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Fiona Apple’s Art of Radical Sensitivity

For years, the elusive singer-songwriter has been working, at home, on an album with a strikingly raw and percussive sound. But is she prepared to release it into the world?

by Emily Nussbaum for The New Yorker

Fiona Apple was wrestling with her dog, Mercy, the way a person might thrash, happily, in rough waves. Apple tugged on a purple toy as Mercy, a pit-bull-boxer mix, gripped it in her jaws, spinning Apple in circles. Worn out, they flopped onto two daybeds in the living room, in front of a TV that was always on. The first day that I visited, last July, it was set to MSNBC, which was airing a story about Jeffrey Epstein’s little black book.

These days, the singer-songwriter, who is forty-two, rarely leaves her tranquil house, in Venice Beach, other than to take early-morning walks on the beach with Mercy. Five years ago, Apple stopped going to Largo, the Los Angeles venue where, since the late nineties, she’d regularly performed her thorny, emotionally revelatory songs. (Her song “Largo” still plays on the club’s Web site.) She’d cancelled her most recent tour, in 2012, when Janet, a pit bull she had adopted when she was twenty-two, was dying. Still, a lot can go on without leaving home. Apple’s new album, whose completion she’d been inching toward for years, was a tricky topic, and so, during the week that I visited, we cycled in and out of other subjects, among them her decision, a year earlier, to stop drinking; estrangements from old friends; and her memories of growing up, in Manhattan, as the youngest child in the “second family” of a married Broadway actor. Near the front door of Apple’s house stood a chalkboard on wheels, which was scrawled with the title of the upcoming album: “Fetch the Bolt Cutters.”

One afternoon, Apple’s older sister, Amber, arrived to record vocal harmonies. In the living room, there was an upright piano, its top piled with keepsakes, including a stuffed toucan knitted by Apple’s mother and a photograph of Martha Graham doing a backbend. Apple’s friend Zelda Hallman, who had not long ago become her housemate, was in the sunny yellow kitchen, cooking tilapia for Mercy and for Hallman’s Bernese mountain dog, Maddie. In the back yard, there was a guesthouse, where Apple’s half brother, Bran Maggart, a carpenter, lived. (For years, he’d worked as a driver for Apple, who never got a license, and helped manage her tours.) Apple’s father, Brandon Maggart, also lives in Venice Beach; her mother, Diane McAfee, a former dancer and actress, remains in New York, in the Morningside Heights apartment building where Apple grew up.

Amber, a cabaret singer who records under the name Maude Maggart, had brought along her thirteen-month-old baby, Winifred, who scooched across the floor, playing under the piano. Apple was there when Winifred was born, and, as we talked about the bizarreness of childbirth, Apple told me a joke about a lady who got pregnant with twins. Whenever people asked the lady if she wanted boys or girls, she said, “I don’t care, I just want my children to be polite!” Nine months passed, but she didn’t go into labor. A year went by—still nothing. “Eight, nine, twenty years!” Apple said, her eyebrows doing a jig. “Twenty-five years—and finally they’re, like, ‘We have to figure out what’s going on in there.’ ” When doctors peeked inside, they found “two middle-aged men going, ‘After youuuu!’ ‘No, after youuuu! ’ ”

Amber was there to record one line: a bit of harmony on “Newspaper,” one of thirteen new songs on the album. Apple, who wore a light-blue oxford shirt and loose beige pants, her hair in a low bun, stood by the piano, coaching Amber, who sat down in a wicker rocking chair, pulling Winifred onto her lap. “It’s a shame, because you and I didn’t get a witness!” Apple crooned, placing the notes in the air with her palm. Then the sisters sang, in harmony, “We’re the only ones who know!” The “we’re” came out as a jaunty warble, adding ironic subtext to the song, which was about two women connected by their histories with an abusive man. Apple, with her singular smoky contralto, modelled the complex emotions of the line for Amber, warming her up to record.

“Does that work?” Apple asked Winifred, who gazed up from her mother’s lap. Abruptly, Apple bent her knees, poked her elbows back like wings, and swung her hips, peekabooing toward Winifred. The baby laughed. It was simultaneously a rehearsal and a playdate.

“Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is a reference to a scene in “The Fall,” the British police procedural starring Gillian Anderson as a sex-crimes investigator; Anderson’s character calls out the phrase after finding a locked door to a room where a girl has been tortured. Like all of Apple’s projects, this one was taking a long while to emerge, arriving through a slow-drip process of creative self-interrogation that has produced, over a quarter century, a narrow but deep songbook. Her albums are both profoundly personal—tracing her heartaches, her showdowns with her own fragility, and her fierce, phoenix-like recoveries—and musically audacious, growing wilder and stranger with each round. As her 2005 song “Extraordinary Machine” suggests, whereas other artists might move fast, grasping for fresh influences and achieving superficial novelty, Apple prides herself on a stickier originality, one that springs from an internal tick-tock: “I still only travel by foot, and by foot it’s a slow climb / But I’m good at being uncomfortable, so I can’t stop changing all the time.”

The new album, she said, was close to being finished, but, as with the twins from the joke, the due date kept getting pushed back. She was at once excited about these songs—composed and recorded at home, with all production decisions under her control—and apprehensive about some of their subject matter, as well as their raw sound (drums, chants, bells). She was also wary of facing public scrutiny again. Fame has long been a jarring experience for Apple, who has dealt since childhood with obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and anxiety.

After a while, she and Amber went into a small room—Apple’s former bedroom, where, for years, she had slept on a futon with Janet. After the dog died, she’d found herself unable to fall asleep there, and had turned the room into a recording studio, although it looked nothing like one: it was cluttered, with one small window and no soundproofing. There was a beat-up wooden desk and a computer on which Apple recorded tracks, using GarageBand. There was a mike stand and a Day of the Dead painting of a smiling female skeleton holding a skeleton dog. Every surface, from the shelves to the floor, was covered in a mulch of battered percussion instruments: bells, wooden blocks, drums, metal squares.

The sisters recorded the lyric over and over, with Apple at the computer and Amber standing, Winifred on her hip. During one take, Amber pulled the neck of her turquoise leotard down and began nursing her daughter. Apple looked up from GarageBand, caught her sister’s eye, and smiled. “It’s happening—it’s happening,” she said.

When you tell people that you are planning to meet with Fiona Apple, they almost inevitably ask if she’s O.K. What “O.K.” means isn’t necessarily obvious, however. Maybe it means healthy, or happy. Maybe it means creating the volcanic and tender songs that she’s been writing since she was a child—or maybe it doesn’t, if making music isn’t what makes her happy. Maybe it means being unhappy, but in a way that is still fulfilling, still meaningful. That’s the conundrum when someone’s artistry is tied so fully to her vulnerability, and to the act of dwelling in and stirring up her most painful emotions, as a sort of destabilizing muse.

In the nineties, Apple’s emergence felt near-mythical. Fiona Apple McAfee-Maggart, the musically precocious, emotionally fragile descendant of a line of entertainers, was a classically trained pianist who began composing at seven. One night, at the age of sixteen, she was in her apartment, staring down at Riverside Park, when she thought she heard a voice telling her to record songs drawn from her notebooks, which were full of heartbreak and sexual trauma. She flew to L.A., where her father was living, and with his help recorded three songs; they made seventy-eight demo tapes, and he told her to prepare to hustle. Yet the first tape she shared was enough: a friend passed a copy to the music publicist she babysat for, who gave it to Andrew Slater, a prominent record producer and manager. Slater, then thirty-seven, hired a band, booked a studio in L.A., and produced her début album, “Tidal.” It featured such sophisticated ballads as “Shadowboxer,” as well as the hit “Criminal,” which irresistibly combined a hip-hop beat, rattling piano, and sinuous flute; she’d written it in forty-five minutes, during a lunch break at the studio. The album sold 2.7 million copies.

Slater also oversaw a marketing campaign that presented his new artist as a sulky siren, transforming her into a global star and a media target. Diane McAfee remembers that time as a “whirlwind,” recalling the day when her daughter received an advance for “Tidal”—a check for a hundred thousand dollars. “I said, ‘Oh, my God, this is unbelievable!’ ” McAfee told me. They were in their dining room, and Apple was “backing away, not excited.” Because Apple was not yet eighteen, her mother had to co-sign her record contract.

The musician Aimee Mann and her partner, the musician Michael Penn, who was also signed with Slater at the time, remember seeing Apple perform at the Troubadour, in West Hollywood, at a private showcase for “Tidal,” in 1996. Mann glimpsed in the teen-ager the kind of brazen, complex female musicianship that she’d been longing for—a tonic in an era dominated by indie-male swagger. Onstage, Apple was funny and chatty, calling the audience “grownups.” After the show, she did cartwheels in the alley outside. Mann recalled Apple introducing the song “Carrion” with a story about how sometimes there’s a person you go back to, again and again, who never gives you what you need, “and the lesson is you don’t need them.” As Apple’s career accelerated, Mann read a Rolling Stone profile in which Apple spoke about having been raped, at twelve, by a stranger, who attacked her in a stairwell as her dog barked inside her family’s apartment. Mann said that it was unheard of, and inspiring, for a female artist to speak so frankly about sexual violence, without shame or apology. But Apple’s candor made her worry. Mann had experienced her own share of trauma; she’d also collapsed from exhaustion while on tour. “I was afraid of what would happen to her on the road,” she said. “It’s an unnatural way to live.”

In fact, the turn of the millennium became an electric, unstable period for Apple, who was adored by her fans but also mocked, and leered at, by the male-dominated rock press, who often treated her as a tabloid curiosity—a bruised prodigy to be both ogled and pitied. Much of the press’s response was connected to the 1997 video for “Criminal,” whose director, Mark Romanek, has described it as a “tribute” to Nan Goldin’s photographs of her junkie demimonde—although the stronger link is to Larry Clark’s 1995 movie, “Kids,” and to the quickly banned Calvin Klein ads depicting teens being coerced into making porn. When Apple’s oldest friend, Manuela Paz, saw “Criminal,” she was unnerved, not just by the sight of her friend in a lace teddy, gyrating among passed-out models, but also by a sense that the video, for all its male-gaze titillation, had uncannily absorbed the darker aspects of her and Apple’s own milieu—one of teens running around upper Manhattan with little oversight. “How did they know?” Paz asked herself.

Apple’s unscripted acceptance speech at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, in which she announced, “This world is bullshit,” further stoked media hostility. The speech, which included her earnestly quoting Maya Angelou and encouraging fans not to model themselves on “what you think that we think is cool,” seems, in retrospect, most shocking for how on target it is (something true of so many “crazy lady” scandals of that period, like Sinéad O’Connor on “Saturday Night Live,” protesting sexual abuse in the Catholic Church). But, by 2000, when Apple had an onstage meltdown at the Manhattan venue Roseland, instability had become her “brand.” She was haunted by her early interviews, like one in Spin, illustrated with lascivious photographs by Terry Richardson, that quoted her saying, “I’m going to die young. I’m going to cut another album, and I’m going to do good things, help people, and then I’m going to die.” Apple’s love life was heavily covered, too: she dated the magician David Blaine (who was then a member of Leonardo DiCaprio’s “Pussy Posse”) and the film director Paul Thomas Anderson, with whom she lived for several years. While Anderson and Apple were together, he released “Magnolia” and she released “When the Pawn . . . ,” her flinty second album, whose full, eighty-nine-word title—a pugilistic verse written in response to the Spin profile—attracted its own stream of jokes.

During this period, Mark (Flanny) Flanagan, the owner of Largo, a brainy enclave of musicians and comedians within show-biz L.A., became Apple’s friend and patron. (In an e-mail to me, he called her “our little champ.”) One day, Apple visited his office, wondering what would happen if she cut off her fingertip—then would her management let her stop touring? Flanagan, disturbed, told her that she could get a note from a shrink instead, and urged her to refuse to do anything she didn’t want to do.

As the decades passed, Apple’s reputation as a “difficult woman” receded. After she left Anderson, in 2002, she holed up in Venice Beach, emerging every few years with a new album: first, “Extraordinary Machine” (2005), a glorious glockenspiel of self-assertion and payback; then the wise, insightful “The Idler Wheel . . .” (2012). She was increasingly recognized as a singer-songwriter on the level of Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. The music of other nineties icons grew dated, or panicky in its bid for relevance, whereas Apple’s albums felt unique and lasting. The skittering ricochets of her melodies matched the shrewd wit of her lyrics, which could swerve from damning to generous in a syllable, settling scores but also capturing the perversity of a brain aflame with sensitivity: “How can I ask anyone to love me / When all I do is beg to be left alone?”

Today, Apple still bridles at old coverage of her. Yet she remains almost helplessly transparent about her struggles—she’s a blurter who knows that it’s a mistake to treat journalists as shrinks, but does so anyway. She’s conscious of the multiple ironies in her image. “Everyone has always worried that people are taking advantage of me,” she said. “Even the people who take advantage of me worry that people are taking advantage of me.”

Lurking on Tumblr (where messages from her are sometimes posted on the fan page Fiona Apple Rocks), she can see how much the culture has transformed, becoming one shared virtual notebook. Female singers like Lady Gaga and Kesha now talk openly about having been raped—and, in the wake of #MeToo, it’s more widely understood that sexual violence is as common as rain. Mental illness is less of a taboo, too. In recent years, a swell of teen-age musicians, such as Lorde and Billie Eilish, have produced bravura albums in Apple’s tradition, while young female activists, including Greta Thunberg and Emma González, keep announcing, to an audience more prepared to listen, that this world is bullshit.

Apple knows the cliché about early fame—that it freezes you at the age you achieved it. Because she’d never had to toil in anonymity, and had learned her craft and made her mistakes in public, she’d been perceived, as she put it to me ruefully, as “the patron saint of mental illness, instead of as someone who creates things.” If she wanted to keep bringing new songs into the world, she needed to have thicker skin. But that had never been her gift.

As we talked in the studio, Apple’s band member Amy Aileen Wood arrived, with new mixes. Wood, an indie-rock drummer, was one of three musicians Apple had enlisted to help create the new album; the others were the bassist Sebastian Steinberg, of the nineties group Soul Coughing, and Davíd Garza, a Latin-rock singer-songwriter and guitarist. Wood and Apple told me that their first encounter, at a recording studio two decades ago, was awkward. Apple remembered feeling intimidated by Wood and by her girlfriend, who seemed “tall and cool.” When Wood described something as “rad,” Apple shot back, “Did you really just say rad?” Wood hid in the bathroom and cried.

Now Wood and her father, John Would, a sound engineer, were collaborating with Apple on building mixes from hundreds of homemade takes. (Apple also worked with Dave Way and, later in the process, Tchad Blake.) The earliest glimmers of “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” began in 2012, when Apple experimented with a concept album about her Venice Beach home, jokingly called “House Music.” She also considered basing an album on the Pando—a giant grove of aspens, in Utah, that is considered a single living being—creating songs that shared common roots.

Finally, around 2015, she pulled together the band. She and Steinberg, a joyfully eccentric bassist with a long gray beard, had played live together for years, and had shared intense, sometimes painful experiences, including an arrest, while on tour in 2012, for hashish possession. (Apple spent the night in a Texas jail cell, where she defiantly gave what Steinberg described as “her best vocal performance ever”; she also ended up on TMZ.) Steinberg, who worked with Apple on “Idler Wheel,” said that her new album was inspired by her fascination with the potential of using a band “as an organism instead of an assemblage—something natural.”

The first new song that Apple recorded was “On I Go,” which was inspired by a Vipassana chant; she sang it into her phone while hiking in Topanga Canyon. Back at home, she dug out old lyrics and wrote new ones, and hosted anarchic bonding sessions with her bandmates. “She wanted to start from the ground,” Garza said. “For her, the ground is rhythm.” The band gathered percussive objects: containers wrapped with rubber bands, empty oilcans filled with dirt, rattling seedpods that Apple had baked in her oven. Apple even tapped on her dog Janet’s bones, which she kept in a pretty beige box in the living room. Apple and the other musicians would march around her house and chant. “Sebastian has a low, sonorous voice,” Garza said, of these early meetings. “Amy’s super-shy. I’m like Slim Whitman—we joke my voice is higher than Fiona’s. She has that husky beautiful timbre, and she would just . . . speak her truth. It felt more like a sculpture being built than an album being made.”

Steinberg told me, “We played the way kids play or the way birds sing.” Wood recalled, “We would have cocktails and jam,” adding that it took some time for her to get used to these epic “meditations,” which could veer into emotional chaos. Steinberg recalls “stomping on the walls, on the floor—playing her house.” Once, when Apple was upset about a recent breakup, with the writer Jonathan Ames, she got into a drunken argument with the band members; Wood took her drums to a gig, which Apple misunderstood as a slight, and Apple went off and wrote a bitterly rollicking song about rejection, “The Drumset Is Gone.”

There were more stops and starts. A three-week group visit to the Sonic Ranch recording studio, in rural Texas—where some band members got stoned in pecan fields, Mercy accidentally ate snake poison, and Apple watched the movie “Whiplash” on mushrooms—was largely a wash, despite such cool experiments as recording inside an abandoned water tower. But Garza praised Apple as “someone who really trusts the unknown, trusting the river,” adding, “She’s the queen of it.”

Once Apple returned to Venice Beach, she finally began making headway, rerecording and rewriting songs in uneven intervals, often alone, in her former bedroom. At first, she recorded long, uncut takes of herself hitting instruments against random things; she built these files, which had names like “metal shaker,” “couch tymp,” and “bean drums,” into a “percussion orchestra,” which she used to make songs. She yowled the vocals over and over, stretching her voice into fresh shapes; like a Dogme 95 filmmaker, she rejected any digital smoothing. “She’s not afraid to let her voice be in the room and of the room,” Garza said. “Modern recording erases that.”

The resulting songs are so percussion-heavy that they’re almost martial. Passages loop and repeat, and there are out-of-the-blue tempo changes. Steinberg described the new numbers as closer to “Hot Knife,” an “Idler Wheel” track that pairs Andrews Sisters-style harmonies with stark timpani beats, than to her early songs, which were intricately orchestrated. “It’s very raw and unslick,” he said, of the new work, because her “agenda has gotten wilder and a lot less concerned with what the outside world thinks—she’s not seventeen, she’s forty, and she’s got no reason not to do exactly what she wants.”

Apple had been writing songs in the same notebooks for years, scribbling new lyrics alongside older ones. At one point, as we sat on the floor near the piano, she grabbed a stack of them, hunting for some lines she’d written when she was fifteen: “Evil is a relay sport / When the one who’s burned turns to pass the torch.” “My handwriting is so different,” she marvelled, flipping pages. She found a diary entry from 1997: “I’m insecure about the guys in my band. I want to spend more time with them! But it seems impossible to ever go out and have fun.” Apple laughed out loud, amazed. “I can’t even recognize this person,” she said. “ ‘I want to go out and have fun!’ ”

“Here’s the bridge to ‘Fast as You Can,’ ” she said, referring to a song from “When the Pawn . . . .” Then she announced, “Oh, here it is—‘Evil is a relay sport.’ ” She continued reading: “It breathes in the past and then—” She shot me a knowing glance. “Lots of my writing from then is just, like, I don’t know how to say it: a young person trying to be a writer.” Written in the margin was the word “Help.”

Whenever I asked Apple how she created melodies, she apologized for lacking the language to describe her process (often with an anxious detour about not being as good a drummer as Wood). She said that her focus on rhythm had some connections to the O.C.D. rituals she’d developed as a child, like crunching leaves and counting breaths, or roller-skating around her dining-room table eighty-eight times—the number of keys on a piano—while singing Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.”

But Apple brightened whenever she talked about writing lyrics, speaking confidently about assonance and serendipity, about the joy of having the words “glide down the back of my throat”—as she put it, stroking her neck—when she got them exactly right. She collects words on index cards: “Angel,” “Excel,” “Intel,” “Gel.” She writes the alphabet above her drafts, searching, with puzzle-solver focus, for puns, rhymes, and accidental insights.

The new songs were full of spiky, layered wordplay. In “Rack of His,” Apple sings, like a sideshow barker, “Check out that rack of his! / Look at that row of guitar necks / Lined up like eager fillies / Outstretched like legs of Rockettes.” In the darkly funny “Kick Me Under the Table,” she tells a man at a fancy party, “I would beg to disagree / But begging disagrees with me.” As frank as her lyrics can be, they are not easily decoded as pure biography. She said, of “Rack of His,” “I started writing this song years ago about one relationship, and then, when I finished it, it was about a different relationship.”

When I described the clever “Ladies”—the music of which she co-wrote with Steinberg—as having a vaudeville vibe, Apple flinched. She found the notion corny. “It’s just, like, something I’ve got in my blood that I’m gonna need to get rid of,” she said. Other songs felt close to hip-hop, with her voice used more for force and flow than for melody, and as a vehicle for braggadocio and insults. There was a pungency in Apple’s torch-and-honey voice emitting growls, shrieks, and hoots.

Some of the new material was strikingly angry. The cathartic “For Her” builds to Apple hollering, “Good mornin’! Good mornin’ / You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in.” The song had grown out of a recording session the band held shortly after the nomination hearings of the Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh; like many women, Apple felt scalded with rage about survivors of sexual violence being disbelieved. The title track came to her later; a meditation on feeling ostracized, it jumps between lucidity and fury. Drumsticks clatter sparely over gentle Mellotron notes as Apple muses, “I’ve been thinking about when I was trying to be your friend / I thought it was, then— / But it wasn’t, it wasn’t genuine.” Then, as she sings, “Fetch the bolt cutters, I’ve been in here too long,” her voice doubles, harmonies turning into a hubbub, and there’s a sudden “meow” sound. In the final moments, dogs bark as Apple mutters, “Whatever happens, whatever happens.”

Partway through, she sings, “I thought that being blacklisted would be grist for the mill.” She improvised the line while recording; she knew that it was good, because it was embarrassing. “It sounds bitter,” she said. The song isn’t entirely despairing, though. The next line makes an impassioned allusion to a song by Kate Bush, one of Apple’s earliest musical heroines: “I need to run up that hill / I will, I will, I will.”

One day during my July visit, Ames, Apple’s ex-boyfriend, stopped by, on his way to the beach. “Mercy, you are so powerful!” he said, as the dog jumped on him. “I’m waiting for her to get calmer, so I can give her a nice hug.” Apple had described Ames to me as her kindest ex, and there was an easy warmth between them. They took turns recalling their love affair, which began in 2006, when Apple attended a performance by Ames at the Moth, the storytelling event, in New York.

For years, Ames had written candid, funny columns in the New York Press about sex and his psychological fragilities, a history that appealed to Apple. They were together for four years, then broke up, in 2010; five years later, they reunited, but the relationship soon ended again, partly because of Ames’s concerns about Apple’s drinking. Ames recalled to Apple that, as the relationship soured, “you would yell at me and call me stupid.” He added that he didn’t have much of a temper, which became its own kind of problem.

“You would annoy me,” Apple said, with a smile.

“I was annoying!” he said, laughing.

They were being so loving with each other—even about the bad times, like when Ames would find Apple passed out and worry that she’d stopped breathing—that it seemed almost mysterious that they had broken up. Then, step by step, the conversation hit the skids. The turn came when Ames started offering Apple advice on knee pain that was keeping her from walking Mercy—a result, she believed, of obsessive hiking. He told her to read “Healing Back Pain,” by John Sarno. The pain, he said, was repressed anger.

At first, Apple was open to this idea—or, at least, she was polite about it. But, when Ames kept looping back to the notion, Apple went ominously quiet. Her eyes turned red, rimmed with tears that didn’t spill. She curled up, pulling sofa cushions to her chest, her back arched, glaring.

It was like watching their relationship and breakup reënacted in an hour. When Ames began describing “A Hundred Years of Solitude” in order to make the point that Apple had a “Márquezian sense of time,” she shot back, “Are you saying that time is like thirty-seven years tied to a tree with me?” Ames used to call her the Negative Juicer, Apple said, her voice sardonic: “I just extract the negative stuff.” She spun this into a black aria of self-loathing, arguing, like a prosecutor, for the most vicious interpretation of herself: “I put it in a thing and I bring out all the bad stuff. And I serve it up to everyone so that they’ll give me attention. And it poisons everyone, so they only listen to it when they’re in fucked-up places—and it’s a good sign when they stop listening to me, because that means that they’re not hurting themselves on purpose.”

Ames pushed back, alarmed. If he’d ever called her the Negative Juicer, he said, he didn’t mean it as an attack on her art—just that she could take a nice experience and find the bad in it. Her music had pain but also so much joy and redemption, he said. But Ames couldn’t help himself: he kept bringing up Sarno.

Somehow, the conversation had become a debate about the confessional nature of their work. Was it a good thing for Apple to keep digging up past suffering? Was this labor both therapeutic and generative—a mission that could help others—or was it making her sick? Ames said that he didn’t feel comfortable exposing himself that way anymore, especially in the social-media age. “It’s a different world!” he said. “You take one line out of context . . .” For more than a decade, Ames has been working in less personal modes; his noir novel “You Were Never Really Here” was recently made into a movie starring Joaquin Phoenix.

Apple said, “I haven’t wanted to drink straight vodka so much in a while.”

“I’m triggering you,” Ames responded.

“You are,” she said, smiling wearily. “It’s not your fault, Jonathan. I love you.”

When Ames stepped out briefly, Apple said that what had frustrated her was the idea that “there was a way out”—that her pain was her choice.

Zelda Hallman, Apple’s housemate, had been sitting with us, listening. She pointed out that self-help books like “The Secret” had the same problem: they made your suffering all your fault.

“Fuck ‘The Secret’!” Apple shouted.

When Ames came back and mentioned Sarno again, Apple interrupted him: “That’s a great way to be in regular life. But if you’re making a song? And you’re making music and there is going to be passion in it and there is going to be anger in it?” She went on, “You have to go to the myelin sheath—you know, to the central nervous system—for it to be good, I feel like. And if that’s not true? Then fuck me, I wasted my fucking life and ruined everything.”

She recalled a day when she had been working on a piano riff that was downbeat but also “fluttering, soaring,” and that reminded her of Ames. She said that he had asked her to name the resulting song “Jonathan.” (The lovely, eerie track, which is on “Idler Wheel,” includes the line “You like to captain a capsized ship.”) “No, no,” he said. “I didn’t!” As Ames began telling his side of the story, Apple said, icily, “I think that water is going to get real cold real soon. You should probably go to the beach.”

He went off to put on his bathing suit. By the time he left, things had eased up. She hugged him goodbye, looking tiny. After Ames was gone, she said that she hated the way she sometimes acted with him—contemptuous, as if she’d absorbed the style of her most unkind ex-boyfriend. But she also said that she wouldn’t have called Ames himself stupid, explaining, “He doesn’t talk the way that I talk, and like my brother talks, and get it all out, like, ‘What the fuck are you talking about? That’s stupid!’ I’m not necessarily angry when I’m doing that.”

The next day, she sent me a video. “We’ve been to the beach!” she announced, panting, as Mercy ran around in the background. “Because it’s her birthday!” Apple had taken Ames’s advice, she said, and gone for a walk, behaving as if she weren’t injured. So far, her knees didn’t hurt. “Soooo . . . he was right all along,” Apple said, her eyes wide. Then she glanced at the camera slyly, the corner of her mouth pulled up. “Orrrrr . . . I just rested my knees for a while.”

Apple goes to bed early; when I visited, we’d end things before she drifted into a smeary, dreamy state, often after smoking pot, which Hallman would pass to her in the living room. Late one afternoon, Apple talked about the album’s themes. She said, of the title, “Really, what it’s about is not being afraid to speak.” Another major theme was women—specifically, her struggle to “not fall in love with the women who hate me.” She described these songs as acts of confrontation with her “shadow self,” exploring questions like “Why in the past have you been so socially blind to think that you could be friends with your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend by getting her a gift?” At the time, she thought that she was being generous; now she recognized the impulse as less benign, a way of “campaigning not to be ousted.”

The record dives into such conflicting impulses: she empathizes with other women, rages at them, grows infatuated with them, and mourns their rejection, sometimes all at once. She roars, in “Newspaper,” “I wonder what lies he’s telling you about me / To make sure that we’ll never be friends!” In “Ladies,” she describes, first with amusement, then in a dark chant, “the revolving door which keeps turning out more and more good women like you / Yet another woman to whom I won’t get through.” In “Shameka,” she celebrates a key moment in middle school, when a tough girl told the bullied Apple, “You have potential.”

As a child, Apple longed to be “a pea in a pod” with other girls, as she was, for a while, with Manuela Paz, for whom she wrote her first song. But as an adult she has hung out mainly with men. She does have some deep female friendships, including with Nalini Narayan, an emergency-room nurse, whom she met, in 1997, in the audience at one of her concerts, and who described Apple as “an empath on a completely different level than anyone I’ve met.” More recently, Apple has become close with a few younger artists. The twenty-one-year-old singer Mikaela Straus, a.k.a. King Princess, who recently recorded a cover of Apple’s song “I Know,” called her “family” and “a fucking legend.” Straus said, “You never hear a Fiona Apple line and say, ‘That’s cheesy.’ ” The twenty-seven-year-old actress Cara Delevingne is another friend; she visited Apple’s home to record harmonies on the song “Fetch the Bolt Cutters.” (She’s the one making that kooky “meow.”)

But Apple has more complicated dynamics with a wider circle of friends, exes, and collaborators. Starting with her first heartbreak, at sixteen, she has repeatedly found herself in love triangles, sometimes as the secret partner, sometimes as the deceived one. As we talked, she stumbled on a precursor for this pattern: “Maybe it’s because my mother was the other woman?”

Apple’s parents met in 1969, during rehearsals for “Applause,” a Broadway musical based on “All About Eve.” Her mother, McAfee, was cast as Eve; her father, Maggart, as the married playwright. Maggart was then an actor on the stage and on TV (he’d been on “Sesame Street”); the sexy, free-spirited McAfee was a former June Taylor dancer. Throughout Apple’s childhood, she and her sister regularly visited the home, in Connecticut, where Maggart’s five other children and their mother, LuJan, lived. LuJan was welcoming, encouraging all the children to grow close—but Apple’s mother was not invited. Apple, with an uneasy laugh, told me that, for all the time she’d spent interrogating her past, this link had never crossed her mind.

Her fascination with women seemed tied, too, to the female bonding of the #MeToo era—to the desire to compare old stories, through new eyes. In July, she sent me a video clip of Jimi Hendrix that reminded her of a surreal aspect of the day she was raped: for a moment, when the stranger approached her, she mistook him for Hendrix. During the assault, she willed herself to think that the man was Hendrix. “It felt safer, and strangely it hasn’t ruined Jimi Hendrix for me,” she said. Years later, however, she found herself hanging out with a man who was a Hendrix fan. One night, they did mushrooms at Johnny Depp’s house, in the Hollywood Hills. Depp, who was editing a film, was sober that night; as Apple recalled, he “kind of led” her and her friend to a bedroom, then shut the door and left. “Nothing bad happened, but I felt kind of used and uncomfortable with my friend making out with me,” she said. “I used to just let things happen. I remember I wrote the bridge to ‘Fast as You Can’ in the car on the way home, and he was playing Jimi Hendrix, and my mind was swirling things together.”

That has always been Apple’s experience: the past overlapping with the present, just as it does in her notebooks. Sometimes it recurs through painful flashbacks, sometimes as echoes to be turned into art. The evening at Depp’s house wasn’t a #MeToo moment, she added. “Johnny Depp was a nice guy, and so was my friend. But I think that, at that time, I was struggling with my sexuality, and trying to force it into what I thought it should be, and everything felt dirty. Going out with boys, getting high, getting scared, and going home feeling like a dirty wimp was my thing.”

Apple came of age in a culture that viewed young men as potential auteurs and young women as commodities to be used, then discarded. Although she had only positive memories of her youthful romance with David Blaine, she was disturbed to learn that he was listed in Jeffrey Epstein’s black book. In high school, Apple was friends with Mia Farrow’s daughter Daisy Previn, and during sleepovers at Farrow’s house she used to run into Woody Allen in the kitchen. “There are all these unwritten but signed N.D.A.s all over the place,” she said, about the entertainment industry. “Because you’ll have to deal with the repercussions if you talk.”

She met Paul Thomas Anderson in 1997, during a Rolling Stone cover shoot in which she floated in a pool, her hair fanning out like Ophelia’s. She was twenty; he was twenty-seven. After she climbed out of the water, her first words to him were “Do you smoke pot?” Anderson followed her to Hawaii. (The protagonist of his film “Punch-Drunk Love” makes the same impulsive journey.) “That’s where we solidified,” she told me. “I remember going to meet him at the bar at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, and he was laughing at me because I was marching around on what he called my ‘determined march to nowhere.’ ”

The singer and the director became an It Couple, their work rippling with mutual influences. She wrote a rap for “Magnolia”; he directed videos for her songs. But, as Apple remembers it, the romance was painful and chaotic. They snorted cocaine and gobbled Ecstasy. Apple drank, heavily. Mostly, she told me, he was coldly critical, contemptuous in a way that left her fearful and numb. Apple’s parents remember an awful night when the couple took them to dinner and were openly rude. (Apple backs this up: “We both attended that dinner as little fuckers.”) In the lobby, her mother asked Anderson why Apple was acting this way. He snapped, “Ask yourself—you made her.”

Anderson had a temper. After attending the 1998 Academy Awards, he threw a chair across a room. Apple remembers telling herself, “Fuck this, this is not a good relationship.” She took a cab to her dad’s house, but returned home the next day. In 2000, when she was getting treatment for O.C.D., her psychiatrist suggested that she do volunteer work with kids who had similar conditions. Apple was buoyant as Anderson drove her to an orientation at U.C.L.A.’s occupational-therapy ward, but he was fuming. He screeched up to the sidewalk, undid her seat belt, and shoved her out of his car; she fell to the ground, spilling her purse in front of some nurses she was going to be working with. At parties, he’d hiss harsh words in her ear, calling her a bad partner, while behaving sweetly on the surface; she’d tear up, which, she thinks, made her look unstable to strangers. (Anderson, through his agent, declined to comment.)

Anderson didn’t hit her, Apple said. He praised her as an artist. Today, he’s in a long-term relationship with the actress Maya Rudolph, with whom he has four children. He directed the video for “Hot Knife,” in 2011; Apple said that by then she felt more able to hold her own—and she said that he might have changed. Yet the relationship had warped her early years, she said, in ways she still reckoned with. She’d never spoken poorly of him, because it didn’t seem “classy”; she wavered on whether to do so now. But she wanted to put an end to many fans’ nostalgia about their time together. “It’s a secret that keeps us connected,” she told me.

Apple was also briefly involved with the comedian Louis C. K. After the Times published an exposé of his sexual misconduct, in 2017, she had faith that C.K. would be the first target of #MeToo to take responsibility for his actions, maybe by creating subversive comedy about shame and compulsion. When a hacky standup set of his was leaked online, she sent him a warm note, urging him to dig deeper.

One of the women C.K. harassed was Rebecca Corry, a standup comedian who founded an advocacy organization for pit bulls, Stand Up for Pits. Apple began working with the group, and, once she got to know Corry, she started to see C.K. in a harsher light. The comedy that she’d admired for its honesty now looked “like a smoke screen,” she said. In a text, she told me that, if C.K. wasn’t capable of more severe self-scrutiny, “he’s useless.” She added, “I SHAKE when I have to think and write about myself. It’s scary to go there but I go there. He is so WEAK.”

At times, Apple questioned her ability to be in any romantic relationship. Last fall, she went through another breakup, with a man she had dated for about a year. “This is my marriage right now,” she said of her platonic intimacy with Zelda Hallman. Apple told me that they’d met in a near-mystical way: while out on a walk, she’d blown a dandelion, wishing for a dog-friend for Mercy, then turned a corner and saw Hallman, walking Maddie. When Apple’s second romance with Ames was ending, she started inviting Hallman to stay over. “I’d have night terrors and stuff,” Apple recalled. “And one day I woke up and she was sitting in the chair—she’d sat there all night, watching me, making sure I was O.K. I was feeling safer with her here.” Apple fantasized about a kind of retirement: in a few years, she and Hallman might buy land back East “and move there with the doggies.”

Hallman, an affable, silver-haired lesbian, grew up poor in Appalachia; after studying engineering at Stanford, she worked in the California energy industry. In the mid-aughts, she moved to L.A. to try filmmaking, getting some small credits. Each woman called their relationship balanced—they split expenses, they said—but Hallman’s role displaced, to some degree, the one Apple’s brother had played. In addition, Hallman sat in on our interviews and at recording sessions; she often took videos, posting them online. They slept on the daybeds in the living room. Apple had made it clear that anyone who questioned her friend’s presence would get cut out. Hallman described their dynamic as like a “Boston marriage—but in the way that outsiders had imagined Boston marriages to be.”

Hallman said that she hadn’t recognized Apple when they met. Initially, she’d mistaken the singer for someone younger, just another Venice Beach music hopeful in danger of being exploited: “I felt relieved when she said she had a boyfriend in the Hills, to take care of her.”

“Oh, my God, you were one of them! ” Apple said, laughing.

After my July visit, Apple began to text me. She sent a recording of a song that she’d heard in a dream, then a recording describing the dream. She texted about watching “8 Mile”—“doing the nothing that comes before my little concentrated spurt of work”—and about reading a brain study about rappers that made her wonder where her brain “lit up” when she sang. “I’m hoping that I develop that ability to let my medial prefrontal cortex blow out the lights around it!” she joked. Occasionally, she sent a screenshot of a text from someone else, seeking my interpretation (a tendency that convinced me she likely did the same with my texts).

In a video sent in August, she beamed, thrilled about new mixes that she’d been struggling to “elevate.” “I always think of myself as a half-ass person, but, if I half-assed it, it still sounds really good.” She added that she’d whispered into the bathroom mirror, “You did a good job.”

In another video—broken into three parts—she appeared in closeup, in a white tank top, free-associating. She described a colorized photograph from Auschwitz she’d seen on Tumblr, then moved on to the frustrations of O.C.D.—how it made her “freak out about the littlest things, like infants freak out.” She talked about Jeffrey Epstein and the comfort of dumb TV; she held up a “cool metal instrument,” stamped “1932,” that she’d ordered from Greece. Near the end of the video, she wondered why she was rambling, then added, “Oh—I also ate some pot. I forgot about that. Well, knowing me, I’ll probably send this to you!”

Apple’s lifelong instinct has been to default to honesty, even if it costs her. In an era of slick branding, she is one of the last Gen X artists: reflexively obsessed with authenticity and “selling out,” disturbed by the affectlessness of teen-girl “influencers” hawking sponcon and bogus uplift. (When she told an interviewer that she pitied Justin Bieber’s thirsty request for fans to stream his new single as they slept, Beliebers spent the next day rage-tweeting that Apple was a jealous “nobody,” while Apple’s fans mocked them as ignoramuses.)

Apple told me that she didn’t listen to any modern music. She chalked this up to a fear of outside influences, but she had a tetchiness about younger songwriters, too. She had always possessed aspects of Emily Dickinson, in the poet’s “I’m Nobody” mode: pridefulness in retreat. Apple sometimes fantasized about pulling a Garbo: she’d release one final album, then disappear. But she also had something that resembled a repetition compulsion—she wanted to take all the risks of her early years, but this time have them work out right.

When I returned to Venice Beach, in September, the mood was different. Anxiety suffused the house. In July, Apple had been worried about returning to public view, but she was also often playful and energized, tweaking mixes. Now the thought of what she’d recorded brought on paralyzing waves of dread.

To distract herself, she’d turned to other projects. She accepted a request from Sarah Treem, the co-creator of the Showtime series “The Affair,” to cover the Waterboys song “The Whole of the Moon” for the show’s finale. (Apple had also written the show’s potent theme song—the keening “Container.”) Apple agreed to write a jokey song for the Fox cartoon “Bob’s Burgers,” and some numbers for an animated musical sitcom, “Central Park.” She was proud to hit deadlines, to handle her own business. “I have a sense of humor,” she told me. “I’m not that fucking fragile all the time! I’m an adult. You can talk to me.” But, before I arrived one day, she texted that things weren’t going well, so that I’d be prepared.

That afternoon, we found ourselves lounging on the daybeds with Hallman, watching “The Affair.” Apple had already seen these episodes, which were from the show’s penultimate season. In August, she’d sent me a video of herself after watching one, tears rolling down her face. That episode was about the death of Alison, one of the main characters. Played by Ruth Wilson, Alison is a waitress living in Montauk, an intense beauty who is grieving the drowning death of her son and suffers from depression and P.T.S.D. She falls into an affair with a novelist, and both of their marriages dissolve. The story is told from clashing perspectives, but in the episode that Apple had watched, only one account felt “true”: an ex-boyfriend of Alison’s breaks her skull, then drops her unconscious body in the ocean, making her death look like a suicide.

As we watched, Apple took notes, sitting cross-legged on the daybed. She saw herself in several characters, but she was most troubled by an identification with Alison, who worries that she’s a magnet for pain—a victim that men try to “save” and end up hurting. In one sequence, Alison, devastated after a breakup, gets drunk on a flight to California, as her seat partner flirts aggressively, feeding her cocktails. He assaults Alison as she drifts in and out of consciousness. She fights back, complaining to the flight attendant, but the man turns it all around, making her seem like the crazy one; she winds up handcuffed, as other passengers stare at her. Apple found the sequence horrifying—it reminded her of how she came across in her worst press.

Her head lowered and her arms crossed, she began to perseverate on her fears of touring. She ticked off potential outcomes: “I say the right thing, but I look the wrong way, so they say something about the way I look”; “I look the right way, but I say the wrong thing, so they say something mean about what I said.” She went on, “I have a temper. I have lots of rage inside. I have lots of sadness inside of me. And I really, really, really can’t stand assholes. If I’m in front of one, and I happen to be in a public place, and I lose my shit—and that’s a possibility—that’s not going to be any good to me, but I won’t be able to help it, because I’ll want to defend myself.”

Later, we tried to listen to the album. She played the newest version of “Rack of His,” but got frustrated by the tinny compression. She worried that she’d built “a record that can’t be made into a record.” When she’d get mad, or say “fuck,” Mercy would get agitated; wistfully, Apple told me that she sometimes wished she had a small dog that would let her be sad. Despite her fears, she kept recording—at the end of “For Her,” she’d multitracked her voice to form a gospel-like chorus singing, “You were so high”—and said that she wanted the final result to be uncompromising. “I want primary colors,” she said. “I don’t want any half measures.”

We listened to “Heavy Balloon,” a gorgeous, propulsive song about depression. She had added a new second verse, partly inspired by the scene of Alison drowning: “We get dragged down, down to the same spot enough times in a row / The bottom begins to feel like the only safe place that you know.” Apple, curling up on the floor, explained, “It’s almost like you get Stockholm syndrome with your own depression—like you’re kidnapped by your own depression.” Her voice got soft. “People with depression are always playing with this thing that’s very heavy,” she said. Her arms went up, as if she were bouncing a balloon, pretending to have fun, and said, “Like, ‘Ha, ha, it’s so heavy! ’ ” Then we had to stop, because she was having a panic attack.

Apple has tried all kinds of cures. She was sent to a family therapist at the age of eleven, when, mad at her sister, she glibly remarked, on a school trip, that she planned to kill herself and take Amber with her. After she was raped, she spent hours at a Model Mugging class, practicing self-defense by punching a man in a padded suit. In 2011, she attended eight weeks of silent Buddhist retreats, meditating from 5 a.m.to 9 p.m., with no eye contact—it was part of a plan to become less isolated. She had a wild breakthrough one day, in which the world lit up, showing her a pulsing space between the people at the retreat—a suggestion of something larger. That vision is evoked in the new song “I Want You to Love Me,” in which Apple sings, with raspy fervor, of wanting to get “back in the pulse.”

She tried a method for treating P.T.S.D. called eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, and—around the time she poured her vodka down the drain, in 2018—an untested technique called “brain balancing.” Articles about neurological anomalies fascinated her. The first day we met, Apple spread printouts of brain scans on the floor of her studio, pointing to blue and pink shapes. She was seeking patterns, just as she often did on Tumblr, reposting images, doing rabbit-hole searches that she knew were a form of magical thinking.

Apple doesn’t consider herself an alcoholic, but for years she drank vodka alone, every night, until she passed out. When she’d walk by the freezer, she’d reach for a sip; for her, the first step toward sobriety was simply being conscious of that impulse. She had quit cocaine years earlier, after spending “one excruciating night” at Quentin Tarantino’s house, listening to him and Anderson brag. “Every addict should just get locked in a private movie theatre with Q.T. and P.T.A. on coke, and they’ll never want to do it again,” she joked. She loved getting loose on wine, but not the regret that followed. Her father has been sober for decades, but when Apple was a little kid he was a turbulent alcoholic. He hit bottom when he had a violent confrontation with a Manhattan cabdriver; Apple was only four, but she remembers his bloody face, the nurse at the hospital. When I visited Apple’s mother at her Manhattan apartment, she showed me a photo album with pictures of Apple as a child. One image was captioned “Fiona had too much wine—not feeling good,” with a scribbled sad face. Apple, at two, had wandered around an adult party, drinking the dregs.

For decades, Apple has taken prescription psychopharmaceuticals. She told me that she’d been given a diagnosis of “complex developmental post-traumatic stress disorder.” (It was such a satisfyingly multisyllabic phrase that she preferred to sing it, transforming it into a ditty.) In December, she began having mood swings, with symptoms bad enough that she was told to get an MRI, to rule out a pituitary tumor. In the end, Apple said, she had to wean herself off an antipsychotic that she had been prescribed for her night terrors; the dosage, she said, had been way too high. As she recovered, she felt troubled, sometimes, by a sense of flatness: if she couldn’t feel the emotion in the songs, she said, she wouldn’t be able to tell what worked.

Earlier that fall, she had given an interview to the Web site Vulture, in which she was brassy and perceptive. People responded enthusiastically—many young women saw in Apple a gutsy iconoclast who’d shrugged off the world’s demands. She won praise, too, for having donated a year’s worth of profits from “Criminal”—which J. Lo dances to in the recent movie “Hustlers”—to immigrant criminal-defense cases. But the positive response also threw her, she realized. “Even the best circumstances of being in public may be too much,” she told me.

By January, the situation was better. Apple was no longer having nightmares, although she was still worried, at times, by her moods. One layer of self-protection had been removed when she stopped using alcohol, she said; another was lost with the reduction in medication. And, although she was enthusiastic about some new mixes, she felt apprehensive. She could listen to the tracks, but only through headphones.

So we talked about the subject that made her feel best: the dog rescues she was funding. She paid her brother Bran to pick up the dogs across the country, then drive them to L.A., for placement in foster homes. She and Hallman followed along through videos that Bran sent them. The dogs had been through terrible experiences: one was raped by humans; another was beaten with a shovel. Apple felt that she should not flinch from these details. Rebecca Corry, of Stand Up for Pits, had given her advice for coping: “You have to celebrate small victories and remember their faces and move on to the next one.”

Then, one day, Apple’s band came to her house to listen to the latest mixes. The next afternoon, her face was glowing again. She had wondered if the meeting would be awkward—if the band might disagree on what edits to make. Instead, she and Amy Aileen Wood kept glancing at each other, ecstatic, as they had all the same responses. At last, Apple could listen to the album on speakers.

Afterward, I texted Wood. “Dare I say it was magical?!” Wood wrote. “Everything is sounding so damn good!” Steinberg told me that the notes were simple: “Get out of the way of the music” and let Apple’s voice dominate. Apple knew what she wanted, he said. He described his job as helping her to recognize “that she was her own Svengali.”

It reminded me of a story that Bran had told me, about working in construction. One day, when he was twenty-eight, he strolled out onto a beam suspended thirty-five feet in the air—a task that he’d done many times. Suddenly, he was frozen, terrified of falling. Yet all he had to do was touch something—any object at all—to break the spell. “Because you’re grounded, you can just touch a leaf on a tree and walk,” he said.

Seeing her band again had grounded Apple. She felt a renewed bravado. She’d made plans to rerelease “When the Pawn . . .” on vinyl, but with the original artwork, by Paul Thomas Anderson, swapped out. “That’s just a great album,” she told me. Looking back on her catalogue, she thought that her one weak song might be “Please Please Please,” on “Extraordinary Machine,” which she wrote only because the record company had demanded another track: “Please, please, please, no more melodies.”

In the next few weeks, she sent updates: she was considering potential video directors; she was brainstorming ideas for album art, like a sketch of Harvey Weinstein with his walker. She’d even gone out to see King Princess perform. One night, after petting Janet’s skull and talking to her, Apple went into her old bedroom: she was able to sleep on the futon again, with Mercy. She’d also got a new tattoo, of a black bolt cutter, running down her right forearm.

On the day that Jonathan Ames came over, Apple had pondered the exact nature of her work. Maybe, she suggested, she was like any other artist whose body is an instrument—a ballerina who wears her feet out or a sculptor who strains his back. Maybe she, too, wore herself out. Maybe that’s why she had to take time to heal in between projects. In “On I Go,” the first song she’d written for “Fetch the Bolt Cutters,” she chanted about trying to lead a life guided by inner, rather than outer, impulses: “On I go, not toward or away / Up until now it was day, next day / Up until now in a rush to prove / But now I only move to move.” In the middle of the track, she screwed up the beat for a second and said, “Ah, fuck, shit.” It was a moment almost anyone making a final edit would smooth out. She left it in.

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littleliv1 · 6 years

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I Was Born To Love You- Part One

I hope you like it! Fill free to send feedback, ideas, requests, etc.!

Summary- We learn a little bit more about Leah, we met Austin but something is wrong with him.

Warnings- Language, unwanted touching, slight verbal abuse

It was the day that 20th Century Fox announced they were making Bohemian Rhapsody. I was so excited to tell Austin how I'd be meeting the cast, as well as Roger Taylor and Brian May, and how I'd be the assistant to Bryan Singer. I was tapping my thumbs on the wheel listening to '39 by Queen. I had been in a Queen kick since the first official meeting of filming. However, I couldn't tell Austin, or anyone really. I had signed a contract of confidentiality stating that I couldn't share more than what was already for the public to see. As was the whole cast and crew of the movie.

I pulled in the drive way to my small, one story home. I was high on happiness, walking along the long pathway of the front of my house, taking notice to the newly growing buds on the ground. I walked inside, around 6 o'clock, as I always do. Austin wasn't home yet, which I took as kind of weird because he was usually the first home. But, I thought, he does work in management, he manages young new stars and books them tours around the world. He may just be working over time, as he did sometimes.

I went to our kitchen and preheated the oven, as I got out the unthawed and uncooked chicken I bought yesterday, as well as some potatoes and broccoli. This was my life. I got up around 5 am, cooked Austin and I breakfast, went to work, got home at around 6 pm (depending on what I had to do that day, 6 was about the average time) to my loving husband, cooked dinner, sometimes we watched a movie, throw a shower in somewhere, and go to bed. Though it seemed like a basic and very boring life, my job and my husband always made it a new adventure everyday. I picked up our new puppy German Shepherd named Lola, as I washed off the counter to start preparing the meal.

About an hour and a half later, dinner was done, but Austin still wasn't home yet. 'No big deal, may just be working late again,' I thought to myself. It didn't feel right eating without him. I usually waited about an hour or so before enjoying my meal so I could enjoy it with him. It was 8 o'clock pm and I still hadn't heard from him. 'I'll just call him,' I thought. I grabbed my phone off the counter where we both kept our phones during dinner and called him. It rang for a bit, and then it went to voice mail. I dialed his work phone, maybe he's at the desk. "Austin McMann's office, this is Shelly, how can I help?" I heard the familiar voice of his assistant, Shelly.

"Hey girl! It's Leah. Is Austin doing okay? He's about three hours late from coming home, he real busy?" I asked nicely. I could hear her voice as she got up to check, "I actually think he just left, he left at his normal time and then forgot something and came back. He's on his way home, though!" She replied back. I've always liked her, she was always so sweet and caring. "Alright, thanks sweet girl. Sorry to bother, just a concerned wife!" I said lightly. She kind of chuckled to herself. "Yeah, I understand." She replied. I had gotten out the plates and turned off the stove and oven that was keeping the food warm until his arrival. I saw headlights through the living room window. "I think he's here now, why don't you join us for dinner sometime?" I asked. "Sure! Give me a time and place and let Austin know, I'll be sure to clear the day!" She said. I laughed, leaning over the counter. "Alright Shelly, I'll talk to you later, love!" We both exchanged 'good-byes'.

I heard a knock at the front door, not only driving Lola crazy as she ran towards the sudden loud noise, it also startled me. 'Oh my god he's dead,' I thought to myself. I was positive it was the police to come tell me that my beloved husband had died in a tragic car wreck. The knocking grew to banging, as I walked towards the door. Once I opened it, my nerves calmed. It was only Stacy. I let out a sigh of relief, giggling to myself about how frantic I realized I just was. "It's only you, sorry for taking so long. What can I do you for, ma'am?" I asked, gesturing her in. "I'll only be but a minute," She stated, staying put. I nodded, confirming I understood. "It's about this new job I assigned you. How are you liking it?" She asked. I smiled. "Well, it's only been a few days, and all Mr. Singer has really told me to do was take notes and get him lunch. I've memorized it, though, it's-" she cut me off with a silencing hand. "Glad you're enjoying it, darling." Lola came strutting in from the kitchen to greet the intruder by jumping on her leg, begging for pets. "Lola! Stop it!" I said, picking her up. "I'm sorry, ma'am, we just got her a few weeks ago, we've been doing our best to train her and-" she silenced you once more. "Darling, know when to stop talking. It's only but a dog. Just don't ever bring her to the office." She said, looking at the pup. I nodded. "Understood."

I sat there quietly. "Not to rush you out or anything, you're more than welcome to stay if you'd like, but was that all you wanted to talk about?" I asked her. She smiled slightly nodding her head. "Yes, yes. I've got to go now, I'm so very happy for you, my sweets. I know your parents would be so proud and happy for you." She said, kissing my cheek.

My parents.

She left, closing the door behind her as Lola licked my face were she kissed me. I hadn't thought about my parents in a few days. Things had been so hectic. I looked at a wedding picture on the wall next to the coat closet. It was of me and my parents kissing my cheek while Austin held me from behind, we were all laughing. I almost shed a tear, but my mind was taken off by the abrupt wind behind me as the door opened. Austin walked through.

I smiled at him, letting the dog down. I walked over to him and we greeted each other with a kiss. "Hello, darling," I said. "So sorry I'm late, my love. I had totally forgotten a meeting I had planned with a few chaps months ago, had to meet them at a coffee shop across town. They were just wannabe Justin Timberlake's." He said, putting his black leather bag next to his desk that was in the living room. I followed. "It's alright, Shelly said you had forgotten something in the office?" I asked, curiously. He looked puzzled. "That's a bit weird," he thought. He started to thin for a moment, before coming to a realization. "Yes yes, I forgot my phone. I left it there before I went to the meeting with the boys. I saw that you had called but my phone was almost dead, I thought I'd just talk to you when I got home." He explained. Innocent enough, I thought.

"I made dinner, chicken, mashed potatoes and broccoli. It's still warm." I said pointing to the kitchen. He smiled at you with his loving brown eyes. "My little chef." He kissed my cheek.

We were both eating dinner when he looks up at me. "So the meeting was probably the only thing that happened to me today, how was your day?" He asked. I smiled, remembering how excited I was to tell him the news. "Well, you know how I've been assisting Stacy for four years now?" I asked him. He nodded, face full of chicken. "Well, I can tell you now, that 20th Century Fox is making a new movie based off of Freddie Mercury's life as well as the band Queen!" I said. He looked brightly, smiling, sipping some water before telling me how exciting that was. "That's not even the best part!" I said. "Then get to the best part, my love!" He replied back, biting into the potatoes. "Stacy had me switched to assisting Bryan Singer. The director of the movie!" I said. He looked up shocked. "Bryan Singer?" He asked. I nodded, still smiling. "I'll get to meet the crew and meet Brian and Roger and learn about the band." I explained again, excitedly eating my chicken. "You're working for a man?" He said, getting a little upset.

I backed off of my exiting high, still partially smiling to keep the mood lightened. "Well, yeah. Stacy evidently promised him a great assistant, which she thought was me." I explained. "It's just work, my love. Nothing more, nothing less." I explained, further, holding his hand to hopefully calm his nerves. He let out a sigh. "It's just. You're so beautiful. And most men want the same thing when it comes to having beautiful assistants. Sex. I don't want him to use you like that." He explained. I understood his concern, but his argument rose questions. "I understand, darling, but what about your assistant? Shelly? She's absolutely stunning, not to mention only 20." I said. He got angry, yanking his hand away. "What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?" He said standing up. I backed down, as I wasn't used to him raising his voice.

I got quiet. "N-nothing sweetheart, your statement about men with pretty assistance just made me think a little bit, that's all." I said. "Of course it did. Because that's all you ever do now, is think! I don't suppose you've been thinking about Bryan Singer or thinking about the other cast members. No, you're just innocent Maleah. Never had a dirty thought about anyone but me since we got married." His voice got louder, driving Lola to bark at him, which seemed like in defense of me. "Austin, what is your problem? I didn't do anything, I haven't even met the guys yet. All I've been doing was getting coffee and food for Mr. Singer, I probably won't meet them until like a month from now!" I stood up, trying to calm him down. He was obviously upset about something, and I really believe it's much more than just who I'm working for now.

"And what happens when you do met these fellows and the way they bite their lip drives you crazy?" He asked, getting quiet and closer to my face. I was silent. Where is all of this coming from? "Sooner or later, we're both going to be working late nights, you'll be too tired to cook and eat with them, we'll both get home and go straight to bed. We will rarely have sex. And then you see them shirtless, smiling, and seeing the way you know they're going to look at you. It'll make you mad, darling." Austin said, cupping my privates. It made me quiver, but not of pleasure. Of fear. His breath was hot, and quite resembles cake vodka. Maybe this was it, he was drunk. "Please let go of me, Austin." I said quietly. He backs up, and realizes the situation. He kisses me on the cheek and thanked me for dinner before going to our bed room and going to sleep.

A/n: thank you for reading, I know I write long parts, I just want to try to make it as detailed as I can! I have multiple parts written, and I’ll post as I finish making final edits!

#ben hardy fanfic #queen #bohemian rhapsody #ben hardy x reader

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anupamasdiggs · 5 years

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SV 1

Satan, being thus confined to a vagabond, wandering, unsettled condition, is without any certain abode; for though he has, in consequence of his angelic nature, a kind of empire in the liquid waste or air, yet this is certainly part of his punishment, that he is . . . without any fixed place, or space, allowed him to rest the sole of his foot upon.

Daniel Defoe, _The History of the Devil_

The Angel Gibreel

"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die. Hoji! Hoji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly. Tat-taa! Taka-thun! How to ever smile again, if first you won't cry? How to win the darling's love, mister, without a sigh? Baba, if you want to get born again . . ." Just before dawn one winter's morning, New Year's Day or thereabouts, two real, full-grown, living men fell from a great height, twenty-nine thousand and two feet, towards the English Channel, without benefit of parachutes or wings, out of a clear sky.

"I tell you, you must die, I tell you, I tell you," and thusly and so beneath a moon of alabaster until a loud cry crossed the night, "To the devil with your tunes," the words hanging crystalline in the iced white night, "in the movies you only mimed to playback singers, so spare me these infernal noises now."

Gibreel, the tuneless soloist, had been cavorting in moonlight as he sang his impromptu gazal, swimming in air, butterfly-stroke, breast-stroke, bunching himself into a ball, spreadeagling himself against the almost-infinity of the almost-dawn, adopting heraldic postures, rampant, couchant, pitting levity against gravity. Now he rolled happily towards the sardonic voice. "Ohé, Salad baba, it's you, too good. What-ho, old Chumch." At which the other, a fastidious shadow falling headfirst in a grey suit with all the jacket buttons done up, arms by his sides, taking for granted the improbability of the bowler hat on his head, pulled a nickname-hater's face. "Hey, Spoono," Gibreel yelled, eliciting a second inverted wince, "Proper London, bhai! Here we come! Those bastards down there won't know what hit them. Meteor or lightning or vengeance of God. Out of thin air, baby. _Dharrraaammm!_ Wham, na? What an entrance, yaar. I swear: splat."

Out of thin air: a big bang, followed by falling stars. A universal beginning, a miniature echo of the birth of time . . . the jumbo jet _Bostan_, Flight AI-420, blew apart without any warning, high above the great, rotting, beautiful, snow-white, illuminated city, Mahagonny, Babylon, Alphaville. But Gibreel has already named it, I mustn't interfere: Proper London, capital of Vilayet, winked blinked nodded in the night. While at Himalayan height a brief and premature sun burst into the powdery January air, a blip vanished from radar screens, and the thin air was full of bodies, descending from the Everest of the catastrophe to the milky paleness of the sea.

Who am I?

Who else is there?

The aircraft cracked in half, a seed-pod giving up its spores, an egg yielding its mystery. Two actors, prancing Gibreel and buttony, pursed Mr. Saladin Chamcha, fell like titbits of tobacco from a broken old cigar. Above, behind, below them in the void there hung reclining seats, stereophonic headsets, drinks trolleys, motion discomfort receptacles, disembarkation cards, duty-free video games, braided caps, paper cups, blankets, oxygen masks. Also -- for there had been more than a few migrants aboard, yes, quite a quantity of wives who had been grilled by reasonable, doing-their-job officials about the length of and distinguishing moles upon their husbands' genitalia, a sufficiency of children upon whose legitimacy the British Government had cast its everreasonable doubts -- mingling with the remnants of the plane, equally fragmented, equally absurd, there floated the debris of the soul, broken memories, sloughed-off selves, severed mothertongues, violated privacies, untranslatable jokes, extinguished futures, lost loves, the forgotten meaning of hollow, booming words, _land_, _belonging_, _home_. Knocked a little silly by the blast, Gibreel and Saladin plummeted like bundles dropped by some carelessly open-beaked stork, and because Chamcha was going down head first, in the recommended position for babies entering the birth canal, he commenced to feel a low irritation at the other's refusal to fall in plain fashion. Saladin nosedived while Farishta embraced air, hugging it with his arms and legs, a flailing, overwrought actor without techniques of restraint. Below, cloud-covered, awaiting their entrance, the slow congealed currents of the English Sleeve, the appointed zone of their watery reincarnation.

"O, my shoes are Japanese," Gibreel sang, translating the old song into English in semi-conscious deference to the uprushing host-nation, "These trousers English, if you please. On my head, red Russian hat; my heart's Indian for all that." The clouds were bubbling up towards them, and perhaps it was on account of that great mystification of cumulus and cumulo-nimbus, the mighty rolling thunderheads standing like hammers in the dawn, or perhaps it was the singing (the one busy performing, the other booing the performance), or their blast--delirium that spared them full foreknowledge of the imminent . . . but for whatever reason, the two men, Gibreelsaladin Farishtachamcha, condemned to this endless but also ending angelicdevilish fall, did not become aware of the moment at which the processes of their transmutation began.

Mutation?

Yessir, but not random. Up there in air-space, in that soft, imperceptible field which had been made possible by the century and which, thereafter, made the century possible, becoming one of its defining locations, the place of movement and of war, the planet-shrinker and power-vacuum, most insecure and transitory of zones, illusory, discontinuous, metamorphic, -- because when you throw everything up in the air anything becomes possible -- wayupthere, at any rate, changes took place in delirious actors that would have gladdened the heart of old Mr. Lamarck: under extreme environmental pressure, characteristics were acquired.

What characteristics which? Slow down; you think Creation happens in a rush? So then, neither does revelation . . . take a look at the pair of them. Notice anything unusual? Just two brown men, falling hard, nothing so new about that, you may think; climbed too high, got above themselves, flew too close to the sun, is that it?

That's not it. Listen:

Mr. Saladin Chamcha, appalled by the noises emanating from Gibreel Farishta's mouth, fought back with verses of his own. What Farishta heard wafting across the improbable night sky was an old song, too, lyrics by Mr. James Thomson, seventeenhundred to seventeen-forty-eight. ". . . at Heaven's command," Chamcha carolled through lips turned jingoistically redwhiteblue by the cold, "arooooose from out the aaaazure main." Farishta, horrified, sang louder and louder of Japanese shoes, Russian hats, inviolately subcontinental hearts, but could not still Saladin's wild recital: "And guardian aaaaangels sung the strain."

Let's face it: it was impossible for them to have heard one another, much less conversed and also competed thus in song. Accelerating towards the planet, atmosphere roaring around them, how could they? But let's face this, too: they did.

Downdown they hurtled, and the winter cold frosting their eyelashes and threatening to freeze their hearts was on the point of waking them from their delirious daydream, they were about to become aware of the miracle of the singing, the rain of limbs and babies of which they were a part, and the terror of the destiny rushing at them from below, when they hit, were drenched and instantly iced by, the degree-zero boiling of the clouds.

They were in what appeared to be a long, vertical tunnel. Chamcha, prim, rigid, and still upside-down, saw Gibreel Farishta in his purple bush-shirt come swimming towards him across that cloud-walled funnel, and would have shouted, "Keep away, get away from me," except that something prevented him, the beginning of a little fluttery screamy thing in his intestines, so instead of uttering words of rejection he opened his arms and Farishta swam into them until they were embracing head-to-tail, and the force of their collision sent them tumbling end over end, performing their geminate cartwheels all the way down and along the hole that went to Wonderland; while pushing their way out of the white came a succession of cloudforms, ceaselessly metamorphosing, gods into bulls, women into spiders, men into wolves. Hybrid cloud-creatures pressed in upon them, gigantic flowers with human breasts dangling from fleshy stalks, winged cats, centaurs, and Chamcha in his semi-consciousness was seized by the notion that he, too, had acquired the quality of cloudiness, becoming metamorphic, hybrid, as if he were growing into the person whose head nestled now between his legs and whose legs were wrapped around his long, patrician neck.

This person had, however, no time for such "high falutions"; was, indeed, incapable of faluting at all; having just seen, emerging from the swirl of cloud, the figure of a glamorous woman of a certain age, wearing a brocade sari in green and gold, with a diamond in her nose and lacquer defending her high-coiled hair against the pressure of the wind at these altitudes, as she sat, equably, upon a flying carpet. "Rekha Merchant," Gibreel greeted her. "You couldn't find your way to heaven or what?" Insensitive words to speak to a dead woman! But his concussed, plummeting condition may be offered in mitigation

. . . Chamcha, clutching his legs, made an uncomprehending query: "What the hell?"

"You don't see her?" Gibreel shouted. "You don't see her goddamn Bokhara rug?"

No, no, Gibbo, her voice whispered in his ears, don't expect him to confirm. I am strictly for your eyes only, maybe you are going crazy, what do you think, you namaqool, you piece of pig excrement, my love. With death comes honesty, my beloved, so I can call you by your true names.

Cloudy Rekha murmured sour nothings, but Gibreel cried again to Chamcha: "Spoono? You see her or you don't?"

Saladin Chamcha saw nothing, heard nothing, said nothing. Gibreel faced her alone. "You shouldn't have done it," he admonished her. "No, sir. A sin. A suchmuch thing."

O, you can lecture me now, she laughed. You are the one with the high moral tone, that's a good one. It was you who left me, her voice reminded his ear, seeming to nibble at the lobe. It was you, O moon of my delight, who hid behind a cloud. And I in darkness, blinded, lost, for love.

He became afraid. "What do you want? No, don't tell, just go."

When you were sick I could not see you, in case of scandal, you knew I could not, that I stayed away for your sake, but afterwards you punished, you used it as your excuse to leave, your cloud to hide behind. That, and also her, the icewoman. Bastard. Now that I am dead I have forgotten how to forgive. I curse you, my Gibreel, may your life be hell. Hell, because that's where you sent me, damn you, where you came from, devil, where you're going, sucker, enjoy the bloody dip. Rekha's curse; and after that, verses in a language he did not understand, all harshnesses and sibilance, in which he thought he made out, but maybe not, the repeated name _Al-Lat_.

He clutched at Chamcha; they burst through the bottom of the clouds.

Speed, the sensation of speed, returned, whistling its fearful note. The roof of cloud fled upwards, the water-floor zoomed closer, their eyes opened. A scream, that same scream that had fluttered in his guts when Gibreel swam across the sky, burst from Chamcha's lips; a shaft of sunlight pierced his open mouth and set it free. But they had fallen through the transformations of the clouds, Chamcha and Farishta, and there was a fluidity, an indistinctness, at the edges of them, and as the sunlight hit Chamcha it released more than noise:

"Fly," Chamcha shrieked at Gibreel. "Start flying, now." And added, without knowing its source, the second command: "And sing."

How does newness come into the world? How is it born?

Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made?

How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? What compromises, what deals, what betrayals of its secret nature must it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminating angel, the guillotine?

Is birth always a fall?

Do angels have wings? Can men fly?

When Mr. Saladin Chamcha fell out of the clouds over the English Channel he felt his heart being gripped by a force so implacable that he understood it was impossible for him to die. Afterwards, when his feet were once more firmly planted on the ground, he would begin to doubt this, to ascribe the implausibilities of his transit to the scrambling of his perceptions by the blast, and to attribute his survival, his and Gibreel's, to blind, dumb luck. But at the time he had no doubt; what had taken him over was the will to live, unadulterated, irresistible, pure, and the first thing it did was to inform him that it wanted nothing to do with his pathetic personality, that half-reconstructed affair of mimicry and voices, it intended to bypass all that, and he found himself surrendering to it, yes, go on, as if he were a bystander in his own mind, in his own body, because it began in the very centre of his body and spread outwards, turning his blood to iron, changing his flesh to steel, except that it also felt like a fist that enveloped him from outside, holding him in a way that was both unbearably tight and intolerably gentle; until finally it had conquered him totally and could work his mouth, his fingers, whatever it chose, and once it was sure of its dominion it spread outward from his body and grabbed Gibreel Farishta by the balls.

"Fly," it commanded Gibreel. "Sing."

Chamcha held on to Gibreel while the other began, slowly at first and then with increasing rapidity and force, to flap his arms. Harder and harder he flapped, and as he flapped a song burst out of him, and like the song of the spectre of Rekha Merchant it was sung in a language he did not know to a tune he had never heard. Gibreel never repudiated the miracle; unlike Chamcha, who tried to reason it out of existence, he never stopped saying that the gazal had been celestial, that without the song the flapping would have been for nothing, and without the flapping it was a sure thing that they would have hit the waves like rocks or what and simply burst into pieces on making contact with the taut drum of the sea. Whereas instead they began to slow down. The more emphatically Gibreel flapped and sang, sang and flapped, the more pronounced the deceleration, until finally the two of them were floating down to the Channel like scraps of paper in a breeze.

They were the only survivors of the wreck, the only ones who fell from _Bostan_ and lived. They were found washed up on a beach. The more voluble of the two, the one in the purple shirt, swore in his wild ramblings that they had walked upon the water, that the waves had borne them gently in to shore; but the other, to whose head a soggy bowler hat clung as if by magic, denied this. "God, we were lucky," he said. "How lucky can you get?"

I know the truth, obviously. I watched the whole thing. As to omnipresence and -potence, I'm making no claims at present, but I can manage this much, I hope. Chamcha willed it and Farishta did what was willed.

Which was the miracle worker?

Of what type -- angelic, satanic -- was Farishta's song?

Who am I?

Let's put it this way: who has the best tunes?

These were the first words Gibreel Farishta said when he awoke on the snowbound English beach with the improbability of a starfish by his ear: "Born again, Spoono, you and me. Happy birthday, mister; happy birthday to you."

Whereupon Saladin Chamcha coughed, spluttered, opened his eyes, and, as befitted a new-born babe, burst into foolish tears.

Reincarnation was always a big topic with Gibreel, for fifteen years the biggest star in the history of the Indian movies, even before he "miraculously" defeated the Phantom Bug that everyone had begun to believe would terminate his contracts. So maybe someone should have been able to forecast, only nobody did, that when he was up and about again he would sotospeak succeed where the germs had failed and walk out of his old life forever within a week of his fortieth birthday, vanishing, poof!, like a trick, _into thin air_.

The first people to notice his absence were the four members of his film-studio wheelchair-team. Long before his illness he had formed the habit of being transported from set to set on the great D. W. Rama lot by this group of speedy, trusted athletes, because a man who makes up to eleven movies "sy-multaneous" needs to conserve his energies. Guided by a complex coding system of slashes, circles and dots which Gibreel remembered from his childhood among the fabled lunch-runners of Bombay (of which more later), the chair-men zoomed him from role to role, delivering him as punctually and unerringly as once his father had delivered lunch. And after each take Gibreel would skip back into the chair and be navigated at high speed towards the next set, to be re-costumed, made up and handed his lines. "A career in the Bombay talkies," he told his loyal crew, "is more like a wheelchair race with one-two pit stops along the route."

After the illness, the Ghostly Germ, the Mystery Malaise, the Bug, he had returned to work, easing himself in, only seven pictures at a time . . . and then, justlikethat, he wasn't there. The wheelchair stood empty among the silenced sound-stages; his absence revealed the tawdry shamming of the sets. Wheelchairmen, one to four, made excuses for the missing star when movie executives descended upon them in wrath: Ji, he must be sick, he has always been famous for his punctual, no, why to criticize, maharaj, great artists must from time to time be permitted their temperament, na, and for their protestations they became the first casualties of Farishta's unexplained hey-presto, being fired, four three two one, ekdumjaldi, ejected from studio gates so that a wheelchair lay abandoned and gathering dust beneath the painted coco-palms around a sawdust beach.

Where was Gibreel? Movie producers, left in seven lurches, panicked expensively. See, there, at the Willingdon Club golf links -- only nine holes nowadays, skyscrapers having sprouted out of the other nine like giant weeds, or, let's say, like tombstones marking the sites where the torn corpse of the old city lay -- there, right there, upper-echelon executives, missing the simplest putts; and, look above, tufts of anguished hair, torn from senior heads, wafting down from high-level windows. The agitation of the producers was easy to understand, because in those days of declining audiences and the creation of historical soap operas and contemporary crusading housewives by the television network, there was but a single name which, when set above a picture's title, could still offer a sure-fire, cent-per-cent guarantee of an Ultrahit, a Smashation, and the owner of said name had departed, up, down or sideways, but certainly and unarguably vamoosed . . .

All over the city, after telephones, motorcyclists, cops, frogmen and trawlers dragging the harbour for his body had laboured mightily but to no avail, epitaphs began to be spoken in memory of the darkened star. On one of Rama Studios' seven impotent stages, Miss Pimple Billimoria, the latest chilli-and-spices bombshell -- _she's no flibberti-gibberti mamzel!, but a whir-stir-get-lost-sir bundla dynamite_ -- clad in temple--dancer veiled undress and positioned beneath writhing cardboard representations of copulating Tantric figures from the Chandela period, -- and perceiving that her major scene was not to be, her big break lay in pieces -- offered up a spiteful farewell before an audience of sound recordists and electricians smoking their cynical beedis. Attended by a dumbly distressed ayah, all elbows, Pimple attempted scorn. "God, what a stroke of luck, for Pete's sake," she cried. "I mean today it was the love scene, chhi chhi, I was just dying inside, thinking how to go near to that fatmouth with his breath of rotting cockroach dung." Bell-heavy anklets jingled as she stamped. "Damn good for him the movies don't smell, or he wouldn't get one job as a leper even." Here Pimple's soliloquy climaxed in such a torrent of obscenities that the beedi-smokers sat up for the first time and commenced animatedly to compare Pimple's vocabulary with that of the infamous bandit queen Phoolan Devi whose oaths could melt rifle barrels and turn journalists' pencils to rubber in a trice.

Exit Pimple, weeping, censored, a scrap on a cutting-room floor. Rhinestones fell from her navel as she went, mirroring her tears. . . in the matter of Farishta's halitosis she was not, however, altogether wrong; if anything, she had a little understated the case. Gibreel's exhalations, those ochre clouds of sulphur and brimstone, had always given him -- when taken together with his pronounced widow's peak and crowblack hair -- an air more saturnine than haloed, in spite of his archangelic name. It was said after he disappeared that he ought to have been easy to find, all it took was a halfway decent nose . . . and one week after he took off, an exit more tragic than Pimple Billimoria's did much to intensify the devilish odour that was beginning to attach itself to that forsolong sweet-smelling name. You could .say that he had stepped out of the screen into the world, and in life, unlike the cinema, people know it if you stink.

_We are creatures of air, Our roots in dreams And clouds, reborn In flight. Goodbye_. The enigmatic note discovered by the police in Gibreel Farishta's penthouse, located on the top floor of the Everest Vilas skyscraper on Malabar Hill, the highest home in the highest building on the highest ground in the city, one of those double-vista apartments from which you could look this way across the evening necklace of Marine Drive or that way out to Scandal Point and the sea, permitted the newspaper headlines to prolong their cacophonies. FARISHTA DIVES UNDERGROUND, opined _Blitz_ in somewhat macabre fashion, while Busybee in _The Daily_ preferred GIBREEL FLIES coop. Many photographs were published of that fabled residence in which French interior decorators bearing letters of commendation from Reza Pahlevi for the work they had done at Persepolis had spent a million dollars recreating at this exalted altitude the effect of a Bedouin tent. Another illusion unmade by his absence; GIBREEL STRIKES CAMP, the headlines yelled, but had he gone up or down or sideways? No one knew. In that metropolis of tongues and whispers, not even the sharpest ears heard anything reliable. But Mrs. Rekha Merchant, reading all the papers, listening to all the radio broadcasts, staying glued to the Doordarshan TV programmes, gleaned something from Farishta's message, heard a note that eluded everyone else, and took her two daughters and one son for a walk on the roof of her high-rise home. Its name was Everest Vilas.

His neighbour; as a matter of fact, from the apartment directly beneath his own. His neighbour and his friend; why should I say any more? Of course the scandal-pointed malice-magazines of the city filled their columns with hint innuendo and nudge, but that's no reason for sinking to their level. Why tarnish her reputation now?

Who was she? Rich, certainly, but then Everest Vilas was not exactly a tenement in Kurla, eh? Married, yessir, thirteen years, with a husband big in ball-bearings. Independent, her carpet and antique showrooms thriving at their prime Colaba sites. She called her carpets _klims_ and _kleens_ and the ancient artefacts were _anti-queues_. Yes, and she was beautiful, beautiful in the hard, glossy manner of those rarefied occupants of the city's sky-homes, her bones skin posture all bearing witness to her long divorce from the impoverished, heavy, pullulating earth. Everyone agreed she had a strong personality, drank _like a fish_ from Lalique crystal and hung her hat _shameless_ on a Chola Natraj and knew what she wanted and how to get it, fast. The husband was a mouse with money and a good squash wrist. Rekha Merchant read Gibreel Farishta's farewell note in the newspapers, wrote a letter of her own, gathered her children, summoned the elevator, and rose heavenward (one storey) to meet her chosen fate.

"Many years ago," her letter read, "I married out of cowardice. Now, finally, I'm doing something brave." She left a newspaper on her bed with Gibreel's message circled in red and heavily underscored -- three harsh lines, one of them ripping the page in fury. So naturally the bitch-journals went to town and it was all LOVELY"S LOVELORN LEAP, and BROKEN-HEARTED BEAUTY TAKES LAST DIVE. But:

Perhaps she, too, had the rebirth bug, and Gibreel, not understanding the terrible power of metaphor, had recommended flight. _To be born again,first you have to_ and she was a creature of the sky, she drank Lalique champagne, she lived on Everest, and one of her fellow-Olympians had flown; and if he could, then she, too, could be winged, and rooted in dreams.

She didn't make it. The lala who was employed as gatekeeper of the Everest Vilas compound offered the world his blunt testimony. "I was walking, here here, in the compound only, when there came a thud, _tharaap_. I turned. It was the body of the oldest daughter. Her skull was completely crushed. I looked up and saw the boy falling, and after him the younger girl. What to say, they almost hit me where I stood. I put my hand on my mouth and came to them. The young girl was whining softly. Then I looked up a further time and the Begum was coming. Her sari was floating out like a big balloon and all her hair was loose. I took my eyes away from her because she was fallIng and it was not respectful to look up inside her clothes."

Rekha and her children fell from Everest; no survivors. The whispers blamed Gibreel. Let's leave it at that for the moment.

Oh: don't forget: he saw her after she died. He saw her several times. It was a long time before people understood how sick the great man was. Gibreel, the star. Gibreel, who vanquished the Nameless Ailment. Gibreel, who feared sleep.

After he departed the ubiquitous images of his face began to rot. On the gigantic, luridly coloured hoardings from which he had watched over the populace, his lazy eyelids started flaking and crumbling, drooping further and further until his irises looked like two moons sliced by clouds, or by the soft knives of his long lashes. Finally the eyelids fell off, giving a wild, bulging look to his painted eyes. Outside the picture palaces of Bombay, mammoth cardboard effigies of Gibreel were seen to decay and list. Dangling limply on their sustaining scaffolds, they lost arms, withered, snapped at the neck. His portraits on the covers of movie magazines acquired the pallor of death, a nullity about the eye, a hollowness. At last his images simply faded off the printed page, so that the shiny covers of _Celebrity_ and _Society_ and _Illustrated Weekly_ went blank at the bookstalls and their publishers fired the printers and blamed the quality of the ink. Even on the silver screen itself, high above his worshippers in the dark, that supposedly immortal physiognomy began to putrefy, blister and bleach; projectors jammed unaccountably every time he passed through the gate, his films ground to a halt, and the lamp-heat of the malfunctioning projectors burned his celluloid memory away: a star gone supernova, with the consuming fire spreading outwards, as was fitting, from his lips.

It was the death of God. Or something very like it; for had not that outsize face, suspended over its devotees in the artificial cinematic night, shone like that of some supernal Entity that had its being at least halfway between the mortal and the divine? More than halfway, many would have argued, for Gibreel had spent the greater part of his unique career incarnating, with absolute conviction, the countless deities of the subcontinent in the popular genre movies known as "theologicals". It was part of the magic of his persona that he succeeded in crossing religious boundaries without giving offence. Blue-skinned as Krishna he danced, flute in hand, amongst the beauteous gopis and their udder-heavy cows; with upturned palms, serene, he meditated (as Gautama) upon humanity's suffering beneath a studio-rickety bodhi-tree. On those infrequent occasions when he descended from the heavens he never went too far, playing, for example, both the Grand Mughal and his famously wily minister in the classic _Akbar and Birbal_. For over a decade and a half he had represented, to hundreds of millions of believers in that country in which, to this day, the human population outnumbers the divine by less than three to one, the most acceptable, and instantly recognizable, face of the Supreme. For many of his fans, the boundary separating the performer and his roles had longago ceased to exist.

The fans, yes, and? How about Gibreel?

That face. In real life, reduced to life-size, set amongst ordinary mortals, it stood revealed as oddly un-starry. Those low-slung eyelids could give him an exhausted look. There was, too, something coarse about the nose, the mouth was too well fleshed to be strong, the ears were long-lobed like young, knurled jackfruit. The most profane of faces, the most sensual of faces. In which, of late, it had been possible to make out the seams mined by his recent, near-fatal illness. And yet, in spite of profanity and debilitation, this was a face inextricably mixed up with holiness, perfection, grace: God stuff. No accounting for tastes, that's all. At any rate, you'll agree that for such an actor (for any actor, maybe, even for Chamcha, but most of all for him) to have a bee in his bonnet about avatars, like much-metamorphosed Vishnu, was not so very surprising. Rebirth: that's God stuff, too.

Or, but, then again . . . not always. There are secular reincarnations, too. Gibreel Farishta had been born Ismail Najmuddin in Poona, British Poona at the empire's fag-end, long before the Pune of Rajneesh etc. (Pune, Vadodara, Mumbai; even towns can take stage names nowadays.) Ismail after the child involved in the sacrifice of Ibrahim, and Najmuddin, _star of the faith_; he'd given up quite a name when he took the angel's.

Afterwards, when the aircraft _Bostan_ was in the grip of the hijackers, and the passengers, fearing for their futures, were regressing into their pasts, Gibreel confided to Saladin Chamcha that his choice of pseudonym had been his way of making a homage to the memory of his dead mother, "my mummyji, Spoono, my one and only Mamo, because who else was it who started the whole angel business, her personal angel, she called me, _farishta_, because apparently I was too damn sweet, believe it or not, I was good as goddamn gold."

Poona couldn't hold him; he was taken in his infancy to the bitch-city, his first migration; his father got a job amongst the fleet-footed inspirers of future wheelchair quartets, the lunch-porters or dabbawallas of Bombay. And Ismail the farishta followed, at thirteen, in his father's footsteps.

Gibreel, captive aboard AI-420, sank into forgivable rhapsodies, fixing Chamcha with his glittering eye, explicating the mysteries of the runners' coding system, black swastika red circle yellow slash dot, running in his mind's eye the entire relay from home to office desk, that improbable system by which two thousand dabbawallas delivered, each day, over one hundred thousand lunch-pails, and on a bad day, Spoono, maybe fifteen got mislaid, we were illiterate, mostly, but the signs were our secret tongue.

_Bostan_ circled London, gunmen patrolling the gangways, and the lights in the passenger cabins had been switched off, but Gibreel's energy illuminated the gloom. On the grubby movie screen on which, earlier in the journey, the inflight inevitability of Walter Matthau had stumbled lugubriously into the aerial ubiquity of Goldie Hawn, there were shadows moving, projected by the nostalgia of the hostages, and the most sharply defined of them was this spindly adolescent, Ismail Najmuddin, mummy's angel in a Gandhi cap, running tiffins across the town. The young dabbawalla skipped nimbly through the shadow-crowd, because he was used to such conditions, think, Spoono, picture, thirty-forty tiffins in a long wooden tray on your head, and when the local train stops you have maybe one minute to push on or off, and then running in the streets, flat out, yaar, with the trucks buses scooters cycles and what-all, one-two, one-two, lunch, lunch, the dabbas must get through, and in the monsoon running down the railway line when the train broke down, or waist-deep in water in some flooded street, and there were gangs, Salad baba, truly, organized gangs of dabba-stealers, it's a hungry city, baby, what to tell you, but we could handle them, we were everywhere, knew everything, what thieves could escape our eyes and ears, we never went to any policia, we looked after our own.

At night father and son would return exhausted to their shack by the airport runway at Santacruz and when Ismail's mother saw him approaching, illuminated by the green red yellow of the departing jet-planes, she would say that simply to lay eyes on him made all her dreams come true, which was the first indication that there was something peculiar about Gibreel, because from the beginning, it seemed, he could fulfil people's most secret desires without having any idea of how he did it. His father Najmuddin Senior never seemed to mind that his wife had eyes only for her son, that the boy's feet received nightly pressings while the father's went unstroked. A son is a blessing and a blessing requires the gratitude of the blest.

Naima Najmuddin died. A bus hit her and that was that, Gibreel wasn't around to answer her prayers for life. Neither father nor son ever spoke of grief. Silently, as though it were customary and expected, they buried their sadness beneath extra work, engaging in an inarticulate contest, who could carry the most dabbas on his head, who could acquire the most new contracts per month, who could run faster, as though the greater labour would indicate the greater love. When he saw his father at night, the knotted veins bulging in his neck and at his temples, Ismail Najmuddin would understand how much the older man had resented him, and how important it was for the father to defeat the son and regain, thereby, his usurped primacy in the affections of his dead wife. Once he realized this, the youth eased off, but his father's zeal remained unrelenting, and pretty soon he was getting promotion, no longer a mere runner but one of the organizing muqaddams. When Gibreel was nineteen, Najmuddin Senior became a member of the lunch-runners' guild, the Bombay Tiffin Carriers' Association, and when Gibreel was twenty, his father was dead, stopped in his tracks by a stroke that almost blew him apart. "He just ran himself into the ground," said the guild's General Secretary, Babasaheb Mhatre himself. "That poor bastard, he just ran out of steam." But the orphan knew better. He knew that his father had finally run hard enough and long enough to wear down the frontiers between the worlds, he had run clear out of his skin and into the arms of his wife, to whom he had proved, once and for all, the superiority of his love. Some migrants are happy to depart.

Babasaheb Mhatre sat in a blue office behind a green door above a labyrinthine bazaar, an awesome figure, buddha-fat, one of the great moving forces of the metropolis, possessing the occult gift of remaining absolutely still, never shifting from his room, and yet being everywhere important and meeting everyone who mattered in Bombay. The day after young Ismail's father ran across the border to see Naima, the Babasaheb summoned the young man into his presence. "So? Upset or what?" The reply, with downcast eyes: ji, thank you, Babaji, I am okay. "Shut your face," said Babasaheb Mhatre. "From today you live with me." Butbut, Babaji ... "But me no buts. Already I have informed my goodwife. I have spoken." Please excuse Babaji but how what why? "I have _spoken_."

Gibreel Farishta was never told why the Babasaheb had decided to take pity on him and pluck him from the futurelessness of the streets, but after a while he began to have an idea. Mrs. Mhatre was a thin woman, like a pencil beside the rubbery Babasaheb, but she was filled so full of mother-love that she should have been fat like a potato. When the Baba came home she put sweets into his mouth with her own hands, and at nights the newcomer to the household could hear the great General Secretary of the B T C A protesting, Let me go, wife, I can undress myself. At breakfast she spoon-fed Mhatre with large helpings of malt, and before he went to work she brushed his hair. They were a childless couple, and young Najmuddin understood that the Babasaheb wanted him to share the load. Oddly enough, however, the Begum did not treat the young man as a child. "You see, he is a grown fellow," she told her husband when poor Mhatre pleaded, "Give the boy the blasted spoon of malt." Yes, a grown fellow, "we must make a man of him, husband, no babying for him." "Then damn it to hell," the Babasaheb exploded, "why do you do it to me?" Mrs. Mhatre burst into tears. "But you are everything to me," she wept, "you are my father, my lover, my baby too. You are my lord and my suckling child. If I displease you then I have no life."

Babasaheb Mhatre, accepting defeat, swallowed the tablespoon of malt.

He was a kindly man, which he disguised with insults and noise. To console the orphaned youth he would speak to him, in the blue office, about the philosophy of rebirth, convincing him that his parents were already being scheduled for re-entry somewhere, unless of course their lives had been so holy that they had attained the final grace. So it was Mhatre who started Farishta off on the whole reincarnation business, and not just reincarnation. The Babasaheb was an amateur psychic, a tapper of table-legs and a bringer of spirits into glasses. "But I gave that up," he told his protégé, with many suitably melodramatic inflections, gestures, frowns, "after I got the fright of my bloody life."

Once (Mhatre recounted) the glass had been visited by the most co-operative of spirits, such a too-friendly fellow, see, so I thought to ask him some big questions. _Is there a God_, and that glass which had been running round like a mouse or so just stopped dead, middle of table, not a twitch, completely phutt, kaput. So, then, okay, I said, if you won't answer that try this one instead, and I came right out with it, _Is there a Devil_. After that the glass -- baprebap! -- began to shake -- catch your ears! -- slowslow at first, then faster--faster, like a jelly, until it jumped! -- ai-hai! -- up from the table, into the air, fell down on its side, and -- o-ho! -- into a thousand and one pieces, smashed. Believe don't believe, Babasaheb Mhatre told his charge, but thenandthere I learned my lesson: don't meddle, Mhatre, in what you do not comprehend.

This story had a profound effect on the consciousness of the young listener, because even before his mother's death he had become convinced of the existence of the supernatural world. Sometimes when he looked around him, especially in the afternoon heat when the air turned glutinous, the visible world, its features and inhabitants and things, seemed to be sticking up through the atmosphere like a profusion of hot icebergs, and he had the idea that everything continued down below the surface of the soupy air: people, motor-cars, dogs, movie billboards, trees, nine-tenths of their reality concealed from his eyes. He would blink, and the illusion would fade, but the sense of it never left him. He grew up believing in God, angels, demons, afreets, djinns, as matter-of-factly as if they were bullock-carts or lamp-posts, and it struck him as a failure in his own sight that he had never seen a ghost. He would dream of discovering a magic optometrist from whom he would purchase a pair of greentinged spectacles which would correct his regrettable myopia, and after that he would be able to see through the dense, blinding air to the fabulous world beneath.

From his mother Naima Najmuddin he heard a great many stories of the Prophet, and if inaccuracies had crept into her versions he wasn't interested in knowing what they were. "What a man!" he thought. "What angel would not wish to speak to him?" Sometimes, though, he caught himself in the act of forming blasphemous thoughts, for example when without meaning to, as he drifted off to sleep in his cot at the Mhatre residence, his somnolent fancy began to compare his own condition with that of the Prophet at the time when, having been orphaned and short of funds, he made a great success of his job as the business manager of the wealthy widow Khadija, and ended up marrying her as well. As he slipped into sleep he saw himself sitting on a rose-strewn dais, simpering shyly beneath the sari-pallu which he had placed demurely over his face, while his new husband, Babasaheb Mhatre, reached lovingly towards him to remove the fabric, and gaze at his features in a mirror placed in his lap. This dream of marrying the Babasaheb brought him awake, flushing hotly for shame, and after that he began to worry about the impurity in his make-up that could create such terrible visions.

Mostly, however, his religious faith was a low-key thing, a part of him that required no more special attention than any other. When Babasaheb Mhatre took him into his home it confirmed to the young man that he was not alone in the world, that something was taking care of him, so he was not entirely surprised when the Babasaheb called him into the blue office on the morning of his twenty-first birthday and sacked him without even being prepared to listen to an appeal.

"You're fired," Mhatre emphasized, beaming. "Cashiered, had your chips. Dis-_miss_."

"But, uncle,"

"Shut your face."

Then the Babasaheb gave the orphan the greatest present of his life, informing him that a meeting had been arranged for him at the studios of the legendary film magnate Mr. D. W. Rama; an audition. "It is for appearance only," the Babasaheb said. "Rama is my good friend and we have discussed. A small part to begin, then it is up to you. Now get out of my sight and stop pulling such humble faces, it does not suit."

"But, uncle,"

"Boy like you is too damn goodlooking to carry tiffins on his head all his life. Get gone now, go, be a homosexual movie actor. I fired you five minutes back."

"But, uncle,"

"I have spoken. Thank your lucky stars."

He became Gibreel Farishta, but for four years he did not become a star, serving his apprenticeship in a succession of minor knockabout comic parts. He remained calm, unhurried, as though he could see the future, and his apparent lack of ambition made him something of an outsider in that most self-seeking of industries. He was thought to be stupid or arrogant or both. And throughout the four wilderness years he failed to kiss a single woman on the mouth.

On-screen, he played the fall guy, the idiot who loves the beauty and can't see that she wouldn't go for him in a thousand years, the funny uncle, the poor relation, the village idiot, the servant, the incompetent crook, none of them the type of part that ever rates a love scene. Women kicked him, slapped him, teased him, laughed at him, but never, on celluloid, looked at him or sang to him or danced around him with cinematic love in their eyes. Off-screen, he lived alone in two empty rooms near the studios and tried to imagine what women looked like without clothes on. To get his mind off the subject of love and desire, he studied, becoming an omnivorous autodidact, devouring the metamorphic myths of Greece and Rome, the avatars of Jupiter, the boy who became a flower, the spider-woman, Circe, everything; and the theosophy of Annie Besant, and unified field theory, and the incident of the Satanic verses in the early career of the Prophet, and the politics of Muhammad's harem after his return to Mecca in triumph; and the surrealism of the newspapers, in which butterflies could fly into young girls' mouths, asking to be consumed, and children were born with no faces, and young boys dreamed in impossible detail of earlier incarnations, for instance in a golden fortress filled with precious stones. He filled himself up with God knows what, but he could not deny, in the small hours of his insomniac nights, that he was full of something that had never been used, that he did not know how to begin to use, that is, love. In his dreams he was tormented by women of unbearable sweetness and beauty, so he preferred to stay awake and force himself to rehearse some part of his general knowledge in order to blot out the tragic feeling of being endowed with a larger-than-usual capacity for love, without a single person on earth to offer it to.

His big break arrived with the coming of the theological movies. Once the formula of making films based on the puranas, and adding the usual mixture of songs, dances, funny uncles etc., had paid off, every god in the pantheon got his or her chance to be a star. When D. W. Rama scheduled a production based on the story of Ganesh, none of the leading box-office names of the time were willing to spend an entire movie concealed inside an elephant's head. Gibreel jumped at the chance. That was his first hit, _Ganpati Baba_, and suddenly he was a superstar, but only with the trunk and ears on. After six movies playing the elephantheaded god he was permitted to remove the thick, pendulous, grey mask and put on, instead, a long, hairy tail, in order to play Hanuman the monkey king in a sequence of adventure movies that owed more to a certain cheap television series emanating from Hong Kong than it did to the Ramayana. This series proved so popular that monkey-tails became de rigueur for the city's young bucks at the kind of parties frequented by convent girls known as "firecrackers" because of their readiness to go off with a bang.

After Hanuman there was no stopping Gibreel, and his phenomenal success deepened his belief in a guardian angel. But it also led to a more regrettable development.

(I see that I must, after all, spill poor Rekha's beans.)

Even before he replaced false head with fake tail he had become irresistibly attractive to women. The seductions of his fame had grown so great that several of these young ladies asked him if he would keep the Ganesh-mask on while they made love, but he refused out of respect for the dignity of the god. Owing to the innocence of his upbringing he could not at that time differentiate between quantity and quality and accordingly felt the need to make up for lost time. He had so many sexual partners that it was not uncommon for him to forget their names even before they had left his room. Not only did he become a philanderer of the worst type, but he also learned the arts of dissimulation, because a man who plays gods must be above reproach. So skilfully did he conceal his life of scandal and debauch that his old patron, Babasaheb Mhatre, lying on his deathbed a decade after he sent a young dabbawalla out into the world of illusion, black-money and lust, begged him to get married to prove he was a man. "God-sake, mister," the Babasaheb pleaded, "when I told you back then to go and be a homo I never thought you would take me seriously, there is a limit to respecting one's elders, after all." Gibreel threw up his hands and swore that he was no such disgraceful thing, and that when the right girl came along he would of course undergo nuptials with a will. "What you waiting? Some goddess from heaven? Greta Garbo, Gracekali, who?" cried the old man, coughing blood, but Gibreel left him with the enigma of a smile that allowed him to die without having his mind set entirely at rest.

The avalanche of sex in which Gibreel Farishta was trapped managed to bury his greatest talent so deep that it might easily have been lost forever, his talent, that is, for loving genuinely, deeply and without holding back, the rare and delicate gift which he had never been able to employ. By the time of his illness he had all but forgotten the anguish he used to experience owing to his longing for love, which had twisted and turned in him like a sorcerer's knife. Now, at the end of each gymnastic night, he slept easily and long, as if he had never been plagued by dream-women, as if he had never hoped to lose his heart.

"Your trouble," Rekha Merchant told him when she materialized out of the clouds, "is everybody always forgave you, God knows why, you always got let off, you got away with murder. Nobody ever held you responsible for what you did." He couldn't argue. "God's gift," she screamed at him, "God knows where you thought you were from, jumped-up type from the gutter, God knows what diseases you brought."

But that was what women did, he thought in those days, they were the vessels into which he could pour himself, and when he moved on, they would understand that it was his nature, and forgive. And it was true that nobody blamed him for leaving, for his thousand and one pieces of thoughtlessness, how many abortions, Rekha demanded in the cloud-hole, how many broken hearts. In all those years he was the beneficiary of the infinite generosity of women, but he was its victim, too, because their forgiveness made possible the deepest and sweetest corruption of all, namely the idea that he was doing nothing wrong.

Rekha: she entered his life when he bought the penthouse at Everest Vilas and she offered, as a neighbour and businesswoman, to show him her carpets and antiques. Her husband was at a world-wide congress of ball-bearings manufacturers in Gothenburg, Sweden, and in his absence she invited Gibreel into her apartment of stone lattices from Jaisalmer and carved wooden handrails from Kcralan palaces and a stone Mughal chhatri or cupola turned into a whirlpool bath; while she poured him French champagne she leaned against marbled walls and felt the cool veins of the stone against her back. When he sipped the champagne she teased him, surely gods should not partake of alcohol, and he answered with a line he had once read in an interview with the Aga Khan, O, you know, this champagne is only for outward show, the moment it touches my lips it turns to water. After that it didn't take long for her to touch his lips and deliquesce into his arms. By the time her children returned from school with the ayah she was immaculately dressed and coiffed, and sat with him in the drawing-room, revealing the secrets of the carpet business, confessing that art silk stood for artificial not artistic, telling him not to be fooled by her brochure in which a rug was seductively described as being made of wool plucked from the throats of baby lambs, which means, you see, only _low-grade wool_, advertising, what to do, this is how it is.

He did not love her, was not faithful to her, forgot her birthdays, failed to return her phone calls, turned up when it was most inconvenient owing to the presence in her home of dinner guests from the world of the ball-bearing, and like everyone else she forgave him. But her forgiveness was not the silent, mousy let-off he got from the others. Rekha complained like crazy, she gave him hell, she bawled him out and cursed him for a useless lafanga and haramzada and salah and even, in extremis, for being guilty of the impossible feat of fucking the sister he did not have. She spared him nothing, accusing him of being a creature of surfaces, like a movie screen, and then she went ahead and forgave him anyway and allowed him to unhook her blouse. Gibreel could not resist the operatic forgiveness of Rekha Merchant, which was all the more moving on account of the flaw in her own position, her infidelity to the ball-bearing king, which Gibreel forbore to mention, taking his verbal beatings like a man. So that whereas the pardons he got from the rest of his women left him cold and he forgot them the moment they were uttered, he kept coming back to Rekha, so that she could abuse him and then console him as only she knew how.

Then he almost died.

He was filming at Kanya Kumari, standing on the very tip of Asia, taking part in a fight scene set at the point on Cape Comorin where it seems that three oceans are truly smashing into one another. Three sets of waves rolled in from the west east south and collided in a mighty clapping of watery hands just as Gibreel took a punch on the jaw, perfect timing, and he passed out on the spot, falling backwards into tri-oceanic spume. He did not get up.

To begin with everybody blamed the giant English stunt-man Eustace Brown, who had delivered the punch. He protested vehemently. Was he not the same fellow who had performed opposite Chief Minister N. T. Rama Rao in his many theological movie roles? Had he not perfected the art of making the old man look good in combat without hurting him? Had he ever complained that NTR never pulled his punches, so that he, Eustace, invariably ended up black and blue, having been beaten stupid by a little old guy whom he could've eaten for breakfast, on _toast_, and had he ever, even once, lost his temper? Well, then? How could anyone think he would hurt the immortal Gibreel? -- They fired him anyway and the police put him in the lock-up, just in case.

But it was not the punch that had flattened Gibreel. After the star had been flown into Bombay's Breach Candy Hospital in an Air Force jet made available for the purpose; after exhaustive tests had come up with almost nothing; and while he lay unconscious, dying, with a blood-count that had fallen from his normal fifteen to a murderous four point two, a hospital spokesman faced the national press on Breach Candy's wide white steps. "It is a freak mystery," he gave out. "Call it, if you so please, an act of God."

Gibreel Farishta had begun to haemorrhage all over his insides for no apparent reason, and was quite simply bleeding to death inside his skin. At the worst moment the blood began to seep out through his rectum and penis, and it seemed that at any moment it might burst torrentially through his nose and ears and out of the corners of his eyes. For seven days he bled, and received transfusions, and every clotting agent known to medical science, including a concentrated form of rat poison, and although the treatment resulted in a marginal improvement the doctors gave him up for lost.

The whole of India was at Gibreel's bedside. His condition was the lead item on every radio bulletin, it was the subject of hourly news-flashes on the national television network, and the crowd that gathered in Warden Road was so large that the police had to disperse it with lathi-charges and tear-gas, which they used even though every one of the half-million mourners was already tearful and wailing. The Prime Minister cancelled her appointments and flew to visit him. Her son the airline pilot sat in Farishta's bedroom, holding the actor's hand. A mood of apprehension settled over the nation, because if God had unleashed such an act of retribution against his most celebrated incarnation, what did he have in store for the rest of the country? If Gibreel died, could India be far behind? In the mosques and temples of the nation, packed congregations prayed, not only for the life of the dying actor, but for the future, for themselves.

Who did not visit Gibreel in hospital? Who never wrote, made no telephone call, despatched no flowers, sent in no tiffins of delicious home cooking? While many lovers shamelessly sent him get-well cards and lamb pasandas, who, loving him most of all, kept herself to herself, unsuspected by her ball--bearing of a husband? Rekha Merchant placed iron around her heart, and went through the motions of her daily life, playing with her children, chit-chatting with her husband, acting as his hostess when required, and never, not once, revealed the bleak devastation of her soul.

He recovered.

The recovery was as mysterious as the illness, and as rapid. It, too, was called (by hospital, journalists, friends) an act of the Supreme. A national holiday was declared; fireworks were set off up and down the land. But when Gibreel regained his strength, it became clear that he had changed, and to a startling degree, because he had lost his faith.

On the day he was discharged from hospital he went under police escort through the immense crowd that had gathered to celebrate its own deliverance as well as his, climbed into his Mercedes and told the driver to give all the pursuing vehicles the slip, which took seven hours and fifty-one minutes, and by the end of the manoeuvre he had worked out what had to be done. He got out of the limousine at the Taj hotel and without looking left or right went directly into the great dining-room with its buffet table groaning under the weight of forbidden foods, and he loaded his plate with all of it, the pork sausages from Wiltshire and the cured York hams and the rashers of bacon from godknowswhere; with the gammon steaks of his unbelief and the pig's trotters of secularism; and then, standing there in the middle of the hall, while photographers popped up from nowhere, he began to eat as fast as possible, stuffing the dead pigs into his face so rapidly that bacon rashers hung out of the sides of his mouth.

During his illness he had spent every minute of consciousness calling upon God, every second of every minute. Ya Allah whose servant lies bleeding do not abandon me now after watching oven me so long. Ya Allah show me some sign, some small mark of your favour, that I may find in myself the strength to cure my ills. O God most beneficent most merciful, be with me in this my time of need, my most grievous need. Then it occurred to him that he was being punished, and for a time that made it possible to suffer the pain, but after a time he got angry. Enough, God, his unspoken words demanded, why must I die when I have not killed, are you vengeance or are you love? The anger with God carried him through another day, but then it faded, and in its place there came a terrible emptiness, an isolation, as he realized he was talking to _thin air_, that there was nobody there at all, and then he felt more foolish than ever in his life, and he began to plead into the emptiness, ya Allah, just be there, damn it, just be. But he felt nothing, nothing nothing, and then one day he found that he no longer needed there to be anything to feel. On that day of metamorphosis the illness changed and his recovery began. And to prove to himself the non-existence of God, he now stood in the dining-hall of the city's most famous hotel, with pigs falling out of his face.

He looked up from his plate to find a woman watching him. Her hair was so fair that it was almost white, and her skin possessed the colour and translucency of mountain ice. She laughed at him and turned away.

"Don't you get it?" he shouted after her, spewing sausage fragments from the corners of his mouth. "No thunderbolt. That's the point."

She came back to stand in front of him. "You're alive," she told him. "You got your life back. _That's_ the point."

He told Rekha: the moment she turned around and started walking back I fell in love with her. Alleluia Cone, climber of mountains, vanquisher of Everest, blonde yahudan, ice queen. Her challenge, _change your life, or did you get it back for nothing_, I couldn't resist.

"You and your reincarnation junk," Rekha cajoled him. "Such a nonsense head. You come out of hospital, back through death's door, and it goes to your head, crazy boy, at once you must have some escapade thing, and there she is, hey presto, the blonde mame. Don't think I don't know what you're like, Gibbo, so what now, you want me to forgive you or what?"

No need, he said. He left Rekha's apartment (its mistress wept, face-down, on the floor); and never entered it again.

Three days after he met her with his mouth full of unclean meat Allie got into an aeroplane and left. Three days out of time behind a do-not-disturb sign, but in the end they agreed that the world was real, what was possible was possible and what was impossible was im--, brief encounter, ships that pass, love in a transit lounge. After she left, Gibreel rested, tried to shut his ears to her challenge, resolved to get his life back to normal. Just because he'd lost his belief it didn't mean he couldn't do his job, and in spite of the scandal of the ham-eating photographs, the first scandal ever to attach itself to his name, he signed movie contracts and went back to work.

And then, one morning, a wheelchair stood empty and he had gone. A bearded passenger, one Ismail Najmuddin, boarded Flight AI-420 to London. The 747 was named after one of the gardens of Paradise, not Gulistan but _Bostan_. "To be born again," Gibrecl Farishta said to Saladin Chamcha much later, "first you have to die. Me, I only half-expired, but I did it on two occasions, hospital and plane, so it adds up, it counts. And now, Spoono my friend, here I stand before you in Proper London, Vilayet, regenerated, a new man with a new life. Spoono, is this not a bloody fine thing?"

Why did he leave?

Because of her, the challenge of her, the newness, the fierceness of the two of them together, the inexorability of an impossible thing that was insisting on its right to become.

And, or, maybe: because after he ate the pigs the retribution began, a nocturnal retribution, a punishment of dreams.

Once the flight to London had taken off, thanks to his magic trick of crossing two pairs of fingers on each hand and rotating his thumbs, the narrow, fortyish fellow who sat in a non-smoking window seat watching the city of his birth fall away from him like old snakeskin allowed a relieved expression to pass briefly across his face. This face was handsome in a somewhat sour, patrician fashion, with long, thick, downturned lips like those of a disgusted turbot, and thin eyebrows arching sharply over eyes that watched the world with a kind of alert contempt. Mr. Saladin Chamcha had constructed this face with care -- it had taken him several years to get it just right -- and for many more years now he had thought of it simply as _his own_ -- indeed, he had forgotten what he had looked like before it. Furthermore, he had shaped himself a voice to go with the face, a voice whose languid, almost lazy vowels contrasted disconcertingly with the sawn--off abruptness of the consonants. The combination of face and voice was a potent one; but, during his recent visit to his home town, his first such visit in fifteen years (the exact period, I should observe, of Gibreel Farishta's film stardom), there had been strange and worrying developments. It was unfortunately the case that his voice (the first to go) and, subsequently, his face itself, had begun to let him down.

It started -- Chamcha, allowing fingers and thumbs to relax and hoping, in some embarrassment, that his last remaining superstition had gone unobserved by his fellow-passengers, closed his eyes and remembered with a delicate shudder of horror -- on his flight east some weeks ago. He had fallen into a torpid sleep, high above the desert sands of the Persian Gulf, and been visited in a dream by a bizarre stranger, a man with a glass skin, who rapped his knuckles mournfully against the thin, brittle membrane covering his entire body and begged Saladin to help him, to release him from the prison of his skin. Chamcha picked up a stone and began to batter at the glass. At once a latticework of blood oozed up through the cracked surface of the stranger's body, and when Chamcha tried to pick off the broken shards the other began to scream, because chunks of his flesh were coming away with the glass. At this point an air stewardess bent over the sleeping Chamcha and demanded, with the pitiless hospitality of her tribe: _Something to drink, sir? A drink?_, and Saladin, emerging from the dream, found his speech unaccountably metamorphosed into the Bombay lilt he had so diligently (and so long ago!) unmade. "Achha, means what?" he mumbled. "Alcoholic beverage or what?" And, when the stewardess reassured him, whatever you wish, sir, all beverages are gratis, he heard, once again, his traitor voice: "So, okay, bibi, give one whiskysoda only."

What a nasty surprise! He had come awake with a jolt, and sat stiffly in his chair, ignoring alcohol and peanuts. How had the past bubbled up, in transmogrified vowels and vocab? What next? Would he take to putting coconut-oil in his hair? Would he take to squeezing his nostrils between thumb and forefinger, blowing noisily and drawing forth a glutinous silver arc of muck? Would he become a devotee of professional wrestling? What further, diabolic humiliations were in store? He should have known it was a mistake to _go home_, after so long, how could it be other than a regression; it was an unnatural journey; a denial of time; a revolt against history; the whole thing was bound to be a disaster.

_I'm not myself_, he thought as a faint fluttering feeling began in the vicinity of his heart. But what does that mean, anyway, he added bitterly. After all, "les acteurs ne sont pas des gens", as the great ham Frederick had explained in _Les Enfants du Paradis_. Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.

The seatbelt light came on, the captain's voice warned of air turbulence, they dropped in and out of air pockets. The desert lurched about beneath them and the migrant labourer who had boarded at Qatar clutched at his giant transistor radio and began to retch. Chamcha noticed that the man had not fastened his belt, and pulled himself together, bringing his voice back to its haughtiest English pitch. "Look here, why don't you. . ." he indicated, but the sick man, between bursts of heaving into the paper bag which Saladin had handed him just in time, shook his head, shrugged, replied: "Sahib, for what? If Allah wishes me to die, I shall die. If he does not, I shall not. Then of what use is the safety?"

Damn you, India, Saladin Chamcha cursed silently, sinking back into his seat. To hell with you, I escaped your clutches long ago, you won't get your hooks into me again, you cannot drag me back.

Once upon a time -- _it was and it was not so_, as the old stories used to say, _it happened and it never did_ -- maybe, then, or maybe not, a ten-year-old boy from Scandal Point in Bombay found a wallet lying in the Street outside his home. He was on the way home from school, having just descended from the school bus on which he had been obliged to sit squashed between the adhesive sweatiness of boys in shorts and be deafened by their noise, and because even in those days he was a person who recoiled from raucousness, jostling and the perspiration of strangers he was feeling faintly nauseated by the long, bumpy ride home. However, when he saw the black leather billfold lying at his feet, the nausea vanished, and he bent down excitedly and grabbed, -- opened, -- and found, to his delight, that it was full of cash, -- and not merely rupees, but real money, negotiable on black markets and international exchanges, -- pounds! Pounds sterling, from Proper London in the fabled country of Vilayet across the black water and far away. Dazzled by the thick wad of foreign currency, the boy raised his eyes to make sure he had not been observed, and for a moment it seemed to him that a rainbow had arched down to him from the heavens, a rainbow like an angel's breath, like an answered prayer, coming to an end in the very spot on which he stood. His fingers trembled as they reached into the wallet, towards the fabulous hoard.

"Give it." It seemed to him in later life that his father had been spying on him throughout his childhood, and even though Changez Chamchawala was a big man, a giant even, to say nothing of his wealth and public standing, he still always had the lightness of foot and also the inclination to sneak up behind his son and spoil whatever he was doing, whipping the young Salahuddin's bedsheet off at night to reveal the shameful penis in the clutching, red hand. And he could smell money from a hundred and one miles away, even through the stink of chemicals and fertilizer that always hung around him owing to his being the country's largest manufacturer of agricultural sprays and fluids and artificial dung. Changez Chamchawala, philanthropist, philanderer, living legend, leading light of the nationalist movement, sprang from the gateway of his home to pluck a bulging wallet from his son's frustrated hand. "Tch tch," he admonished, pocketing the pounds sterling, "you should not pick things up from the street. The ground is dirty, and money is dirtier, anyway."

On a shelf of Changez Chamchawala's teak-lined study, beside a ten-volume set of the Richard Burton translation of the Arabian Nights, which was being slowly devoured by mildew and bookworm owing to the deep-seated prejudice against books which led Changez to own thousands of the pernicious things in order to humiliate them by leaving them to rot unread, there stood a magic lamp, a brightly polished copper--and--brass avatar of Aladdin's very own genie-container: a lamp begging to be rubbed. But Changez neither rubbed it nor permitted it to be rubbed by, for example, his son. "One day," he assured the boy, "you'll have it for yourself. Then rub and rub as much as you like and see what doesn't come to you. Just now, but, it is mine." The promise of the magic lamp infected Master Salahuddin with the notion that one day his troubles would end and his innermost desires would be gratified, and all he had to do was wait it out; but then there was the incident of the wallet, when the magic of a rainbow had worked for him, not for his father but for him, and Changez Chamchawala had stolen the crock of gold. After that the son became convinced that his father would smother all his hopes unless he got away, and from that moment he became desperate to leave, to escape, to place oceans between the great man and himself.

Salahuddin Chamchawala had understood by his thirteenth year that he was destined for that cool Vilayet full of the crisp promises of pounds sterling at which the magic billfold had hinted, and he grew increasingly impatient of that Bombay of dust, vulgarity, policemen in shorts, transvestites, movie fanzines, pavement sleepers and the rumoured singing whores of Grant Road who had begun as devotees of the Yellamma cult in Karnataka but ended up here as dancers in the more prosaic temples of the flesh. He was fed up of textile factories and local trains and all the confusion and superabundance of the place, and longed for that dream-Vilayet of poise and moderation that had come to obsess him by night and day. His favourite playground rhymes were those that yearned for foreign cities: kitchy--con kitchy-ki kitchy-con stanty-eye kitchy-ople kitchy-cople kitchyCon-stanti-nople. And his favourite game was the version ofgrandmother's footsteps in which, when he was it, he would turn his back on upcreeping playmates to gabble out, like a mantra, like a spell, the six letters of his dream--city, _ellowen deeowen_. In his secret heart, he crept silently up on London, letter by letter, just as his friends crept up to him. _Ellowen deeowen London_.

The mutation of Salahuddin Chamchawala into Saladin Chamcha began, it will be seen, in old Bombay, long before he got close enough to hear the lions of Trafalgar roar. When the England cricket team played India at the Brabourne Stadium, he prayed for an England victory, for the game's creators to defeat the local upstarts, for the proper order of things to be maintained. (But the games were invariably drawn, owing to the featherbed somnolence of the Brabourne Stadium wicket; the great issue, creator versus imitator, colonizer against colonized, had perforce to remain unresolved.)

In his thirteenth year he was old enough to play on the rocks at Scandal Point without having to be watched over by his ayah, Kasturba. And one day (it was so, it was not so), he strolled out of the house, that ample, crumbling, salt-caked building in the Parsi style, all columns and shutters and little balconies, and through the garden that was his father's pride and joy and which in a certain evening light could give the impression of being infinite (and which was also enigmatic, an unsolved riddle, because nobody, not his father, not the gardener, could tell him the names of most of the plants and trees), and out through the main gateway, a grandiose folly, a reproduction of the Roman triumphal arch of Septimius Severus, and across the wild insanity of the street, and over the sea wall, and so at last on to the broad expanse of shiny black rocks with their little shrimpy pools. Christian girls giggled in frocks, men with furled umbrellas stood silent and fixed upon the blue horizon. In a hollow of black stone Salahuddin saw a man in a dhoti bending over a pool. Their eyes met, and the man beckoned him with a single finger which he then laid across his lips. _Shh_, and the mystery of rock-pools drew the boy towards the stranger. He was a creature of bone. Spectacles framed in what might have been ivory. His finger curling, curling, like a baited hook, come. When Salahuddin came down the other grasped him, put a hand around his mouth and forced his young hand between old and fleshless legs, to feel the fleshbone there. The dhoti open to the winds. Salahuddin had never known how to fight; he did what he was forced to do, and then the other simply turned away from him and let him go.

After that Salahuddin never went to the rocks at Scandal Point; nor did he tell anyone what had happened, knowing the neurasthenic crises it would unleash in his mother and suspecting that his father would say it was his own fault. It seemed to him that everything loathsome, everything he had come to revile about his home town, had come together in the stranger's bony embrace, and now that he had escaped that evil skeleton he must also escape Bombay, or die. He began to concentrate fiercely upon this idea, to fix his will upon it at all times, eating shitting sleeping, convincing himself that he could make the miracle happen even without his father's lamp to help him out. He dreamed of flying out of his bedroom window to discover that there, below him, was -- not Bombay -- but Proper London itself, Bigben Nelsonscolumn Lordstavern Bloodytower Queen. But as he floated out over the great metropolis he felt himself beginning to lose height, and no matter how hard he struggled kicked swam-in-air he continued to spiral slowly downwards to earth, then faster, then faster still, until he was screaming headfirst down towards the city, Saintpauls, Puddinglane, Threadneedlestreet, zeroing in on London like a bomb.

o o o

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krispyweiss · 6 years

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The Best of Live Music 2018

Another year is coming to a close and with it, another year of wonderful - and a few not-so-wonderful - live-music experiences.

In an effort to accentuate the positive, Sound Bites is devoting this space - and many column inches of copy - to review excerpts from his favorite concerts of 2018. They’re grouped is as good an order as he could come up with in categories of A+, A and A-; shows of B+ and below didn’t make the, uh, grade.

The numbers in parentheses indicate the number of times Sound Bites has been privileged to see the artist in question.

A+

I’m With Her (3) at Southern Theatre, Columbus, Ohio, Nov. 5: Though I'm With Her are incomparable, the closest thing might be Crosby, Stills and Nash, if that group ditched the rock 'n' roll and managed to stay on key always. Their version of John Hiatt's "Crossing Muddy Waters" is to Hiatt as CSN's "Blackbrid is to the Beatles - an improvement on what’s already essentially perfect. There really are no words to describe the intensity of their performances, which have been on a steady uphill climb on their three Ohio appearances in the past 15 months, even though their first of those, in Cincinnati, seemed impossible to improve upon.

I’m With Her (2) at Memorial Hall OTR, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 5: Even if it’s 100 degrees, sweaters or jackets should be required at any I’m With Her concert, because Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan’ll send shivers up and down concertgoers’ spines. Take any superlative modified by any adverb, and you still couldn’t adequately describe the quality of this concert.

Rhiannon Giddens (2) at Memorial Hall OTR, Cincinnati, Ohio, May 20: Barefooted in a yellow, floor-length skirt and a black blazer, with playful splashes of red dye in her black hair, Giddens sawed her fiddle and clawed at her banjo for about half the evening and spent the reminder of her time onstage using her greatest instrument - her expressive voice. Jumping, punching the air to accentuate notes, losing herself in the music with her eyes up in her thrown-back head, Giddens was entranced by the music and cast the same spell on the audience. Part opera singer, part jazzy chanteuse, part Southern wailer, part preacher, Giddens is a nearly supernatural force - like a once-in-a-century storm of music - the rare vocalist who spends entire concerts spitting out notes most singers would be happy to hit once a night.

Magic Dick and Shun Ng with Acoustic Hot Tuna (8) at Jorma Kaukonen's Fur Peace Ranch, Pomeroy, Ohio, Nov. 10: It's too bad Fur Peace Ranch doesn't have a marquee because seeing the billing of Magic Dick and Hot Tuna in lights would've been priceless. As it went, hearing the former J. Giles Bard harp player paired with virtuosic, wonder-kid guitarist Shun Ng headlining over Acoustic Hot Tuna was also priceless, as the top of the bill put on one of those impossible-to-believe concerts and Hot Tuna were their typically terrific selves during their warm-up slot on a cold, frost-filled Nov. 10 concert in Pomeroy.

An Exclusive Evening with Jorma Kaukonen (5) at Gramercy Books, Bexley, Ohio, Nov. 15: Jorma Kaukonen answered questions, read from his new memoir and played a few tunes when he held court in front of 60 devotees inside Bexley's Gramercy Books. The guitarist's only bookstore stop on his tour to promote "Been So Long: My Life and Music" was billed as “An Exclusive Evening with Jorma Kaukonen” and found the Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna co-founder perched on a barstool taking questions from former Rock and Roll Hall of Fame chair and Zeppelin Productions founder Alec Wightman and the audience; reading from the book; and showing off his unique picking style on chestnuts such as the Airplane's "Embryonic Journey" and the "trad." "How Long Blues."

Outlaw Music Festival feat. Willie Nelson (12) and Family, Van Morrison (4), Tedeschi Trucks Band (8), Sturgill Simpson, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real (2) and Particle Kid (2) at Hersheypark Stadium, Hershey, Penn., Sept. 8: Though he's absolutely earned the right, Willie Nelson probably shouldn't follow Van Morrison and the Tedeschi Trucks Band. He followed an uncharacteristically jovial Morrison, who, dressed in his trademark dark suit, fedora and shades visited many corners of his storied songbook in a generous, 90-minute set. Meanwhile, the 12-piece Tedeschi Trucks band slayed the smallish audience in the cavernous stadium. And Sturgill Simpson played a jaw-dropping, 80-minute concert that was boiling stew of blues-based rock with the faintest hint of outlaw spice.

John Prine (2) at Ohio Theatre, Columbus, Ohio, Sept. 28: John Prine and his four-piece band played a career-spanning, genre-bending, tear-jerking, joke-telling show that found them running through all of this year's The Tree of Forgiveness - but not in sequence - along with many of the best tracks from Prine's songbook.

The Del McCoury Band (3) at Sugarloaf Mountain Amphitheatre, Chillicothe, Ohio, July 8: Despite fronting and giving ample spotlight time to his band, Del McCoury was the obvious star of this show, his acoustic guitar cutting through the music every time such a riff was necessary, and his voice hitting high notes most men can’t reach in their 30s let alone on the cusp of their 80s. He was in a playful mood and granted so many requests, he good-naturedly stumbled over lyrics to long-dormant tracks such as “40 Acres and a Fool” and “Blackjack County Chains.”

Huffamoose (2) at Ardmore Music Hall, Ardmore, Pa., Nov. 24: At the Ardmore, the Philadelphia-based Huffamoose played a triumphant, 17-song, 105-minute set just outside its hometown that featured cuts culled from its four LPs - its long-out-of-print, self-titled debut (on the local 7 label) and ’97’s We’ve Been Had Again along with the two most recent ones - and demonstrated that although much has changed, much has remained the same. This was the rare comeback concert where the words “we’re gonna do a new one” weren’t bad news.

David Byrne at Rose Music Center at the Heights, Huber Heights, Ohio, Aug. 11: Whether David Byrne is a simpleton masquerading as a genius, or - more likely - an intellectual hiding behind inane lyrics, the former Talking Heads frontman is nevertheless quite impossible to figure out even after 40 years of pouring himself out with his music. And Byrne is perhaps the only musician who can sing about donkey dicks (“Every Day is a Miracle”) and “Toe Jam” and somehow not come off as a cretinous moron.

Taj Mahal (5) Trio at Thirty One West, Newark, Ohio, Sept. 22: Playing a resonator guitar and with his solidly in-the-pocket rhythm section - the Taj Mahal Trio, ladies and gentlemen - right with him, Mahal got things going with a double greeting of sorts, playing rock-infused versions of "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" and "Good Morning Miss Brown" back to back. These set the tone for an uproarious evening of song in which Mahal played the blues on his banjo and hollow-bodied electric guitar, played reggae on his ukulele, played folk on his resonator, played boogie-woogie on his piano and played rock 'n' roll on his acoustic guitar.

James Taylor (12) & His All-Star Band with Bonnie Raitt (2) at Schottenstein Center, Columbus, Ohio, June 30: It’s not only Taylor’s catalog, but his presentation, that keeps fans coming back decade after decade. Not only does he switch up songs from tour to tour, he also tinkers with arrangements to keep things fresh. Raitt’s show would’ve been disappointing as a stand-alone concert. But as an entree to Taylor’s portion, it fit nicely.

Toubab Krewe (2) at Thirty One West, Newark, Ohio, Nov. 26: The five-man rhythm section known as Toubab Krewe took concertgoers on an aural journey that lifted off from Newark and went 'round the world during a stupendous, all-instrumental concert inside Thirty One West. It takes serious chops and exceptional song craft to hold an audience's attention for two solid hours while never singing a word. Toubab Krewe have both and both were in full flight Nov. 26 in Newark.

Dead & Company (7) at Blossom Music Center, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, June 20: If Dead & Company wanted to prove something with their 100th show, they did. They proved that they are finally & truly a band - a band capable of putting together complete, knockout shows, rather than throwing a few solid punches surrounded by the musical equivalent of rope-a-dope.

Alison Krauss (4) at Fraze Pavilion, Kettering, Ohio, June 15: If the term Americana means anything, Alison Krauss is defining it on her solo tour in support of Windy City, on which she and her seven-piece band touch on virtually every type of music a group could possibly cram in to 90 minutes of stage time. Throughout the evening, Krauss accentuated the music with clipped chords and short runs on her fiddle. Though she was clearly the star, she happily allowed her bandmates to shine just as brightly as she did and seemed genuinely flattered to have each of them along for the ride.

Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives at Memorial Hall OTR, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 30: Stuart and the Fab Supers were terrific. Ostensibly a country band, they’re equally adept at playing rock ‘n’ roll, rockabilly, surf music, honky tonk, folk and bluegrass and did all that and more exceedingly well for a near-sell-out crowd that was as energized as the music itself.

Steep Canyon Rangers (7) at Midland Theatre, Newark, Ohio, Feb. 2: The Rangers spent two generous hours running through tracks new and old in a concert that ended with an enthusiastic standing ovation that caused guitarist Woody Platt to suggest we all follow them to the next gig in Chicago.

The Avett Brothers (2) at Fraze Pavilion, Kettering, Ohio, Aug. 14: The Avetts made Sound Bites cry as band donned at least 10 musical guises over the course of its staggering, two-hour, 10-minute show. From the first note in daylight at 8 p.m. sharp to the final bows in darkness, shortly after 10, the audience was on its collective feet, singing along to nearly every word, as the band held them rapt with its eclectic mix of county, folk, classical, rock and even a bit of prog that featured cello solos, bowed bass, rhythm banjo, piano-cello duets, screeching guitars and lengthy pieces that featured piano and organ a la the Band.

Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams (3) at Woodlands Tavern, Columbus, Ohio, Feb. 28: The couple set the standard early, opening with the Carter Family’s “You’ve Got to Righten that Wrong” before moving into their own “Surrender to Love.” Historical and contemporary. Universal and personal. It was a pattern that would continue all evening as Campbell on guitar, mandolin and fiddle, laid down a bed for the pair’s luxurious harmonies and Williams’ occasional rhythm guitar and shakers and made Sound Bites wonder yet again why Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams are playing bars to scores of fans instead of playing arenas to thousands.

Phil Lesh & Friends (14), Hawaii Theatre, Honolulu, Hawaii, Dec, 31, 2017: This show counts because one-third of it took place on Jan. 1, 2018, and because it was the best Dead-related concert Mr. and Mrs. Sound Bites had seen in ages as Lesh covered not only his former band, but Funkadelic, the Band, Velvet Underground and others.

Los Lobos (17) at Rose Music Center at the Heights, Huber Heights, Ohio, Aug. 7: Los Lobos are so hot, they can parlay a short-handed opening set into a standing ovation from a half-full house of George Thorogood partisans, who found themselves cheering the band from East L.A. as if they were the second coming of the Destroyers.

Richie Furay at Natalie’s Coal Fired Pizza and Live Music, Worthington, Ohio, Aug. 12: Richie Furay - best known as the Buffalo Springfield vocalist/guitarist not named Stephen Stills or Neil Young - plumbed the Springfield, Poco and Souther-Hillman-Furay Band songbooks during an acoustic set that followed an afternoon show earlier in the day. Daughter Jesse Lynch joined Dad on vocals and tambourine on all but the opening salvo of Poco’s “Pickin’ up the Pieces” and Springfield’s “Sad Memory.” At 74, Furay looks and sounds 20 years younger with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, a life of clean living on his face and a voice that still shows why producers tapped him to sing Young’s songs with Springfield.

Todd Rundgren’s (37) Utopia (3) at Taft Theatre, Cincinnati, Ohio, May 10: Just as Utopia was essentially two bands, this was essentially two shows. Billed as Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, but featuring a four-piece reminiscent of the group that emerged after Rundgren’s proggy big band dissolved, the quartet of Rundgren, bassist/guitarist Kasim Sulton, drummer Willie Wilcox and last-minute replacement keyboardist Gil Assayas (who stepped in for the ailing Ralph Schuckett, who stepped in for the ailing Roger Powell), powered through a nostalgic - material ranged from 1972 to 1985 - 130-minute concert that served as a musical way-back machine for the Utopians in the two-thirds filled house. The arc of the band’s diverse songbook was on full display and as amazing as ever.

Todd Snider (10) at Stuart’s Opera House, Nelsonville, Ohio, June 22: An 80-minute, solo-acoustic performance that was both musically and comedically pleasing, as Snider combined his insightful numbers - and a few choice covers - with split-your-sides-open stories that often appeared mid-song but somehow didn’t interrupt the flow.

Elizabeth Cook (3) at Thirty One West, Newark, Ohio, May 16: Over the 80-minute solo set, Cook - who popped cough drops because of a cold but sounded healthy - mostly eschewed heartrending numbers like “I’m Not Lisa” and instead sung of an ex-husband who preferred beer cans to her can on “Yes to Booty;” the alcohol-fueled atmosphere she grew up around on “Stanley By God Terry;” recovery on “Methadone Blues;” and resilience on “Sometimes It Takes Balls to be a Woman.”

Cheryl Wheeler at King Arts Complex, Columbus, Ohio, March 24: Cheryl Wheeler was at turns funny, tender and socially conscious - but mostly funny - always folksy and 100-percent entertaining. We laughed - so hard we cried. And we looked forward to the next Cheryl Wheeler concert and the opportunity to hear the things we missed while doubled over in hysterics.

Los Lobos (16), Memorial Hall OTR, Cincinnati, Ohio, Jan. 25: Missing bassist Conrad Lozano, who was replaced, and multi-instrumentalist Steve Berlin, who was not, Los Lobos played an aggressive, one-set show that immediately erased any disappointment the absences might have caused.

Bettye LaVette at Jorma Kaukonen's Fur Peace Ranch, Pomeroy, Ohio, Oct. 13: Bettye LaVette was backed by guitar, bass, drums and keys/piano as she explored 12 back pages from all eras of Bob Dylan's songbook, from protest anthems to Christian declarations of faith, from well-known numbers to obscurities written between the 1960s and the 21st century. Indeed, the only person who might have rearranged these songs more radically than LaVette is Dylan himself.

Jorma Kaukonen (3) At Natalie’s Coal Fired Pizza & Live Music, Worthington, Ohio, June 13 (Early Show): There’s something refreshing about the way Jorma Kaukonen refuses to cash in on his legacy as a founder of the famed San Francisco sound with the Airplane. And as he played and sang his grizzled blues like a man walking the Mississippi Delta in the first part of the 20th century, it was again clear that Kaukonen chose the right path.

A-

Elton John (3) at Schottenstein Center, Columbus, Ohio, Nov. 2: If Elton John is really going to quit touring when his current trek ends - in 2021 - he’s going out in top form. From the first, teasing note of “Bennie and the Jets,” to the final, lingering sounds of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” the musicians tinkered with arrangements just enough to keep things interesting for people who know these songs as well as they know anything. And if this is really farewell - and if "Yellow Brick Road" is really the last song 18,000 Columbus residents will ever hear John play live - it's a fond one.

Tedeschi Trucks Band (9) at Palace Theatre, Columbus, Ohio, Nov. 9: The 12-piece band begun its "An Evening With" show just after 8 p.m. with a 55-minute opening set that set the table for what came later. Singer Mike Mattison wailed the blues and crooned jazz when he joined Susan Tedeschi on incendiary renditions of "Key to the Highway" and "Right on Time," the front woman got introspective on Bob Dylan's "Going, Going, Gone" and the group wound up powering through yet another spell-binding concert of originals and covers that spanned the past 100 years of music and its myriad styles.

Todd Rundgren (38) at Express Live!, Columbus, Ohio, Sept. 12: Always unpredictable, Todd Rundgren is even more so when he tours as Unpredictable. On these occasions, he and his long-time band - guitarist Jesse Gress; former Tubes drummer Prairie Prince; Utopia bassist Kasim Sulton; and keyboardist Greg Hawkes of the Cars - work off a list of several dozen original and cover songs and play the ones that strike Rundgren's fancy on that particular evening. And on this night, the result was a wildly diverse, two-hour set of songs that bounced around nearly as much as Rundgren’s career itself.

Bruce Hornsby (9) & the Noisemakers at Columbus Commons, Columbus, Ohio, Aug. 24: Hornsby and his current band channeled the pianist's former band, the Grateful Dead, and their taking-the-music-for-a-walk ethos. Stretching it out is a way of life for Hornsby & Noisemakers, who played just 16 songs in 130 minutes.

Roger Daltrey Performs the Who’s Tommy at Fraze Pavilion, Kettering, Ohio, July 2: On a stage packed full of musicians, Daltrey, the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra and members of the Who’s touring band played Tommy front to back. And they played the shit out of it. The Philharmonic was a fully integrated part of the show, kicking off the concert with “Overture” as it’s always been meant to be heard; turning “Tommy Can You Hear Me” into a whimsical pops-concert moment; adding welcome flourishes to “Sally Simpson;” and filling “We’re Not Gonna Take It” with majesty.

Peter Rowan’s (2) Twang an’ Groove at Jorma Kaukonen’s Fur Peace Ranch, Pomeroy, Ohio, June 16: Once one of Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys, a co-founder of Old & In the Way and author of classics including “Midnight Moonlight” and New Riders of the Purple Sage’s signature song, “Panama Red,” both of which were played toward the tail end of Set Two, Peter Rowan has been a part of some of bluegrass’ most-important 20th-century moments. He’ll be 76 on the Fourth of July, but his hands are still supple, his voice still able to climb to high-and-lonesome heights with his yodel intact, as his version of Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel No. 3” demonstrated.

Dead & Company (6) at Riverbend Music Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, June 4, 2018: Anyone looking to understand why Dead Heads keep going back to see former Grateful Dead members year after year, decade after decade, needn’t look any farther than Dead & Company’s June 4 performance in Cincinnati. It was - by far, and until June 20 - the best of the half-dozen Dead & Company concerts Sound Bites has attended since the group came together in 2015.

Steve Kimock (3) & Friends at Ardmore Music Hall, Ardmore, Pa., Nov. 23: “Were gonna sort of front-porch our way in to this,” Steve Kimock said as he and his Friends took the stage and cooked up an ethereal, post-Thanksgiving stew that slowly bubbled into the one-off band’s - which came together for a special Black Friday performance in the City of Brotherly Love - opening number, KIMOCK’s “Careless Love.” It was a show that satisfied like a second helping of turkey.

David Crosby & Friends (2) at Kent Stage, Kent Ohio, Nov. 28: David Crosby, Michael League, Becca Stevens and Michelle Willis came into Kent and over the course of an hour-and-40-minute performance proved themselves a top-tier acoustic/harmony group that, with the right setlist, could be a salve for those still mourning the loss of Crosby, Stills and Nash. But with only a few exceptions - excellent exceptions but too few nonetheless - the quartet stuck with 21st-century material, resulting in a concert that consisted of near-perfect execution of fair to very good songs.

Steve Earle (3) & the Dukes (2) at Newport Music Hall, Columbus, Ohio, June 10: Steve Earle is like an outlaw version of Bruce Springsteen, singing everyman songs with a left-wing political bent that’s sometimes so subtle, people will miss it if they’re not playing close attention. Also like Springsteen, Earle finds himself in the midst of a late-career renaissance, as a triad of fire-breathing tracks from 2017’s So You Wannabe an Outlaw were among the highlights of a career-spanning set that opened with a full performance of 1988’s Copperhead Road.

Hubby Jenkins at Jorma Kaukonen's Fur Peace Ranch, Pomeroy, Ohio, Oct. 20: This was a fascinating concert - musically, spiritually and intellectually. Prior to taking his audience to church in a gospel-heavy second set, Hubby Jenkins took them to school, using his brief, 45-minute first set to educate concertgoers not only about the African origins of the banjo he was playing but the evolution of African-American culture and stereotypes via slavery, the Black Codes and Jim Crow and the minstrel tradition.

An Acoustic Evening with Lyle Lovett (3) & Shawn Colvin (2) at Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium, Athens, Ohio, March 21: It was one-third Lyle Lovett, one-third Shawn Colvin and one-third the Lovett-Colvin comedy hour. Together, the three-thirds equaled an evening of well-rounded entertainment.

12/27/18

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coffee-obsessed-writer · 6 years

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Mommy Dearest

A/N: For Soy’s 666 Challenge Fic @hornsbeforehalos . My prompt was: “I’m evil, babe, kinda comes with the territory.” Prompt is bolded within fic. This is my first time writing a fic with an OFC, please be kind. Also, @hornsbeforehalos congrats on the followers baby!!!! I LOVE YOU!

Dean Winchester x OFC Rhiann Clay; Bobby Singer; Sam Winchester

OFC(s): Flora & Rhiann Clay (mother/daughter)

Summary: Dean, Sam, and Bobby are on the hunt for a century-old witch who has made it her job to take out as many Hunters as she can. When they stop at a random motel during the search, things take a dangerous turn but, in the chaos,, find a possible new ally.

Warnings: Mild violence, mild language

Words: 3956

Banner graphic made by me. Unbeta’d - all mistakes are mine to own.

Everything Tags: @his-paradox // @sorenmarie87 // @lefthologramdeer // @grace-for-sale // @redm81 // @becs-bunker // @docharleythegeekqueen // @moonchild-shoshanna // @idontfuckingknowgurl // @geeksareunique

SPN Tags: @soythedemonqueen // @kazosa // @lucifer-in-leather // @perseusandmedusa // @tiquismiquis // @mrsbarnes-rogers // @yorkeylover // @through-thesilver-lining // @illysamorgan // @fictionalabyss // @gettinjoyful // @auntsalgal // @stuckupstucky// @miss-spnm0mma // @teller258316 // @sphollis-blog // @sweet-things-4-life // @hobby27 // @sweetlythoughtfulbird // @theoriginalvicki // @dreamchester67 // @xxwarhawk // @assassinofmasyaf // @mahalaraewolfe // @negans-wife // @superwhovianfangirl // @toobusynerdfighting // @vickyfarley // @missihart23 // @letsby // @babykalika2001

“This is not someone you boys wanna mess with,” Bobby warned, squinting back against the midafternoon sun. The dust still hadn’t settled from his arrival, but he didn’t waste a second telling Sam and Dean what he had uncovered about this new threat.

“Why? What is she? What do we need to take her out?” Dean asked, somewhat confident they could take out anything. “I mean, its just another monster, right?”

Bobby shook his head disapprovingly. “No, she’s not just another monster, boy. She’s human. Or at least she was.”

“Was?” Sam’s concern over their new foe was not unfounded. He could read the level of Bobby’s warning and take it for what it was. This was a “seek shelter” red alert of the Emergency Broadcast System, not a blip on the radar of some small storm to come.

Dean rolled his eyes. “C’mon, you two are acting like this little brunette could wipe out the world. What’s the worst she’s gonna do?”

“Dean, you know better. Lilith was a little girl—”

“Lilith was a demon, Sam,” Dean corrected with a bark. “This girl, she’s human. Let me find her and I’ll put a bullet in her damn head before she takes out another Hunter.”

“It just ain’t that simple, Dean.”

“Oh yeah? And why’s that?”

“Because, she’s not just human. She was a Hunter. She was the most skilled Hunter for her time; the stuff legends were made of. Story goes that she was after a coven out on the west coast somewhere. They found her, and instead of killing her, they turned her. I don’t know how or with what. But after that, she wasn’t the same. She turned on our kind. She started hunting Hunters, throwin’ ‘em up to whatever monster was close by.”

Dean flashed an exasperated scowl at Sam; his eyes ablaze with anger at what this crazy psycho bitch was doing to his fellow brothers-in-arms. Sam merely brushed him off and recommitted his attention to Bobby.

“You said, of her time, what time was that?”

“Oh, somewhere in the nineteenth century. Probably around the time Samuel Colt was pouring the metal for that gun.”

Bobby nodded to the Impala’s trunk, but the boys both knew what he had meant without the insinuation. The Colt was locked away safely in its protected enclosure, and Sam was glad now, more than ever, they happened to have it in their possession.

“Will it be enough to take her out?” Sam asked, absently resting a hand against the trunk where their best hope weapon rested.

“I have no clue, Sam. I know what I told ya. This girl, she’s got magic in her that runs deep, plus the mind and knowhow of a skilled hunter. She ain’t gonna—”

“You two are ridiculous. Sittin’ here all scared of some old ass half human half witch who shoulda been dead decades ago. Show me a picture and let me go all Boba Fett on her ass. We’ll see who comes out on top.”

Bobby and Sam shared an exchange that did not go unnoticed by Dean. He was getting frustrated with them over how scared they were acting over the latest target. Shaking his head, he pushed off the Impala’s driver side door and started pacing between his and Bobby’s car.

“Where is she now, Bobby?” Sam asked, ignoring Dean’s silent wandering tantrum.

“Working on that. Rufus is supposed to be gettin’ back to me real soon. But, last I heard she was stalking these two hunters outside of Philadelphia. Somewhere up in the Poconos. Doubt she’s still there, but I got ears on the ground everywhere I can think of. We’ll find her.”

“Yeah, when?” Dean asked with a sarcastic shrug. “When she slits another Hunter’s throat? When she leads a nest of vampires straight to our door?!” The volume of his voice was escalating, even being remote as they were Bobby tried to shush him, but Dean was having none of it.

“I’m tired of losing people we know, Bobby! Yeah, this one ain’t on us, but I’ll be damned if I am gonna just sit by and let it happen. Let’s get back to your place, pack up what we can and head to Pennsylvania. Let’s track this bitch down before she takes someone else out.”

The trip east was wrought with one roadblock after another. It was three days before they rolled into the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and thanks to a near miss with a deer and three blown tires, one extra day before they arrived in the Pocono area.

Dean’s mood was nothing to be trifled with. The last few hours in the car were silent; Sam knowing better than to try and engage his brother in conversation when Dean was being this crabby. His furrowed brow and pensive glare were fixed to the road ahead and barely registered any change but a flicker of his eyes when Sam’s phone began ringing.

“Yeah, what’s up Bobby?” Sam said answering it. “Great, thanks.”

“What?” Dean grunted without giving his brother a glance.

“Rufus finally called. Looks like those two hunters turned up where they were supposed to. If she was after them, she didn’t succeed.”

“So, we drove all this way for nothing?” Dean’s patience was already thin, this news did nothing for his mood. “Damn it!” he growled and gripped the steering wheel tighter.

“Not necessarily, it just means that they got home.”

“Alright, well, where were they then? What where they hunting? Gimme something, Sam.”

“I have no idea Dean, I’m giving you the information I have. Bobby—”

Dean growled a low, guttural noise rose in his chest as he sharply pulled the Impala to the side of the deserted mountain road. “Bobby is dragging his ass on this.”

“That’s not fair, man. He’s getting the info second hand, too.”

“Why is it, we can figure out how to kill and track all kinds of funky monsters, but can’t get a grip on where this bitch is?”

“I don’t know, but we will find her.”

“Hmpf,” Dean muttered and looked in his rearview mirror, waiting for Bobby’s old beater to catch up with him. When the familiar headlights pulled in behind the Impala, Dean hopped out, but left the car running.

Bobby rolled down the window and watched as Dean approached, and knew he was in for some kind of pouty tirade.

“Bobby…”

“I know, Dean, I know. But I am telling you, Rufus is convinced she’s still here.”

“Here? Here where? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“He said to take the next exit. There’s a motel up and off the highway a few miles. Said she’s somewhere close by.”

Dean closed his eyes and sighed in frustration. He turned on his heel and went back to the Impala without another word.

Rhiann watched from the window as the rain fell hard enough to create puddles in the grass. Being stuck in the room, again, was more than she could really handle, but there wasn’t too much choice in the matter. Her mother had told her to stay put, and it wasn’t because she wasn’t old enough to make her own choices; not following her mother’s orders would just be stupid, and deadly.

Headlights swept into the parking lot, followed immediately by another pair. Two old cars shut down in front of the office and she watched as the three men who exited, dash through the drops and inside where it was dry.

Her heart sank. She knew who they were, and that they were coming. Mother had told her as much. But what could she do? She couldn’t do anything without putting herself into jeopardy. And what were the lives of three strangers, compared to that of her own?

“Nothing,” she mumbled into the empty room, but knew it was the wrong answer.

Using her finger against the cold, foggy window, she drew a small x on each of the cars, and secretly prayed they’d find a way to live. She rolled her eyes at that small voice, the one that hated the death and violence, no matter how justified mother claimed it was. The part of her that was human enough to understand that you couldn’t continue killing in the name of one person or one thing. It wasn’t right.

Rhiann sighed. Her whole life to this point was to obey Flora’s rules, then use her innate psychic abilities to help find and eliminate Hunters. Her mother was ruthless when it came to this mission, regardless of the fact that she was once a Hunter herself. It had been a century ago, but still, she had been one.

Rising from the window sill, Rhiann began to pace the floor. She didn’t know those men; couldn’t pick them up out of a line up, but she knew they were the latest targets and began to feel sick because she part of what helped to lure them in.

In the bathroom now, she flipped on the overhead fluorescent light and cringed at her reflection. She’d not been sleeping, and it was beginning to show. Her red hair was a wildfire of tangles and the remnants of yesterday’s makeup was left in small traces around her eyes. The air in the room suddenly became stifling. The more she stared at her pallid reflection, the more she wanted to run screaming out of the room. Flora told her to stay put, but she couldn’t anymore. Rhiann was desperate for fresh air against her skin and damn the consequences should she get caught.

She didn’t bother with a coat, instead just ran out of her room and into the parking lot. Relishing the feeling of the cold mountain air against her skin, she didn’t stop until she was halfway through the parking lot. She wouldn’t have stopped either, if not for the collision with the man.

Rhiann had been walking hastily, with her face upturned to the rain when she ran smack into his chest, his arms grabbing her shoulders before she could fall back completely. “Hey there, you alright?!” he asked, releasing her shoulders once Rhiann was steady on her feet.

“Uh, yeah. Sorry. I should be paying closer attention.”

“No problem, these things happen.”

Rhiann studied his face and immediately knew, he was one of them. She looked past him towards the office, saw the other two through the window waiting at the desk. She wanted to warn him before Flora worked her magic; tell them to get gone before they could get hurt. But that could potentially cost her own life. Mother or not, Flora was a witch with great power and an incredible amount of malice intent.

Guilt ate at her in the seconds it took to refocus on the man in front of her. He was watching her curiously, a ghost of a smirk on his lips. Rhiann had been raised to hate hunters, they were the reason for so many tragedies in her mother’s life. On blind faith, she did for years, but lately, she began to question it. More so now that she was face to face with this one in particular.

Something in the way he looked at her, not through her like most people do, but in the way people dream about. His bright eyes were soft and kind, his hand that lingered against her shoulder warm in comparison to the cold rain soaking through her shirt.

“You gotta go,” she begged, suddenly grabbing the lapels of his coat. “Please, PLEASE, you and your friends, you have to leave now. Don’t go into your rooms.”

He stared at her, confused at first. His green eyes flickered back towards the office and back to her. “What? Who are you?”

“My mother… she’s… you’re a hunter, right?”

His body tensed. From the corner of her eye, she noticed his hand twitch towards the weapon he most certainly carried on his hip.

“Maybe.”

“I know you are. You and your friends need to leave. She’s going to kill you.”

“Who?” he barked, causing Rhiann’s nerves to shake.

“Look man, I don’t know your name, just that you’re a hunter. Most likely here to try and find a witch named Clay. Flora Clay. She’s my mother,” she explained quickly, her eyes continually darting between him and the office door.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the overhang by the rooms. Once out of the rain he stepped in closer, his face drawn into a threatening expression.

“My name is Dean Winchester. I am a hunter, damn good one, too. Got two other ones in there. So, if this is some kind of game you’re playing here, sweetheart, I can promise you, it’s not gonna end well for you or mommy dearest.”

Rhiann’s bottom lip was quivering. For a moment Dean considered the fact that she was just a pawn, but he knew better; at least his instinct reminded him that he did. He engaged in his desire to end the witch they were hunting and if her daughter could help move that along, he would at least give a listen before he had to end her, too.

“No game. She’s here, and she’s not going to stop until she takes out every hunter she can find.”

“How exactly does she find them?” he asked, his rage simmering just under the surface.

Rhiann hung her head. She was afraid to face her part in it, but the longer she denied it, the more that voice in the back of her head would scream at her to own up to it. “Me. It’s my fault. I have this ability… I can touch someone or something that belongs to someone, then sense where that person is, who they are, what they feel... I hate it. But mother, she forces me to use it.”

Dean bit down on his lower lip so hard, she thought he might draw blood. “We aren’t done talking about that, but I need to know where she is. Right now!”

“She’s in the office. At least she was.”

Dean turned in a panic. Knowing Sam and Bobby were still in there, caused a bolt of fear to race through him. Without thinking, he grabbed Rhiann by the arm and drug her towards the office door.

“I don’t want to kill you, but if she hurt them, I’m gonna kill her. Then, you.”

Rhiann was silent. Her body shook with fear of what they would find when Dean finally pushed that door open. She felt deserved whatever torture he had in store. After all, she was the one who found them in the first place.

Dean cautiously turned the handle and walked inside. Bobby and Sam were on the floor, alive, but knocked unconscious. Flora stood over them, her back to the door. Dean grabbed Rhiann and held one arm tightly around her neck, so she couldn’t run and silently withdrew his weapon, targeting the back of Flora’s head.

“What did you do to them you bitch?!” Dean yelled, eliciting a dark chuckle to rise from Flora’s gut.

When she faced him and saw he had her daughter by the neck, her salacious grin grew across her wrinkled face. “Oh, another hunter to play with. Lovely.”

“Flora, please… enough…” Rhiann pleaded quietly, a steady stream of tears falling. “These are good people, they aren’t responsible for—”

“Darling, please do shut up!” Flora moaned and rolled her eyes. “Honestly, all these years of hearing you whine is aging me. I can’t listen to it anymore.” Under her breath, she mumbled a few incoherent words, and Rhiann’s mouth became shut. She couldn’t speak no matter how hard she tried. With a flick of her wrist, she moved Rhiann from Dean’s gripped and hurled her against the wall of the office, her head knocking into a shelf, then crashing to the floor.

Dean watched in shock and disgust as Rhiann was torn from his embrace and flung into the faux wood paneling. He was frozen in place as he watched Flora stalk towards her daughter, now unconscious on the floor. She muttered another spell and raised her hand again when Dean finally found his ability to move again. Grabbing his gun, he pointed it at her and pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced her shoulder but barely affected her.

“Stupid boy, bullets won’t hurt me. Now sit down.” She flicked her wrist again, and Dean was pushed back against the door and shoved by an invisible force to the ground. Flora glanced over her shoulder and cackled at Dean. “That’s better.”

“Why? Huh? Why go through all this trouble? You’re gonna kill your own daughter now?”

“I’m evil, babe, kinda comes with the territory. Besides, she turned on me. She’s useless to me now. You three will just have to be the last of my hunter kills. Then, I can move on to bigger and more destructive things,” Flora purred, her raspy voice croaking a laugh.

Dean tried to fight against his capture, but he couldn’t move anything. “You’re just a witch, how the hell do you have this kind of juice?”

“Just a witch?” Flora questioned and feigned offense. “I’m hurt you don’t recognize good demonic work when you see it.” She snarled another smile, flashing black eyes at Dean. His gut lurched at the sight of the demon embodying the witch and felt a brief moment of despair. She turned towards him and way from Rhiann, eyeing him up like a piece of candy. Dean saw movement from behind her, washing away the speck of doubt that they would come out of this ok.

“Oh great, more of you nasty ass things,” he smirked, trying to keep her attention. “How long have you been playing dress up as a witch? Hmm? Can’t keep it up as a demon, so you gotta take some witchy Viagra or something?”

“Please, Dean. Do you have any idea how powerful this makes me? Trust me, I’ll—”

Flora screamed in pain, a light flashed from her eyes as the demon inside her succumbed to the blade that was now protruding from her back. Dean was immediately released from his invisible captivity and further slumped to the ground. Just as Flora’s body fell to the floor and began to immediately deteriorate, Bobby was stumbling backward and shaking his head of whatever Flora had done to him.

Sam was starting to stir, trying to get back on his feet when he realized there was trouble happening around him.

“You alright?!” Dean asked and helped Sam to his feet before checking him for any further wounds.

“Yeah, fine. You?”

Dean nodded and clapped him on the chest. “Yeah. Good. Bobby?”

“In one piece,” he gruffed and patted down his own chest in relief. “What the hell just happened?”

They all looked at each other, then down to Rhiann still lying on the floor. Blood was pooling around her head from where it collided with the shelf on the wall. Dean cautiously knelt beside her and felt for a pulse.

She was alive. He gently rolled her over, allowing Bobby and Sam to get a better look at her face.

“Who’s she?” Bobby asked.

“Her daughter. She ran into me in the parking lot and knew we were hunters. Said her mother was Flora Clay, and she was out to kill us.”

“So, this was her?” Sam asked, “the witch we were after?”

“The very same,” Bobby said and shared a look of surprise with the boys. “I still don’t get how—I mean, what’s the odds?”

Dean sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know, maybe we just got lucky.”

“Seems that way,” Sam said, bending down and checking over Rhiann’s wound. “What do we do with her?”

Bobby looked between them and shrugged. “Good question. Dean, got any thoughts? You spoke to her. She something that needs to be put down like her momma?”

From below them, Rhiann began to come around. She groaned softly, her hand traveling to the painful spot on her head. Dean was at her side, helping her to sit up and stayed hunkered down beside her.

“You know who I am?” he asked, once she was focusing on his face.

She nodded. “Dean Winchester. A damn good hunter.”

“That’s right,” Dean said and snorted a laugh. “Do you know who you are?”

“Rhiann Clay.”

Dean nodded. “Flora is taken care of. Did you know she was possessed?”

“Possessed?” Rhiann asked, her mind still reeling from the pain she felt in her head. “Possessed by what?”

“A demon.”

Rhiann shook her head slowly, “No, I had no idea.”

Dean seemed to consider her answer and she felt relieved when he accepted it as fact. He stood up and extended a hand towards her to help her up on her feet. Rhiann jumped, startled by seeing Bobby and Sam both on their feet and staring at her.

“You’re alright,” she said, a small, exhausted smile on her lips. “I thought—”

“We’re fine,” Bobby replied. “But, uh, now what do we do about you?”

Rhiann moved to the small couch that was against the wall. She sighed and looked between the three men towering over her. “Whatever you must. I didn’t like what I was doing, but I did it. I helped her. That blood is on my hands, too.”

The hunters shared a silent exchange, and all seemed to know and agree what the others intended.

“You’re not your mother. Everyone deserves another chance. At least once,” Dean said quietly. “We won’t hurt you. But don’t let us find out that you picked up in mom’s footsteps.”

Rhiann felt a sob of relief expel and she didn’t even care who noticed. She covered her face with her hands and began to cry, years of fear and now relief, pouring out in waves.

“You have somewhere you could go?” Bobby asked, ignoring the looks of curiosity on Sam and Dean’s faces after he asked.

“No, just this place. I can’t stay here though. I just—”

“It’s fine,” Bobby tutted and sat beside her on the couch. “I maybe got somewhere you could hang your hat for a bit. Just till ya get on your feet. Let’s us keep an eye on you, too.”

Rhiann looked at him cautiously. She was taken aback by his kindness and wasn’t sure if she could trust him or not. She reached out and hesitantly took his hand, wanting to see if she could feel his true intentions. The vibration raised from his flesh and coursed into her mind’s eye. Her psychic abilities were a bit dulled since the crack on the head, but she could feel them nonetheless. This was a good man. True of spirit and word.

She let go of his hand and smiled. “If you mean it, I think I’d like to take you up on that.” Rhiann looked up at Dean and thought maybe there was a hint of a smile there. When she looked back towards Bobby, he too, seemed pleased.

“Good. No reason you have to suffer cause mom there was a monster. Maybe a stable place is just what you need.”

Dean reached down to take her hand and helped her up from the couch. Bobby also stood up with a slight groan and Sam clapped him on the shoulder.

“Job ain’t getting’ any easier, is it Bobby?”

“Shut up, boy,” Bobby muttered and reached down to the place on the floor where the demon blade now lay in a pile of ashes that once belonged to a possessed witch named Flora Clay. “Let’s go home. I need a damn drink.”

#soy's 666 challenge #dean winchester x ofc #dean winchester #spn fan fiction #spn fan fics #dean winchester fan fic

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blackkudos · 6 years

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Frankie Lymon

Franklin Joseph (Frankie) Lymon (September 30, 1942 – February 27, 1968) was an American rock and roll/rhythm and blues singer and songwriter, best known as the boy soprano lead singer of the New York City-based early rock and roll group The Teenagers. The group was composed of five boys, all in their early to mid-teens. The original lineup of the Teenagers, an integrated group, included three African-American members, Frankie Lymon, Jimmy Merchant, and Sherman Garnes; and two Puerto Rican members, John Seda and Douglas Seda.

The Teenagers' first single, 1956's "Why Do Fools Fall in Love," was also its biggest hit. After Lymon went solo in mid-1957, both his career and that of the Teenagers fell into decline. He was found dead at the age of 25 on the floor of his grandmother's bathroom from a heroin overdose. His life was dramatized in the 1998 film Why Do Fools Fall In Love.

Early years: joining the Teenagers

Frankie Lymon was born in Harlem, New York on September 30, 1942 to Howard and Jeanette Lymon. Howard worked as a truck driver and Jeanette worked as a maid. Howard and Jeanette Lymon also sang in a gospel group known as the Harlemaires; Frankie and his brothers, Lewis and Howie, sang with the Harlemaire Juniors (a fourth Lymon brother, Timmy, was a singer, though not with the Harlemaire Juniors). The Lymons struggled to make ends meet, so, at age 10, Lymon began working as a grocery boy.

At the age of 12 in 1954, Lymon heard a local doo-wop group known as the Coupe De Villes at a school talent show. He became friends with the lead singer, Herman Santiago, and he eventually became a member of the group, now calling itself both The Ermines and The Premiers. Dennis Jackson of Columbus, Georgia, was one of the main influences in Lymon's life. His personal donation of $500 helped start Lymon's career.

One day in 1955, a neighbor gave The Premiers several love letters that had been written to him by his girlfriend, with the hopes that he could give the boys inspiration to write their own songs. Merchant and Santiago adapted one of the letters into a song called "Why Do Fools Fall in Love". The Premiers, now calling itself The Teenagers, got its first shot at fame after impressing Richard Barrett, a singer with The Valentines. Barrett, in turn, got the group an audition with record producer George Goldner. On the day of the group's audition, Santiago, the original lead singer, was late. Lymon stepped up and told Goldner that he knew the part because he helped write the song. The disc jockeys always called them "Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers".

Life and career

"Why Do Fools Fall in Love": fame and success

Goldner signed the group to Gee Records, and "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" became its first single in January 1956. The single peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard pop singles chart, and topped the Billboard R&B singles chart for five weeks.

Six other top blues 10 singles followed over the next year or so: "I Want You to Be My Girl", "I Promise to Remember", "Who Can Explain?", "Out in the Cold Again", "The ABC's of Love", "I'm Not a Juvenile Delinquent", and "Baby Baby" were also popular Teenagers releases. "I Want You To Be My Girl" gave the band its second pop hit, reaching No. 13 on the national Billboard Hot 100 chart. "Goody Goody" (written by Matty Malneck and Johnny Mercer and originally performed by Benny Goodman) was a No. 20 pop hit, but did not appear on the R&B chart. The Teenagers placed two other singles in the lower half of the pop chart.

With the release of "I Want You To Be My Girl", the group's second single, The Teenagers became Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers. An album, "The Teenagers Featuring Frankie Lymon", was released in December 1956.

Going solo

In early 1957, Lymon and the Teenagers broke up while on a tour in Europe. During an engagement at the London Palladium, Goldner began pushing Lymon as a solo act, giving him solo spots in the show. Lymon began performing with backing from pre-recorded tapes. The group's last single, "Goody Goody" backed with "Creation of Love," initially retained the "Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers" credit, but they were actually solo recordings (with backing by session singers). Lymon had officially departed from the group by September 1957; an in-progress studio album called Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers at the London Palladium was instead issued as a Lymon solo release.

As a solo artist, Lymon was not nearly as successful as he had been with the Teenagers. Beginning with his second solo release, "My Girl", Lymon had moved to Roulette Records. On a July 19, 1957, episode of Alan Freed's live ABC TV show The Big Beat, Lymon began dancing with a white teenage girl while performing. His actions caused a scandal, particularly among Southern TV station owners, and The Big Beat was subsequently canceled. There is no surviving footage of this, because the episode was taped over. This is according to Judith Fisher Freed.

Lymon's slowly declining sales fell sharply in the early 60s as his voice changed from his signature tenor to a much deeper baritone as a result of his heroin use within the span of one year. His highest charting solo hit was a cover of Bobby Day's "Little Bitty Pretty One", which peaked at No. 58 on the Hot 100 pop chart in 1960 and which had been recorded in 1957. Addicted to heroin since the age of 15, Lymon fell further into his habit, and his performing career went into decline. According to Lymon in an interview with Ebony magazine in 1967, he was first introduced to heroin when he was 15 by a woman twice his age. In 1961, Roulette, now run by Morris Levy, ended their contract with Lymon and he entered a drug rehabilitation program.

After losing Lymon, the Teenagers went through a string of replacement singers, the first of whom was Billy Lobrano. In 1960, Howard Kenny Bobo sang lead on "Tonight's the Night" with the Teenagers; later that year, Johnny Houston sang lead on two songs. The Teenagers, who had been moved by Morris Levy to End Records, were released from their contract in 1961. The Teenagers briefly reunited with Lymon in 1965, without success.

Later years

Over the next four years, Lymon struggled through short-lived deals with 20th Century Fox Records and Columbia Records. Lymon began a relationship with Elizabeth Mickey Waters, who became his first wife in January 1964 and the mother of his only child, a baby girl named Francine who died two days after birth at Lenox Hill Hospital. Lymon's marriage to Waters was not legal, because she was still married to her first husband. After the marriage failed, he moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s, where he began a romantic relationship with Zola Taylor, a member of the Platters. Taylor claimed to have married Lymon in Mexico in 1965, although their relationship ended several months later, purportedly because of Lymon's drug habits. Lymon, however, had been known to say that their marriage was a publicity stunt and Taylor could produce no legal documentation of their marriage. In Major Robinson's gossip column of June 6, 1966, Zola said the whole thing was a joke that she went along with at the time (October 1965).

He appeared at the Apollo as part of a revue, adding an extended tap dance number. Lymon recorded several live performances (such as "Melinda" in 1959), but none rose on the charts. His final television performance was on Hollywood a Go-Go in 1965, where the then-22-year-old singer lip-synched to the recording of his 13-year-old self singing "Why Do Fools Fall in Love." The same year, Lymon was drafted into the United States Army and reported to Fort Gordon, Georgia, near Augusta, Georgia, for training. While in the Augusta area, Lymon met and fell in love with Emira Eagle, a schoolteacher at Hornsby Elementary in Augusta. The two were wed in June 1967, and Lymon repeatedly went AWOL to secure gigs at small Southern clubs. Dishonorably discharged from the Army, Lymon moved into his wife's home and continued to perform sporadically.

Traveling to New York in 1968, Lymon was signed by manager Sam Bray to his Big Apple label, and the singer returned to recording. Roulette Records expressed interest in releasing Lymon's records in conjunction with Big Apple and scheduled a recording session for February 28. A major promotion had been arranged with CHO Associates, owned by radio personalities Frankie Crocker, Herb Hamlett and Eddie O'Jay. Lymon, staying at his grandmother's house in Harlem where he had grown up, celebrated his good fortune by taking heroin; he had remained clean ever since entering the Army three years earlier.

Death

On February 27, 1968, Lymon was found dead of a heroin overdose at the age of 25 on the floor of his grandmother's bathroom. Lymon, a Baptist, was buried at Catholic Saint Raymond's Cemetery in the Throggs Neck section of The Bronx, New York City, New York.

"I'm Sorry" and "Seabreeze", the two songs Lymon had recorded for Big Apple before his death, were released later in 1968.

Posthumous troubles

Lymon's troubles extended to others after his death. After R&B singer Diana Ross returned "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" to the Top Ten in 1981, a major controversy concerning Lymon's estate ensued. Zola Taylor, Elizabeth Waters and Emira Eagle each approached Morris Levy, the music impresario who retained possession of Lymon's copyrights and his royalties, claiming to be Lymon's rightful widow; Lymon had neglected to divorce both Taylor and Waters. The complex issue resulted in lawsuits and counter-lawsuits, and in 1986, the first of several court cases concerning the ownership of Lymon's estate began.

Trying to determine who was indeed the lawful Mrs. Frankie Lymon was complicated by more issues. Waters was already married when she married Lymon; she had separated from her first husband, but their divorce was finalized in 1965, after she had married Lymon. Taylor claimed to have married Lymon in Mexico in 1965, but could produce no acceptable evidence of their union. Lymon's marriage to Eagle, on the other hand, was properly documented as having taken place at Beulah Grove Baptist Church in Augusta, Georgia, in 1967; however, the singer was still apparently twice-married and never divorced when he married Eagle. The first decision was made in Waters' favor; Eagle appealed, and in 1989, the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court reversed the original decision and awarded Lymon's estate to Eagle.

However, the details of the case brought about another issue: whether Morris Levy was deserving of the songwriting co-credit on "Why Do Fools Fall in Love". Although early single releases of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" credit Frankie Lymon, Herman Santiago and Jimmy Merchant as co-writers, later releases and cover versions were attributed to Lymon and George Goldner. When Goldner sold his music companies to Morris Levy in 1959, Levy's name began appearing as co-writer of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" in place of Goldner's. Lymon was never paid his songwriting royalties during his lifetime; one result of Emira Eagle's legal victory was that Lymon's estate would finally begin receiving monetary compensation from his hit song's success. In 1987, Herman Santiago and Jimmy Merchant, both then poor, sued Morris Levy for their songwriting credits.

In December 1992, the United States federal courts ruled that Santiago and Merchant were co-authors of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love". However, in 1996 the ruling was reversed by the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit on the basis of the statute of limitations: copyright cases must be brought before a court within three years of the alleged civil violation, and Merchant and Santiago's lawsuit was not filed until 30 years later. Authorship of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" currently remains in the names of Frankie Lymon and Morris Levy.

Legacy

Although their period of success was brief, Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers' string of hits were highly influential on the rock and R&B performers who followed them. Lymon's high-voiced sound is said to be a direct predecessor of the girl group sound, and the list of performers who name him as an influence include Michael Jackson, Ronnie Spector, Diana Ross, The Chantels, The Temptations, George Clinton, Smokey Robinson, Len Barry and The Beach Boys, among others. The performers most inspired by and derivative of Lymon and the Teenagers' style are The Jackson 5 and their lead singer and future superstar Michael Jackson. Motown founder Berry Gordy based much of the Jackson 5's sound on Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers' recordings, and the Teenagers are believed to be the original model for many of the other Motown groups he cultivated.

Lymon's music and story were re-introduced to modern audiences with Why Do Fools Fall in Love, a 1998 biographical film directed by Gregory Nava, also the director of the Selena biopic. Why Do Fools Fall in Love tells a comedic, fictionalized version of Lymon's story from the points of view of his three wives as they battle in court for the rights to his estate. The film stars Larenz Tate as Frankie Lymon, Halle Berry as Zola Taylor, Vivica A. Fox as Elizabeth Waters and Lela Rochon as Elmira Eagle. Why Do Fools Fall in Love was not a commercial success and met with mixed reviews; the film grossed a total of $12,461,773 during its original theatrical run.

In 1973, Lymon became known to a slightly younger generation than before with the release of American Graffiti,, which included "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" on its soundtrack.

In September 1979 at the Santa Barbara Bowl, Joni Mitchell performed a version of "Why Do Fools Fall In Love" which subsequently appeared on the release of her album of the concert entitled "Shadows and Light" the following September. During the opening mix of the album, Joni Mitchell also spliced sections of "I'm Not A Juvenile Delinquent" into the title track refrains.

The song "Harlem Roulette" by The Mountain Goats, off its 2012 album Transcendental Youth,, contains reference to Frankie Lymon, the song "Seabreeze" and Roulette Records. Frontman John Darnielle has stated that the song is about the last night of Lymon's life.

Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, and into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2000.

Lymon was mentioned in the 1992 Stephen King short story "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band". Lymon is named as the one who cut off the waitress Sissy's finger for trying to help the protagonists, Mary and Clark Willingham, escape from the town of Rock & Roll Heaven, Oregon, who is inhabited by musicians like Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Roy Orbison, and other musicians who died young.

Discography

Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers discographySinglesGee releases

1956-01: [Gee 1002] "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" / "Please Be Mine" 1 (#1 on the R&B chart for 5 weeks)

1956-04: [Gee 1012] "I Want You to Be My Girl" / "I'm Not a Know-It-All" 2 (#3 on R&B chart)

1956-07: [Gee 1018] "I Promise to Remember" / "Who Can Explain?" (double-sided hit on R&B chart (#10 and #7))

1956-09: [Gee 1022] "The ABC's of Love" / "Share" (#8 on R&B chart)

1956-11: [Gee 1026] "I'm Not a Juvenile Delinquent" / "Baby, Baby"

1957-04: [Gee 1032] "Teenage Love" / "Paper Castles"

1957-05: [Gee 1035] "Love Is a Clown / Am I Fooling Myself Again"

1957-06: [Gee 1036] "Out in the Cold Again" / "Miracle in the Rain" 5 (#10 on R&B chart)

1957-07: [Gee 1039] "Goody Goody" / "Creation of Love" 3

1957-12: [Gee 1046] "Everything to Me" / "Flip Flop" 4

Notes

1 Released as by "The Teenagers"

² Early copies released as by "The Teenagers featuring Frankie Lymon"; billing on later pressings changed to "Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers"

³ Both sides of this release are actually Frankie Lymon solo recordings.

4 billed as "The Teenagers" (lead vocal by Billie Lobrano)

5 Released as by "The Teenagers featuring Frankie Lymon"

Album

1956: [Gee 701] The Teenagers Featuring Frankie Lymon

Compilations

1986: Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers: For Collectors Only (Murray Hill 148)

Frankie Lymon solo discographySinglesRoulette releases

1957: [Roulette 4026] "My Girl" / "So Goes My Love"

1957: [Roulette 4035] "Little Girl" / "It's Christmas Once Again"

1958: [Roulette 4044] "Thumb Thumb" / "Footsteps"

1958: [Roulette 4068] "Portable on My Shoulder" / "Mama Don't Allow It" — 4/58

1958: [Roulette 4093] "Only Way to Love" / "Melinda"

1959: [Roulette 4128] "Up Jumped a Rabbit" / "No Matter What You've Done"

1969: [Roulette 21095 ""/ "1-20-12 Forever'

Gee release

1959: [Gee 1052] "Goody Good Girl" / "I'm Not Too Young to Dream"

Roulette releases

1960: [Roulette 4257] "Little Bitty Pretty One" / "Creation of Love"

1960: [Roulette 4283] "Buzz Buzz Buzz" / "Waitin' in School"

1961: [Roulette 4310] "Jailhouse Rock" / "Silhouettes"

1961: [Roulette 4348] "Change Partners" / "So Young (And So in Love)"

1961: [Roulette 4391] "Young" / "I Put the Bomp" (featuring backing vocals by two members of The Delicates (Denise Ferri and Peggy Santiglia))

Later releases

1964: "To Each His Own" / "Teacher, Teacher" (20th Century Fox)

1964: "Somewhere" / "Sweet and Lovely" (Columbia)

1969: "I'm Sorry" / "Seabreeze" (Big Apple)

Albums

1956: Frankie Lymon And The Teenagers - 1981 Re-issue Roulette Y2-116-RO (Japan) [Gee 701]

1957: Frankie Lymon at the London Palladium (Roulette)

1958: Rock & Roll with Frankie Lymon (Roulette)

1994: Complete Recordings (Bear Family)

Wikipedia

#Frankie Lymon

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angelqueen04 · 6 years

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ASOIAF Fic Recs

Had an anon ask for some recs and um... yeah, I decided to post it separately because, I may have, um, gone a little overboard. Lots of different pairings involved below.

Yeah.

Born-a-Girl Fics

I have an enormous love for these stories, as it's so much fun to see how the various dynamics of the Starks, and indeed, all of Westeros change when the one thing Rhaegar was wrong about in canon becomes something he was right about after all.

All of Madrigal-in-Training's stories on AO3, her profile being located here. I'd read a few born-a-girl!Jon stories before I started reading her work and had enjoyed the genre, but after I read her stuff, I damn near became obsessed. (Did I say ‘near’? I lied, there’s no ‘near’ about it - I did become obsessed. I admit it.) Most of her fics are WiPs, but she updates fairly frequently, so her stories are definitely worth following.

The Acquaint the Flesh series, by Author376. In a Westeros where Soulmates are bound and Marked by the Gods to bind Houses together and pay blood debts, Lyarra Snow and Oberyn Martell are about to get a shock. The born-a-girl!Jon story to end all born-a-girl!Jon stories. I have re-read this series at least a hundred times and I still squee my head off every single time. The gods throwing together two complete opposites, an OFC who is so much fun, a Frey we can actually like, and that's barely scratching the surface! The series is also a WiP, but don't let that put you off.

And I'm calling for my mother as I pull the pillars down, by dwellingondreams. Elia Martell becomes the Lady of Casterly Rock due to her mother's machinations. Robarra Baratheon becomes a princess due to the Mad King's obsession with finding a bride of Targaryen blood. The seeds of rebellion are planted all the same. JFC, who knew that Elia/Tywin could be possible? Well, in a world where Robert Baratheon is born Robarra Baratheon and is quickly snatched up to be Rhaegar's wife, it seems that it is. Of course, this switch up does not prevent Aerys and Rhaegar from setting the world on fire because they're either insane or obsessed with prophecy or both. Still, the affects of this change-up are really fun.

empire (i'm building it with all i know), by willowoftheriver. Fem!Jon Snow is discovered to be a Targaryen as a chld, triggering an unfortunate marriage. Femslash ahoy! Viserys is still a nutjob, though. Words cannot express how much I love this two-shot series.

Oh, mercy, I implore, by SecondStarOnTheLeft. She collects friends with the same ease she conceives healthy babes - so her goodmother tells her, something soft and wistful in her sad eyes, and Berta cannot disagree. A different crown princess, and a different world. Jeez, but I do love these gender-flipped fics. This one is fun too. Girl!Robert isn’t taking any crap from Rhaegar, no sir.

Time-Travel or Fix-It stories

Three Tully Daughters, by ProcrastinationIsMyCrime. Conflicts for the Iron Throne before the darkest hour led to the defeat of the living on Westeros. Jon must have known the fate of men for he’d drugged and snuck his sisters onto a ship set for Braavos. That had been the last time either Stark daughter had seen Jon. Upon Arya's death, Sansa encounters a Dornish bachelor in Braavos who by all rights should be dead. Armed with knowledge held by no other, she would sail for Westeros and save her home; for she was in the reign of Aerys II Targaryen. There would be less chaos for Littlefinger this time. Joffrey would never be born if she could help it. Cersei would never sit the Iron Throne. A time-travel story that actually doesn't solve the insertion process by having the character in question (Sansa, in this case) be reborn into a new family. A very ASOIAF twist! I was a bit wary of the Sansa/Jaime pairing at first, but in this story it works, OMG it works. Sheer brilliance. WiP.

Valar Botis (All Men Must Serve), by sanva. “But you, Lord Snow, you’ll be fighting their battles forever.” Ser Alliser Thorne Every time he died his last in that life he awoke again in another at the exact moment of Ghost's birth. Jon Snow is the King of Groundhog Day. What more needs to be said? ;)

Aegon the Unlikely-era Fics

You and I conspire and split the ground, by SecondStarOnTheLeft. Grandfather's boots are next, soft and worn where Father's are always polished to gleaming, and then Grandfather's hands, and then his face. He looks tired, under his beard, under his crown, but he is smiling when he reaches under the bed to her. "My sister Daella used hide under her bed with her dollies, when we were small," he says, his voice very quiet and very gentle. "Will you come out, poppet? Your grandmother and I would like to speak with you a little, if we may." Wherein Aegon the Unlikely actually doesn't wash his hands of his kids and their obsession with prophecies, wherein Rhaella Targaryen is the ultimate sweetheart who deserves Nice Things, and wherein Rhaelle Targaryen is a total badass. I have a huge love of the family of Aegon the Unlikely and their antics, and this fic is a favorite of mine.

Behind the Ballads, by Ramzes. Jenny of Oldstones and her prince were a favourite theme for singers, their romance making them larger than life. What were they like in life? I absolutely love this behind-the-songs look into the life of Duncan the Small, and seeing just WTF he was thinking. Utterly brilliant. I'd also recommend you look at Ramzes' other work. She has at least two series about Rhaelle Targaryen, one that covers the same time frame as this one (but is not connected to this story), and one that is a series of AUs featuring what might have happened if Rhaelle had lived to the era of Robert's Rebellion. Definitely worth a look.

Coins, by ariel2me. QUOTE SWAP: Rhaelle Targaryen + “What sort of father uses his own flesh and blood to pay his debts?” Oh, the heart. It breaks.

Crack Fics

Ned Stark Adopts His Way Through Westeros, by witchbreaker. "This isn't my fault." And other lies Eddard Stark tells himself. A short fic inspired in the comments of Acquaint the Flesh, it is probably one of the funniest stories ever, not to mention adorable. Also, read the comments, as there is a hysterical little extra piece in there dreamed up by a responder and the author. The best.

A Helpful FAQ, by Siamesa. In a world where Renly Baratheon accidentally spent the War of Four Kings on vacation in Dorne, surviving King Stannis's small council meetings takes a clear understanding of people and politics. Luckily, he's here to provide both... or so he thinks. Ohdearlord, this one still makes me LMAO, even after having practically memorized it. Hilarious.

The Dragon and the Maiden, by modbelle. Viserys brings the Stark girl Joffrey's head. He's surprised by her reaction to this. He'd expected her to be upset, but she seems quite delighted by this. What a strangely charming creature she is, even if she is a Stark. Yeah, this one came out of left field for me, but holy crap who knew such a thing could somehow work?

AU Fics

Desert Wolves, by bluegoldrose. "But Ashara’s daughter had been stillborn, and his fair lady had thrown herself from a tower soon after..." ~Ser Barristan Selmy What if Ashara's daughter lived? What if Ashara Dayne raised Jon Snow alongside her own bastard? What if Ned Stark never stopped loving Ashara even when he fell in love with Catelyn? The bastards of Lord Eddard Stark are the Desert Wolves. The true born children of Lord Eddard Stark are the Winter Wolves. Their lives are lived apart until the tides of war see fit to bring them together. Ashara/Ned is a ship that I cling to, and one that I am always on the lookout for in regards to fics. This one is one of my favorites, particularly since neither Catelyn nor Ashara is demonized. It's a WiP, and hasn't been updated in a while, but I'm still hopeful that the last few chapters will eventually be posted.

Winter's Crown, by orphan_account. What if Rickard Stark had other ambitions? Or, a history of the Starks, from Torrhen to Rickard, in a world where they spent two and a half centuries building up their wealth and waiting for the perfect moment to declare their independence. A twist/expansion on all that we learned from World of Ice and Fire. Very interesting.

Lightning (Struck Before Me), by sanva. “Send the letters,” her voice came out clear, unwavering, resolute, “request House Stark, Arryn, and Tully send representatives to treat and bend the knee.” Wherein Jon discovers something long hidden deep in the crypts of Winterfell and everything changes. This fic is part of a series, and I'm not sure if any more will be posted for it, but this is still fun to read on its own. A mix of book and show.

Dragonstone, by Danivat. After the death of his brother, Robert Baratheon needs a loyalist Lord on Dragonstone. He also really wants back in Ned's good graces. Or, the Game goes on after the Rebellions. The Starks still won't play, but everyone is playing the Game all around them, and Jon Sand has somehow become an important piece. Robert Baratheon, unknowingly, is the Targaryens' greatest asset. This one could fall under either the category of AU or Crack, or perhaps both. There are quite a few divergent points, and they are listed in the notes at the start of the story so you will not be hopelessly lost. Very fun.

One Day (Is Now and Forever), by SimplexityJane. Rhaegar takes Lyanna to Dragonstone, not Dorne. This story had the potential to be a complete and utter epic, but it also stands wonderfully as it is.

Kingdoms at War, by deathwalker. What if Ned Stark wasn't executed at the Great Sept of Baelor? Instead, what if, he had been removed from Kingslanding before Joffrey could give the order for his head? What impact would this have had on the Game of Thrones? I've called this fic a "small step to the left" in the past, and it is so much fun, particularly since it’s based on a question we have all asked ourselves. Though, be prepared - this is a long one.

The Duel, by Aiur. The duel between Robb and Joffrey goes differently than anyone predicts. Be prepared to shed a few tears here. That’s all I’m sayin’.

The Dragon’s Queen, by orphan_account. Aerys married his eldest son off to Elia Martell immediately after Viserys's birth instead of sending his cousin to Essos, and she bore Rhaegar three children before dying in labor with the last. Rhaegar is therefore a young widower when he crowns Lyanna Stark the Queen of Love and Beauty during the tourney at Harrenhal, and Aerys decides that his son will marry the lady. Here are seven letters Lyanna Stark sent in another world. I really love epistolary stories, and this one is so interesting. I wish there was more of it, because it hints at so much more. Very fun.

But you are of the North, by LuminaCarina. Ned Stark doesn’t visit from the Eyrie. Brandon, Lyanna and Benjen adjust. Very interesting idea.

The Squire of Dragonstone, by EmynIthilien. Instead of joining the Night's Watch, Jon travels south to squire for Stannis on Dragonstone. Roughly spanning the events of A Game of Thrones through A Storm of Swords, Stannis and Jon investigate the royal incest mess, fight battles in and out of the courtroom, attend a joyous wedding, and come to rely on each other more than they ever expected. I call this one “Sherlock!Stannis and Watson!Jon”. A great trilogy of stories where things are actually taken care of, and in a legal-ish way!

The Lady of Storm’s End, by Sarah_Black. Sansa was supposed to marry someone brave, gentle and strong. Lord Stannis Baratheon was not what she had in mind. Or: The one where Sansa is never betrothed to Joffrey, never loses Lady, and only comes to King's Landing to attend King Robert's wedding feast. The king is marrying Margaery Tyrell as Cersei's treason has been exposed and dealt with. But things are never simple when the Iron Throne is in desperate need of heirs and wildlings threaten the peace... Another pairing that is a bit weird, but the author makes it work beautifully! The story is also inspired by The Squire of Dragonstone listed above, though it is not necessary to read it. The author explains anything you need to know in the opening notes.

broken lovers series, by soapboxblues. wherein rhaegar wins the war, and jaime manages to keep his head by taking a stark for a wife I never knew Lyanna/Jaime could somehow be possible, but this series proved it to me. There are so many wonderful things about this series, I can’t even.

Kindness, Not Fear, by SecondStarOnTheLeft. In the wake of Daenerys' triumph, Sansa comes to King's Landing. Multi-POV post-series short fic. An older story, but one that I still love to pieces.

The Lion Queen, by Laine. I am the first of my kind, and the bards will sing of me for centuries after I'm gone. Ned Stark takes the Iron Throne, and he intends to share it with his Queen. Yeah, pretty sure I was going to hell for liking this pairing, but nonetheless, I do love it. Plus, a non-crazy Cersei. How often do we see her?

I Fear No Fate (For You Are My Fate, My Sweet), by vixleonard. Myrcella Baratheon always knew she would be married to a man for a political alliance. What she did not know was that she was going to be left in the North at 8-years-old to one day become the wife of Robb Stark and just how much it would change her life. I think this was one of the first ASOIAF fics that I bookmarked, and I still come back to it from time to time. A classic.

#asoiaf #fic recs #multiships

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atarahderek · 6 years

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Coco head canon: If Héctor were well-remembered and the Riveras never banned music

Héctor – spent a lonely 50 years in the Land of the Dead waiting for Imelda to join him. One night a year to see his family wasn't quite enough to keep him from missing them, or wishing he could dance with his wife again. She showed up in the middle of the night, and when Héctor learned of her arrival, he let out a grito that quite literally woke the dead on his whole block. He had made several friends during his wait, and he kept up with all of them, even when some of them began to fade as they came closer to the final death. He never pushed anyone away, and ended up raising a lot of awareness for the near-forgotten using his songs and his notoriety—something that only grew exponentially when Ernesto de la Cruz was uncovered as a thief and murderer.

Imelda – upon learning that the reason her husband had never returned to her was because he had died on his attempt to return, she grieved as any widow would, trying so hard to be angry with him for leaving and getting himself killed. She had even stopped listening to music for a time, but Coco eventually convinced her to accept it again. Though she never did dance again in her lifetime. She did, however, make the best darn dance shoes in Mexico, and they were one of her zapateria's specialties. Upon her death, she was greeted by an over-enthusiastic Héctor, and her own response was to smack him so hard with her boot his head literally spun. She grabbed his skull to stop it and yanked him into a passionate kiss. What followed was the spilling of all that pent-up anger and grief, along with an assurance that she still loved her idiota. Héctor later confessed that he deserved every bit of her ire. A few days after her arrival, Imelda danced with her husband for the first time in half a century.

Oscar and Felipe – really didn't change much. They still tried to become inventors, applying most of their ideas to footwear in some way. But for all their creativity, neither of them possessed the practicality to make any of their inventions work. So they took up abstract sculpting in their spare time. They created some...interesting pieces. When their toddler grandniece tried painting one of their sculptures, they attempted to pass it off as an alebrije. The family's favorite pieces, including the one with Gloria's contribution of color, sit near their photos on the ofrenda.

Coco – became a very skilled dancer, but never pursued it as a career because Victória came along quite soon after her marriage to Júlio. She preferred to stay rooted to her mother's home and business anyway. However, she designated herself the family music teacher in her father's stead. She gained a moderate amount of skill on a few instruments, and was always a very good singer. But she didn't mind in the least whenever her descendants surpassed her musical talent. In fact, she couldn't be more proud. Especially of Miguel, the first in the family to truly inherit her papá's full musical genius. Coco never suffered full on dementia, her mind remaining mostly clear even as she approached 100. She had had her share of grief in her life, but none of it permanently impacted or prevented the many joys she also had.

Júlio – was always an okay dancer, and had a moderate voice (Coco always thought he could be quite good if he got vocal training). But he hated performing or speaking for an audience, and preferred lending his upholstery skills to the family business anyway. However, he always made a point of taking Coco dancing for their anniversary, and attempted to learn several complicated dances for her. His desire to learn new skills for Coco's sake was one of his most endearing traits as far as she was concerned.

Rosita – had an extensive collection of records. Some of them were de la Cruz records, but she took tremendous pleasure in smashing them to bits when she learned the truth about him. While she had no musical talent of her own, she loved listening to it, and was the most open minded of her generation when it came to new genres of music.

Victória – was a skilled artist and, though she was loathe to admit it, quite a talented dancer. Her work was always very technical, and she used her artistic talent to design prints for shoes and to create portraits of her family members. Like her papá, she hated the spotlight, and would always pretend she knew nothing about music or dancing in order to avoid having to engage in either in public. But Coco had caught her dancing many times in private. It was her abuelo Héctor who brought her out of her shell after her death. He used dancing as therapy to help Victória cope with the grief of leaving her mother behind to bury her.

Elena – is probably the least musical member of the Rivera family, much to Coco's chagrin. Elena always wanted to be just like Imelda, focusing her efforts on running the family business and household. And while she can't dance or play an instrument, and doesn't like to sing anything other than soft lullabies, Elena is a phenomenal cook. She is extremely reluctant to allow family members to travel outside Santa Cecilia, especially for music, fearing the same thing could happen to them that happened to her abuelo.

Franco – is an incessant whistler. He's naturally very quiet, focusing on his work, but when he's not communicating through words, he's using whistling. He grew up on a ranch, and still uses whistling to command horses and dogs. Each of his three kids had a tune designated for them. Whistling carried further than shouting their names did, and the kids knew from the tune which of them was wanted, and from the tone how urgent the command was. Franco's grandkids each have whistles to call them as well. Even Benny and Manny have unique but matching “whistle names,” as they call them; Manny's is an inversion of Benny's.

Berto – played the tuba in high school, but got bored with it as an adult. He's an avid soccer fan, and is also very dedicated to the family business. He takes after his mamá in many ways, particularly regarding musical interest. He can whistle just as well as his papá, and frequently borrows Franco's “whistle names” to call his own children. Of the blood Riveras, he's probably the worst singer.

Gloria* - like her Tia Victória, she's very shy about her musical abilities. She has two left feet, but her talent lies in song. She has a beautiful voice, but is far too shy to let it be heard beyond her family. Even her family is rarely privy to her singing. Her sisters-in-law have tried numerous times to rectify this, but all they ever succeed in doing is driving her further into her shell.

Enrique – focuses mostly on his career as a leather worker and shoemaker, but his favorite hobby is sound design. He has his own Foley studio and a digital library full of his own engineered sound effects, which he licenses to small production companies. He has tried his hand at a variety of musical instruments, but has always gotten distracted by the sound of something new, and has never kept his focus on a single instrument long enough to actually learn how to play it well. His wife has joked that she's grateful he has a wandering ear and not a wandering eye. Enrique is also a very talented poet, and collaborates regularly with Miguel to write and record new songs. He's Miguel's go-to singer when Miguel needs a tenor.

Carmen* - she's mostly just here for the shoes, but give her a ladle, some space and one of her favorite TV shows or records, and she'll put all her soul into her favorite soul music. She has an even more extensive record collection than Rosita did. She's a pretty good singer in her own right, but she has been known to butcher some of the more difficult notes and refrains. She sings while she does household chores, and is found frequently bobbing her head along to music blasting through her earbuds. The other Riveras can always tell what she's listening to, unless she's vacuuming.

Luisa – loves a soft lullaby or love song. She is somewhat shy when performing in public, but will do so gladly as long as she's performing a duet or group piece with those closest to her. She first learned to swallow her nerves and sing in public when she and Enrique went to a karaoke bar for one of their first dates. She almost never sings in public if Enrique isn't part of the song. They are quite possibly Santa Cecilia's favorite romantic duet.

Abel – sings baritone-bass, and prefers to play the accordion over singing. Like his papá, his true love is soccer. He hates being called by whistle, but automatically responds to his own whistle name without even thinking. He has lamented before about how their abuelito has the kids trained like dogs (Franco sees no problem with this). He's in the school pep band and choir, but will likely never have a solo part. He is, however, an integral part of Miguel's garage mariachi band—though he'd rather eat his own accordion and soccer cleats than put on one of those “ridiculous” charro suits.

Rosa – is the one who does get all the solos in choir. She is also first chair among the strings in her school's orchestra. She loves the violin, and is as talented with it as Miguel is with his guitar. Sometimes she'll sing along with her mamá to a record or CD, and she's a pretty good dancer. She loves to hone her skills by performing string battles with band mates or with Miguel, and the two of them typically end their battles with broken strings rather than a clear cut winner. The battles started as a way to determine which of them was to be stuck with an undesired chore, but neither of them really actually lost.

Miguel – this boy IS music. His favorite instrument is the guitar, and he is personally responsible for keeping his Papá Héctor's white skull guitar polished and preserved. He idolizes Héctor, wanting to be just like him—which has his abuelita worried that he'll run off to Mexico City and return in a pinewood box, just like Héctor did. Miguel can play a few instruments, but is an absolute wizard on the acoustic and electric guitar, as well as electric bass. He's a very good songwriter as well, even if he did have a lot of trouble learning to read sheet music when he was younger. By the time he's a teenager, he's already recording and selling albums, and by age 15 he requires an agent. It's quite clear that he will one day be the most famous of the Riveras, perhaps even surpassing Héctor.

Benny and Manny – are both quite young yet, but have already mastered the kazoo and the kitchen pot drums. They regularly make up nonsensical songs, trading off lines as they go. They sing the jingle Miguel wrote for the zapateria's radio commercials.

Socorro – dances like her namesake and sings like Imelda. Which doesn't surprise Miguel one bit. As a baby, she had the most powerful set of lungs he'd ever heard in his life. Her entire nuclear family is well aware of her potential to become a very talented, very powerful singer. Shortly after taking her first steps, she wanted to dance. Her favorite activity is dancing with her papá.

*I use the book published family tree for the names of Miguel's tias, but be aware that it may be wrong. Lee Unkrich has said that it is, and the film crew has as well. I use the name Carmen for Berto's wife because it means “song,” and in the canon film, it's doubtful Elena would name her daughter something like that.

#Coco #Pixar #Disney #Hector Rivera #Imelda #Miguel Rivera #head canon #self-indulgent #alternate universe #I have no idea where Foley-loving Enrique came from #but there it is #change of tense indicates living vs. dead Riveras

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destielfanfic · 7 years

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I’m Your Huckleberry

"He really likes cowboys!” “Yes, he does.”

And so do we! Whether set in the Old West or on a contemporary ranch, there is just something about our boys, and cowboy boots that just gets the heart racing. Ya know what they say, Save a Horse...

Be sure to also check out our western au tag and our first Western Destiel rec list as well as our Wild West and Cowboy asks. Most links go to our reviews or submitted rec posts. Newly added fics are marked with asterisk *

I. Contemporary Westerns/Ranch

Blackstrap Molasses by Neonbat [NC-17, 40,000 word count]

Castiel has come back to his small Kansas hometown to work as a veterinarian while he aids in the care of his smallest siblings. An influx of new patients has him a little busy, but when he finds himself making home calls to an old acquaintance from High school his life takes a turn. Dean pulls him into his orbit, and the two must deal with the perceptions of hometown life, bigotry, and self-sabotage if they want a shot at things together.

Broomstick Cowboy by jupiter_james [NC-17, 18,000 word count]

Dean Winchester is one of the finest circuit riders of his generation, right after his legendary father. He's got the life he loves, with the exception of one thing - one person: his biggest sponsor, Castiel Milton. Despite being a ranch owner, Milton is only interested in one thing, and that's making money, even at the expense of animals past their prime. At least, that's what Dean's animosity has been lead to believe. However, coming face to face with his misunderstanding makes him reevaluate a lot of things, including his feelings for Castiel.

Fire N Ice by WincestersRaven [NC-17, 71,700 word count]

Dean and Jimmy Novak met a year and a half ago and they’ve been dating for eight months. When he meets Castiel Novak, Jimmy’s identical twin, Dean’s shocked to say the least. Jimmy never mentioned having a brother, let alone a twin brother. The more he gets to know Cas, the more he finds himself falling hard for the man who has his boyfriend’s face, but is different in so many ways. Author’s note: Dean doesn’t cheat in this fic. There is no three-way with Dean and the twins.

Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy by palominopup (submitted rec) [NC-17, 67,300 word count]

Sam and Dean Winchester are owners of Winchester Farms, a large Quarter Horse ranch. Sam loans their bunkhouse to a writer so he can get some privacy to finish his latest book.

Texas State of Mind by palominopup [NC-17, 69,800 word count]

Dean Winchester was once an award winning country music star, but fame came too early. Now, he’s fifteen years sober and owns a ranch in western Texas. He’s happy with his life. He has horses, a nice herd of cattle and so what, if he’s alone. He tells his friends that he’s happily single. Back when he was touring, men and women threw themselves at him – but he knew they only wanted him for his fame. Cas Novak just won his fifth CMA award. He loves singing, but the touring was getting old. Living in a bus nine months out of the year was slowly destroying his creativity. He hasn’t written anything new in over a year. Then he hears an old song on the radio. He vaguely remembers the handsome singer and wondered whatever happened to him. Before he knew it, he’d written a new song. The only problem was…it was a duet. A duet that could only be sung with a voice like Winchester’s.After locating the man’s ranch, Cas makes a surprise visit. Will he be able to talk Dean into joining him on stage after all these years? Will the two men find what they’ve been looking for all their lives – someone to share a future with?

II. Historical fics set in the Old West

A Road For Home by hymnaries (submitted rec) [NC-17, 17,880 word count]

It’s been six years since Sheriff Castiel Milton last saw Dean Winchester, three since he left his life in Massachusetts behind for a lonely outpost in New Mexico Territory. In this self-imposed exile, he’s at last begun to separate himself from the man he used to be. But after a tragic event causes Dean to reach out to him once more, Castiel not only finds himself confronted with the past he so desperately tried to forget, but also with a newly grown-up Dean who has not so easily buried the feelings that propelled their unconventional relationship into uncharted territory those many years ago. Against the backdrop of the Reconstruction Era West, the two men revisit the events that led to their separation and tentatively explore the possibility of a future together.

Down by the Water by Cas_Wings (submitted rec) [NC-17, 88,400 word count]

When Castiel loses everything dear to him due to a botched river crossing, including his supplies, livestock, covered wagon, and even his wife, he has no where to turn, no way to survive stranded in the middle of his journey. That is, until he meets Dean Winchester, who offers him a life saving deal: In exchange for help on his farm, Dean offers to provide much needed room and board. But how will this decision affect Castiel as he moves through his grief, and discovers feelings he never would have expected? Fighting with injury, pain, grief, and even the threat of death, Dean and Castiel find themselves in the one place they would have never expected: down by the water, struggling to accept their unforeseen love. ((Set in 1853. AU.))

Eldorado Canyon by TerenceFletcher [T, 92,800 word count]

Sam and Dean Winchester are hunters. Finding new supernatural cases, solving mysteries, helping innocents to survive—things most ordinary people can barely even imagine—are all part of their daily routine. Life is sometimes easy, sometimes tough, but almost always dangerous. When they get their new appointment in Nevada, they hit the road without thinking twice. The only thing is—it’s the fall of 1861, the Civil War has been ongoing for several months, and the enemy is nearly invincible. In a world without cell phones and cars, the only gear the Winchesters have is their black stagecoach and precious Colt gun. And a weird local preacher who is trying to help them. A DCBB 2017 fic

Hope on Fire by Ltleflrt (submitted rec) [M/light NC-17, 32,600 word count]

The Civil War ended, but left Castiel weighted down with guilt and shame. In an attempt to start over, he moves West, building a life for himself outside the small mountain town of Purgatory. Five years later a storm blows in, bringing the Winchester brothers and bitter memories along with it. A DCBB 2014 fic

Hunter's Caress by Ltleflrt [NC-17, 161,100 word count]

Castiel Jameson won't rest until the outlaw who murdered his brother faces justice, and Dean Winchester is the only man alive who can help him track the villain down. Some say Winchester is a cold-blooded killer himself; others say he'd been wronged his whole life. All Castiel knows is that the desire glinting in Dean's green eyes is even more dangerous than he is. Castiel fights to keep his mind on business, but during the long nights on the trail with the dangerously handsome hunter he finds himself dreaming of yielding to Dean's illicit kisses and losing himself in lawless passion. Dean Winchester is about to hang when Castiel saves his neck with his crazy plan. But dying might be better than spending day and night playing nursemaid to such an infuriating city slicker. He appreciates the stubborn detective's desire for justice, but he'd appreciate Cas a lot more if he'd stop being a lawman long enough to just be a man. He certainly has all the right equipment. Dean aches to run his fingers through Castiel's dark hair, yearns to know how Castiel's golden skin will feel against him. And before the coming of the next dawn, Dean vows to teach him the pleasures and sweet rewards of a Hunter's Caress.

Lost to the Flames by jinxedambitions (submitted rec) [NC-17, 29,700 word count]

Castiel was happy running a mission for omegas where they could live in peace and have power over their lives. When a group of alphas come asking to buy the land, so they can use it for mining, Castiel sends them away. However, they come back and burn the mission to the ground leaving Castiel a broken man. Sam and Dean are sent after an outlaw leaving a string of dead alphas across the western territories. They track him for months before they realize the outlaw is an omega hunting sadistic alphas. Sam and Dean must decide whether they agree with Castiel’s mission, whether they should bring him to justice, and whether Dean’s found a kindred spirit in the outlaw.

Mail Order Familiar by Amethystaris, BlueMasquerade [M, 62,000 word count] (previously recced here) *

Dean Winchester was a Familiar meant for the wide-open spaces of the frontier. An ad in the paper combined with increasing pressure from his grandfather to sign a contract with a Witch of Samuel’s choice was just the motivation Dean needed to leave the big city behind. What he expects to find is a year of hard work and rough living cleansing the land of magics that corrupted it centuries ago. What he doesn’t expect is that the Witch waiting for him just might be exactly what he has been looking for his whole life. Castiel Angelus is cautiously optimistic that the Familiar he’s agreeing to work with, sight unseen, will be a good fit for his power. He’s chosen to work on the frontier in order to escape his demanding family and their unceasing ambitions. He finds that Dean’s compatibility is beyond his wildest dream. Their bonds, both magical and personal, will be tested to the limits as they encounter the source of the corruption and seek to defeat it, before it’s too late.

Plain and Tall by destielpasta and mtothedestiel [NC-17, 69,900 word count]

Dean is a Kansas farmer who only wants to work his land and care for his infant daughter. With his wife gone and his brother moving on to a life beyond the homestead, Dean finds himself in need of another pair of hands. Castiel, a lonely drifter freshly arrived in town, may prove the solution to Dean’s troubles. Over the course of four seasons, the two men face the everyday challenges of prairie life, and learn to overcome the betrayals of their past to discover a new definition of family. A DCBB 2016 fic

The Right Side of the Law by elizaye [NC-17, 2,000 word count]

We stand here today, September 14th, 1861, to execute heavenly justice upon Castiel—on Castiel for the crimes of murder, fraud, impersonation of a priest, theft, desertion, and public indecency.

The Shawnee Trail by emmbrancsxx0 [NR, 166,000 word count] *

In 1887, Dean Winchester and Castiel Novak lead a peaceful life in Lawrence, Kansas. Dean and Sam are stagecoach messengers for Wells, Fargo and Castiel is the town doctor. When Castiel's patient, Kelly Kline, knocks on their door one night about to give birth, she asks for the Winchesters and Castiel's help in protecting her son against one of the west's most notorious outlaws. To fulfill that promise, the men set out on a journey full of shootouts, trouble with the law, gambling, and an important discovery: Dean and Castiel really need to define the nature of their relationship.

Vagabonds by amarillogrande [Nc-17, 87,000 word count]

Dean is a sheriff in a tiny town in Colorado, restless and unsatisfied with his life. It's not what he's read about in the dime novels since he was little, capturing dangerous outlaws and being the last word of the law. More like tossing the town drunk in a cell to sober up when he gets a little too rowdy. But his chance comes when a thief rolls through their town. Dean pursues the thief, and that puts him right into the path of Emmanuel, a notorious outlaw. When he's captured by the outlaw and his gang to be held for ransom, he starts off on a journey he could have never envisioned, and learns that perhaps there's more to Emmanuel than meets the eye.

We Dig In Our Heels, As Hard As We Can by AlreadyPainfullyGone (submitted rec) [NC-17, 11,000 word count]

Castiel is a union surgeon fresh from the civil war, Dean is a confederate soldier working as a prostitute in a dangerous town.

If you enjoyed the fic, please drop by the archive (AO3) and let the author know with your comments and/or kudos! And if you found our recs useful, let us know by Liking and/or Reblogging our posts!

#destiel #fic rec #western #historical au

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dustedmagazine · 6 years

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Dusted Mid-Year Exchange: 2018, Part 2

Part two covers mid-year favorites from H. C. McEntire to Yuzo Iwata. If you missed part one, check it out here.

H.C. McEntire — Lionheart (Merge)

Who recommended it? Justin Cober-Lake

Did we review it? No.

Ben Donnelly’s take:

Country music likes to provide bona fides in the lyrical details. Be it bad boy specifics of a truck model or coffeehouse ballads spiked with animal bones and rusty weathervanes, the singer signals that they know life out on the dirt roads. What's striking about Lionheart is how it delves into the particulars of a North Carolina life, from textile miles to chicory and gardenias. Indeed, nearly every song mentions the local flora, yet such details fall into place incidentally. McEntire describes places where nature is growing over every outbuilding and brick alley. There's a sense of discovery in theses settings where relationships with friends, family and a lover play out. All those vines were too common to notice until now, when love and the gratitude that follows make the mundane vivid.

McEntire longs for the present moment perfected, not a past reconstructed, and that's why her rootsy details don't have anything to prove. She’s comes to this twang a decade after playing the knotted indie rock also endemic to the region, a style that leaves nary a trace musically here. When she sings “I’m the clown who feeds the crows,” she’s both a figure in her natural habitat and someone who knows the other locals are smirking and murmuring, as she wanders on her own.

Efrim Manuel Menuck—Pissing Stars (Constellation)

Pissing Stars by Efrim Manuel Menuck

Who recommended it? Jonathan Shaw

Did we review it? Yes. Jonathan said that a “mind-scrambling collision of plasticized media culture and geopolitical rapacity provides the thematic impetus for Pissing Stars.”

Bill Meyer’s take:

Words and notes are mere platforms; it’s the blasted, low-definition, high-contrast sound of Pissing Stars that hits you first and leaves a mark. Menuck (founder of Godspeed! You Black Emperor and Silver Mt. Zion) uses grimy sonic filters to amplify an emotional anguish whose extend deeper than the current geo-political situation. The album’s organizing preoccupation is a love affair between TV personality and an arm dealer’s coddled son, which caught Menuck’s attention when he was in his teens (he’s well into his 40s now). The songs address love and money, and the impossibility of redemption and the yearning to transcend that impossibility, not as binary relationships but as far boundaries of a vast and incomprehensible field. Menuck sounds broken and partially remade, awash in sounds made to match.

Mesarthim — The Density Parameter (Avantgarde Music)

The Density Parameter by Mesarthim

Who recommended it? Ian Mathers

Did we review it? Yes Ian admired the way that Mesarthim, “seesaws from something even the staunchest, pettiest gatekeepers would have to admit are metal, to sections featuring patterns and instruments that, in a different context, would make perfect sense at a rave.”

Eric McDowell’s take:

“Safe to say that black metal’s got what it takes to make innocent listeners uncomfortable: the corrosive distortion, the pummeling drums, those terrifying roars — not to mention all that netherworldly symbolism, mythology and branding. But if Mesarthim’s keeping somewhat more experienced listeners (Bandcamp dabblers, Dusted midyear exchange reviewers) on their toes, it’s not because they’re doubling down on those tropes. It’s because they take such a free hand with gestures to genres that seem to take the legs out from under their black metal persona.

Not to overstate the case: The music on The Density Parameter, the Australian duo’s third full-length, is plenty dark and crushing. But then there are the unsettling touches — the synthetic arena-rock drums and boxing-movie-montage keys of “Ω,” the bleeding-heart strings of “Transparency” or the ghoulish club beat of “74%.” To say that Mesarthim sounds like a band bored with convention is really to say that they sound pumped about the possibility of subverting it. And when they want to indulge, they can do that, too, as they prove in the album’s final overpowering minutes.

Roscoe Mitchell and the Montreal-Toronto Art Orchestra—Ride the Wind (Nessa)

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Who recommended it? Derek Taylor

Did we review it? Yes. Derek said: “Flimsy idiomatic descriptors like jazz, classical and the like are irrelevant to the proceedings, replaced by the umbrella adjectival phrase of organized and energized sound.”

Jonathan Shaw’s take:

Adequately describing music this enormously complex, aesthetically confrontational and confident requires a technical vocabulary and understanding of jazz history that this reviewer lacks. For this 2016 set, Mitchell wrote and worked and played with the 19-piece Montreal-Toronto Art of Orchestra. Their varied instrumentation and dexterous, evocative playing create some dizzying experiences: see the transition out of the choppy clatter of “Splatter” into the lyrical grace of the first few minutes of the title track. From staccato, oddly percussive reeds to undulant brass and strings—it’s a sharp and then gorgeous progress.

A couple reference points occur: Mingus’s orchestral and ambitious Let My Children Hear Music (1972), especially the whirling, swirling “The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife Are Some Jive-ass Slippers”; “A Brain for the Seine” (1969), a long composition by the Art Ensemble of Chicago, in which Mitchell has been a key player throughout its long and bewilderingly experimental existence. Those dates invoke the high point of the American free jazz avant-garde, and few personages loomed as largely, or productively, in that period as Mitchell’s.

That begs some questions: Can we still have an avant-garde in the early 21st century? Can a figure as established and prominent as Mitchell produce authentically avant-garde art? If the avant-garde is thought as a political and historically specific phenomenon, likely not; the postmodern and late capital have reduced those possibilities all but completely. But if by “avant-garde” we mean a style, and a style specific to jazz, then this music carries its mark and its intensity. It’s also lovely and bracing to hear Mitchell work through a new arrangement of “Nonaah” here, a song that recalls the mid-1970s cultural environment of its original composition and appearance in Mitchell’s oeuvre. The song caps this set, and in doing so insists that we hear history at work. Thanks, Derek, for recommending this stirring and provocative recording.

Kacey Musgraves — Golden Hour (MCA Nashville)

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Who recommended it? Patrick Masterson

Did we review it? No.

Derek Taylor’s take:

“Jazz is dead” — it’s a declamatory provocation at once reductive, alarmist and cavalier that’s been floating around for the better part of a half-century, uttered by the idiom’s traditionalists, progressives and detractors alike. The same fatalistic phrase could equally and erroneously be applied to country music. Twenty-nine year old Texan Kacey Musgraves isn’t exactly a corrective to that combative line of thought and her brand of musical expression is fraught with certain stylistic choices (concessions?) that appear cardinal in this age of Country Music Awards commodification. But embrace of pop conventions has always been efficacious strategy going back to Countrypolitan, Western Swing and even The Singing Brakeman.

Golden Hour, Musgraves’ fourth album, is reportedly a reflection of recently-found, matrimony-rooted optimism, audible in the gilded acoustic guitar melodies that serve as the skeletal frames for the songs around which a warm-blooded corpus of lap steel, banjo, drums and noninvasive keys is fleshed. Her voice is a modest wonder, musing on solitary afternoons leavened and enriched by the safety that comes in knowing that loving companionship is the current and foreseeable norm or using the kitschy metaphor of a “Velvet Elvis” to elucidate her lover’s left-of-center appeal. Apart from others of her age and ascendant success, she seems to cotton that the gifts of prosperity and stardom need not come through the mercenary espousal of whatever pop chart-calibrated admixture the A&R suits and million-bean counters deem worthy of exploitation.

Olden Yolk—S-T (Trouble In Mind)

Olden Yolk by Olden Yolk

Who recommended it? Ben Donnelly

Did we review it? Yes. Jennifer Kelly said, “The vocals slide over one another like colored transparencies, creating shifting shades and moods.”

Ian Mathers’ take:

“Je suis les enfants/in the barrel of a gun” is a heck of a way to open an album, and the mix of the slightly sinister and the slightly baroque carries throughout the first Olden Yolk record. Which means, yes, building on that proud legacy of twee bands not afraid of the Velvet Underground, and I see those Clientele comparisons and can agree with them too. At points though I also think of early, spikier Go-Betweens. All of which is to say that the considerable charms and pleasures of Olden Yolk are coming from a distinct and well loved (if sometimes underestimated) lineage. There are discernible traces of psych-folk, jangle-pop, even a bit of the tang of the garage in there, but as with any act producing music worth paying attention to, here all those referents are just attempts to point at the contours of the very specific, individual thing Olden Yolk are doing. Whether it’s the brasher likes of “Esprit de Corps” or the lovely eternal sigh of “Gamblers on a Dime” or especially the forbidding sprawl and tangle of the closing “Takes One to Know One,” Olden Yolk build on the past with such verve and panache they never feel of the past.

John Prine — The Tree of Forgiveness (Oh Boy)

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Who recommended it? Isaac Cooper

Did we review it? Yes, Isaac said, “Prine finds his warmest balance yet between boundless empathy and joking detachment.”

Eric McDowell’s take:

Portrait of the artist as an old man, the cover of John Prine’s first album of original music in 13 years says it all. He looks a bit tossed around, sure, but sly as ever. He’s surrounded by darkness and wearing black, but his face glows. Perhaps he’s “seeing the light,” but he’s gazing right at us, eyes skeptical, mouth ready to crack an acid joke.

On The Tree of Forgiveness, Prine’s intimate and gruff voice doesn’t so much guide us from light to dark as show us their inseparability. Often they’re embodied in the figures and narratives characteristic of Prine’s music. There’s the down-and-out beggar of the trucking-on opener, “Knockin’ on Your Screen Door” whose family “up and left me / with nothin’ but an 8-track / another side of George Jones.” On “The Lonesome Friends of Science,” there’s the poor washed-up Pluto, “once a mighty planet there / now just an ordinary star / hanging out in Hollywood / in some old funky sushi bar.” While other tunes have an earnest tenderness that makes us want to pin Prine himself as not only their singer but also their subject — the strings-saturated “Summer’s End” or “Boundless Love” (“If I came home, would you let me in / fry me some pork chops and forgive my sins?”) — that risky move is no more tempting than on the closer, “When I Get to Heaven.” “I’m gonna get a cocktail / vodka and ginger ale / and I’m gonna smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long / I’m gonna kiss that pretty girl / on the tilt-a-whirl / yeah, this old man is going to town”: The plan feels pure Prine, but it’s also sketched as a sing-along, inviting us to share in the fantasy.

If everyone’s already pointed out that Prine’s always been this way, singing with wit about old age and death and wearing black since the early days, then I guess he’s done his job.

Alasdair Roberts, Amble Skuse & David McGuinness — What News (Drag City)

What News by Alasdair Roberts, Amble Skuse & David McGuinness

Who recommended it?

Bill Meyer

Did we review it? Yes. Bill Meyer said, “Turns out, the news is that Roberts has made the most unabashedly gorgeous record of his career.” Bryan Daly’s take: This inspired trio has shepherded both the songs and the traditional instruments on which they were played from deep in the past and conveyed them to the present, with all the care and fortitude it took to deliver news through the wild countryside in the age when they were written. An old Britain comes vividly alive not only because of the scholarly work that has been done in presenting them faithfully, but also because of the emotions that streak these songs with color. After spending some time with these characters in the world where they live and die, casual understanding of the song's history and meaning becomes insufficient. Digging through the archives for context becomes its own rewarding pursuit. But just as digging through the archives these days can mean typing few words into your phone, the world is another place from when these songs were written. Amble Skuse's subtle weaving of shifting modern noise provides the most sublime moments throughout, like the ambiguous but familiar clacking that opens the album. Is it a camera? A typewriter? A horse? What news is being prepared? Lest we forgot we haven’t slipped into the times when these songs were first sung, a familiar hiss and static of the current grounds us in the now.

Alasdair's ageless tenor also plays well against McGuinness's period instruments (grand piano, dulcitone), illuminating timeworn themes like betrayal and confused notions of honor. Characters are portrayed with such sensitivity that the dust that might have gathered on their stories has been shaken off in travel through time. When the players imbue such reverence for presenting the past as is done here, songs arrive freshly felt. The news travels fast, even through the space of hundreds of years.

Caroline Rose — Loner (New West)

LONER by Caroline Rose

Who recommended it? Justin Cober-Lake

Did we review it? No

Patrick Masterson’s take:

Loner leads off with a song called “More of the Same,” but such a description could hardly be less apt for Caroline Rose’s third full-length. In the wake of 2014’s I Will Not Be Afraid, Rose took her catchy but simple country-tinged folk, her insecurities and her formidable wit and lathered a thick coat of synth-tinged pop on it. Press materials cite Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears as inspirations, both of which seem like more than lip service (check the FutureSex/LoveSounds vibe of “To Die Today” and, well, this cover of “Toxic”), but perhaps the most clear pop parallel is on the significantly altered (and, hence, appropriately titled) “Soul No. 5,” where her shog-off attitude toward admirers recalls Nicki Minaj or peak-era Ke$ha before she dropped the dollar sign: “I like to hit ‘em and quit ‘em / That’s just my style,” she shrugs with flair.

Bang, bang and away she goes is right: Whether it’s this kind of forthright pop approach or something more serious (and seriously invested) like “Jeannie Becomes a Mom” – I’m still thinking about how she ends with “Now you’re in real life” reverbing out to the point that you can barely understand it before metaphorically clarifying right at the finish – and closer “Animal” or even the funny, cringe-worthy cat-call escalations of “Smile! AKA Schizodrift Jam 1 AKA Bikini Intro,” every song on here moves at a swift clip to showcase some point along the spectrum of Rose’s talent. Call in Britney, call in Ke$ha, call in Angel Olsen, call in The Replacements — none of it seems quite sufficient. Caroline Rose is a league apart and better than she’s ever been.

Salad Boys — This Is Glue (Trouble in Mind)

This Is Glue by Salad Boys

Who recommended it? Jennifer Kelly

Did we review it? Yes. Jonathan Shaw said, “The contrast of blithe pop with alienated, distraught lyrics is nothing new. This record reinvests that contrast with liveliness and complication.”

Patrick Masterson’s take:

The cover to This Is Glue is almost comically accurate, an album of pastel shades. Listening to “Blown Up,” which kicks off Joe Sampson’s 12-song, 45-minute-long sophomore LP under the Salad Boys name into gear with a propulsive indie-rock fling before segueing into “Hatred,” which… sounds like anything but, gives you the two major speeds of the record in just about nine minutes. So yeah: The Christchurch, New Zealander loads up on soft-baked indie jangle like it’s 1986. In one of Dusted’s first reviews this year, Jonathan described it as “compulsively listenable from the jump,” which is nearly as damning as it is praising. Put it on! Forget it’s on! And on and on and on.

But look at the album art closer and you’ll see the bright speckles of red and that smear of darkness to the left – there’s more going on than initially meets the eye. Same goes for the music; working harder to hear the details rewards multiple plays. Stuff like “Psych Slasher” or “Under the Bed” are fairly overt hits, sure, but there’s also “Scenic Route to Nowhere,” where Sampson’s accent is most evident and there’s this almost Oneida-esque stretch at three-quarters distance; the über-jangle of “Exaltation”; the frontier strings in “Dogged Out”; and “Right Time,” which had me remembering some of my earliest indie-rock encounters listening to 3WK and realizing I had no idea what I didn’t know. Trouble in Mind tells me these lyrics are “more claustrophobic and yearning” than 2015’s more upbeat Metalmania, but the way Sampson barely ever rises above an inside voice even at full emoting had me focusing harder on the guitar tones, frankly; in this way, Salad Boys’ closest analog to me isn’t whatever I forgot from the Left of the Dial box, it’s another Antipodean group increasingly lost to the salads of time: Ides of Space. I mean that as a compliment, and I almost never give stuff like this compliments. Eat up.

Tove Styrke — Sway (RCA)

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Who recommended it? Ian Mathers

Did we review it? Yes, Ian called it, “ a perfect sparkling little showcase for how much the craft and delivery of this kind of pop song can matter.”

Jennifer Kelly’s take:

Um, yeah, Swedish electro-pop, not my favorite. Ian’s right, though, Styrke is good at what she does, imbuing glossy, focused-tested beats with soft, engaging humanity. “Sway,” one of the singles, has a big sweeping chorus, a sugary blast of “Swaa-aa-aay” that could melt the hardest heart, while “Say My Name” slathers staccato rhythms with giddy female empowerment. Styrke’s girlish voice has a nice touch of vulnerability to it, shading marketable hooks with recognizable human feeling. Production is immaculate, meticulous, air-tight, engineered for maximum impact. You could do worse, obviously. But really, when so many good, less commercially viable bands are vying for your attention, why spend time on stuff that’s doing just fine without you?

Yuzo Iwata—Daylight Moon (Siltbreeze)

Daylight Moon by Yuzo Iwata

Who recommended it? Bryan Daly

Did we review it? Yes. Bryan said: “these are deeply thrilling guitar-driven instrumentals with the room-live warmth and sense of play found on the Matrix Tapes, and mentally chasing a melody on any of these songs captivates fully.”

Jonathan Shaw’s take:

It’s hard to know if “Gigolo” intentionally alludes to “Gigolo Aunt,” one of the most coherent songs on Syd Barrett’s eponymous final record of studio material. But Yuzo Iwata’s delightful tune has the same lively, blithely bouncy quality as Barrett’s, and it plays a similar role on Daylight Moon. “Gigolo” is a space of unadulterated joy on a record that’s otherwise redolent with more difficult feelings. The difficulties are suggested by variations in tone; the record’s instrumentation is invariably simple, with Iwata backed by a straightforward rock combo. That anchors the record in a consistent sonic vocabulary. But Iwata’s playing projects the record onto multiple emotional planes: the meditative lilt of “Up on a Dragonfly”; the foreboding, spaghetti-western shamble of “Border”; the gently somber “Goodnight, Daylight Moon.”

The most intense sounds on Daylight Moon assert themselves on the fuzzily metallic “Drone Beetle” (recorded in 1999, unlike the other songs on the LP, which date from September 2015), and on “Daylight Moon II,” easily the record’s most incendiary performance. It’s got an aching, terrible beauty, and it feels like the fiery catharsis that offsets the goofball charm of “Gigolo.” Both songs are terrific, but “Daylight Moon II” is more vividly present, Iwata’s soloing seeks transcendence. It gets there. I wish it were here longer.

#mid-year 2018 #h.c. mcintire #efraim manuel menuck #mesarithm #roscoe mitchell #kasey musgraves #olden yolk #john prine #alasdair roberts #amble skuse #david mcguinness #caroline rose #salad boys #tove styrke #yuzo iwata #midyear

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