winding key had nothing to do with it.

-Zelda, Last Exit by Max Gladstone

[torpublishinggroup]

the background of this picture is actually a deceptively mobile bench that swings side to side and concerningly far back. in that way, it's kind of like Last Exit by max gladstone, a book that will yank your heart in unexpected directions. read this book to mourn, sigh, smile, and shiver

[postpunkindustrial]

Last Exit - Last Exit

R.I.P. Peter Brotzmann

[rockingreads]

Sting: Broken Music: A Memoir (2005)

Maybe the most surprising thing about Gordon 'Sting' Sumner's Broken Music is that it's not 800-pages-long, but a surprisingly succinct, elegant memoir that actually left me wanting more instead of begging for him to stop.

It's almost as though Sting subjugated his considerable (and not unjustified) ego by applying his mastery of pop music songcraft to his prose, and thus kept these memoirs refreshingly focused and engaging, when we all know he could have easily rambled on for as long as he pleased.

Instead, Sting candidly opens up about his parents' broken marriage and its traumatic effect on his upbringing, before detailing his long musical apprenticeship with a number of pub-crawling weekend jazz groups (most notably Last Exit) while holding down odd jobs ranging from bus conductor to school teacher.

And when he finally reached the big time with The Police and flourished as a hit songwriter, Sting provides an intimate insider's view of their five-album career, as well as his often fraught personal and alchemical creative relationship with bandmates Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers.

Broken Music winds down with the band's breakup in 1986, which coincided with Sting's parents' deaths in quick succession, thus neatly capping this particular story arc ... again, just like only a great songwriter can.

But that obviously means there's still much more to tell, should Sting ever decided to write about his wildly successful solo career, eventual touring reunion with The Police, and his rarefied middle age as rock royalty, in general.

After all, his is one of popular music's most famous names ... well, nicknames.

Featured Records:

The Police: Ghost in the Machine (1981)

Sting: The Dream of the Blue Turtles (1985)

Sting: … Nothing Like the Sun (1987)

Buy from: Amazon

[booksandchainmail]

ur periodic Last Exit posting is making me want to read it omg. i already read max gladstone’s substack for slightly sideways takes on writing so it’s not that much of a leap but now i’m considering picking up the series 👀

I'm glad! I really like basically every book Max Gladstone has written, but I didn't know he has a substack, I'll have to check that out.

RE: Last Exit, it's actually a standalone! (Though a hefty one). His longer series is the Craft books, which are secondary-world fantasy about magic lawyers, while Last Exit is an American road trip novel with dimensions hopping and cosmic horror.

Either one is well worth reading IMO, the Craft books are a little rougher around the edges to begin with, while Last Exit leans more into luxuriant prose

[nervoussystemmusicreverence]

Last Exit - Discharge

Music

Artist

Last Exit

Composer

Peter Brötzmann Ronald Shannon Jackson Bill Laswell Sonny Sharrock

Produced

Last Exit

Credit

Peter Brötzmann – tenor saxophone Ronald Shannon Jackson – drums, voice Bill Laswell – Fender 6-string bass Sonny Sharrock – guitar

Released

1986

Streaming

[thephilosopheroftheboudoir]

Last Exit

Detonator

from the lp Iron Path

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #46: “Enemy Within” by Last Exit

“The enemy within” is a phrase used by historical blemishes like Joseph McCarthy, Margaret Thatcher and Adolf Hitler. As the expression gains traction and frequency anew in the 21st Century, it’s worth remembering its history and what those who deployed this incitement to fear our neighbors, immigrants and dissenters did and wanted to do to democratic society.

But, the phrase is also a pointer inwards, a catalyst to examine and engage with the darker forces in our own souls, minds and hearts. One can’t be an enemy to anyone else without first kicking their better angels to the curb. 

Which brings us to Last Exit, purveyors of Free Jazz for punks, a roar as consciously aggressive as Bad Brains and Fugazi capable of getting powerful emotional content across without a word. 

“Enemy Within” appears on the short lived quartet’s self-titled 1986 debut carved from blistering live set at New Morning in Paris in February of that year. In less than four minutes, Sonny Sharrock(guitar), Peter Brötzmann (sax), Bill Laswell (6 string bass), and Ronald Shannon Jackson (drums, voice) present the angry maelstrom that occurs inside and out when enemies are identified and solutions proffered for “dealing with them properly.”

A less thoughtful early Metallica springs to mind during the opening drum/guitar stampede before Brötzmann’s uncivilized saxophone cuts and snares until derailed by Laswell’s foreboding bass in the concluding moments. 

This is not a thought experiment despite the opening semiotic rumination. This is pure emotion, musicians surrendering fully and freely to the moment. Given the improvisational nature of Last Exit, song titles were likely decided after the fact. As smart guys, it’s unlikely they were unaware of the dark overtones “Enemy Within” carried, and in pointing us that direction perhaps drive a contemplation absent from their spectacular outburst, an amplified example of how art takes on a life of its own once released into the wild.

[crudely-drawn-ben]

This makes me think about how the best depiction of the quintessentially American monster I have seen recently is the adversary in Max Gladstone's Last Exit - the terrifying hunter that pursues the main characters on their road trip through the America we know and the Americas that almost were, each more horrible than the last. He takes the form of a cowboy in a white hat, because this is America and they are travelling through his realm. A very dark and creepy book that, thanks to the uncanny ability of Max Gladstone to be amazing at writing books, sticks the landing in a very impressive way.

I guess the thing about Godzilla is that it represents a massive national trauma which eviscerated nature and the human soul, but the USA versions fall somewhere on the spectrum between "vaguely about 9/11 or recent natural disaster" and "giant monster smashy smash." I think that stems from trying to conceptualize Godzilla as representing a particular and isolated instance of disaster and translate that into something of a similar nature in the USA.

But the real deep down soul death and national trauma in the USA isn't anything recent, you can't point out something uniquely bad like an atomic bomb. Really the kaiju for the USA needs to be symbolic of how this whole place is an infinite recursive system of devouring its population, starting from colonization and going right up through to the present day. The crucial difference is that if a kaiju was to represent the deep, unhealed, and still bleeding scar at the heart of the nation, it has to by definition be some ancient dead thing which rises on the anguish of everyone consumed in the name of this country and burns it into the ground. There's not an easy way to make a USAmerican kaiju because the only way to do so accurately means the kaiju has to be the protagonist, and ultimately has to show how much the people in the USA are unified when the hyperwealthy and our government are destroyed.

Who is gonna make that?

[st-just]

She'd not understood this about magic, back when she started to look for some: magic was a slow form of suicide. You pushed on that gap between the way the world was and the way the world could be until, if you were strong and smart and pure and very lucky and very dumb, one day the gap grew teeth and opened its mouth and ate you.

-Zelda, Last Exit by Max Gladstone

[torpublishinggroup]

would ya look at the time? it's book o' clock

[mannytoodope]

Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner (born 2 October 1951), known as Sting, is a singer, songwriter, and actor. He was the principal songwriter, lead singer, and bassist for The Police from 1977 to 1985. He earned the nickname Sting because he wore yellow and black sweaters, Sting. After the Police ended in 1985, Sting started his solo career 1985 using rock, reggae, classical,new-age, and worldbeat elements in his music. Sting has received 16 Grammy Awards as a member of the Police and as a solo artist. During the band’s time together, their sound shifted from postpunk/ new wave to other sounds Sting used in his solo career. I started listening to The Police when I was getting into postpunk music. They were one of my favorites. Then, honestly, I stopped listening to them. I liked their reggae-like sound and aggressive sound that is synonymous with postpunk, and I liked Sting’s. In 2003, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for recording. Sting has received numerous awards for his work in music, as a solo artist, and with the Police. Sting has sold over 100 million records and won many awards as a solo artist. In 2003, he received a star on The Hollywood Walk of Fame. Sting has worked with various artists and appeared and made music for films. Sting is still making music, and the Police put their differences aside for a small reunion and tour. Sting has a successful career and will continue making music for his fans.

[postpunkindustrial]

Last Exit - Last Exit

R.I.P. Peter Brotzmann

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

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[twistedappletree]

show me what it’s like

to give back pain.