“City of Night is a novel written by John Rechy. It was originally published in 1963 in New York by Grove Press. Earlier excerpts had appeared in Evergreen Review, Big Table, Nugget, and The London Magazine. City of Night is notable for its exposé approach to and stark depiction of hustling, as well as its stream of consciousness narrative style. Set in the 1960s, the book follows the travels of a young man (Rechy uses the term ‘youngman’ when referring to hustlers) across the country while working as a hustler. The book focuses chapters on locations that the boy visits and certain personages he meets there, from New York City, to Los Angeles, San Francisco and New Orleans. Throughout the novel, the unnamed narrator has trysts with various peculiar characters, including another hustler, an older man, an S&M enthusiast and a bed-ridden…

When the Moody Blues entered a Decca recording studio in October 1967, they were a modestly successful British Invasion act with one likable Merseybeat hit single to their credit, 1965’s “Go Now.” Their contract with the label was about to expire and they owed several thousand pounds to Decca. In exchange for having the debt canceled, they agreed to make a rock version of Dvorak’s New World Symphony that the label wanted to use to showcase a new stereo audio format.

If record buyers were a bit slow to catch on, critics were even slower.

But the weeklong Decca session didn’t work out as planned. Instead of a Dvorak recording, it produced Days of Future Passed, an album that successfully fuses rock and classical in a performance that profits substantially from the contributions of composer/conductor Peter Knight and his London Festival Orchestra (a nonentity that was named for the…

“The Yage Letters, first published in 1963, is a collection of correspondence and other writings by Beat Generation authors William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. It was issued by City Lights Books. Most of the letters date back to 1953 and chronicle Burroughs’ visit to the Amazon rainforest in search of yagé (ayahuasca), a plant with near-mythical hallucinogenic and some say telepathic qualities. Along the way, Burroughs and Ginsberg share other stories and anecdotes, including some concepts Burroughs would later use in novels such as Naked Lunch. The book ends with further correspondence written in 1960 detailing Ginsberg’s experiments with yagé. Beyond the letters themselves, the book is noteworthy for two short pieces by Burroughs. The anarchic ‘Roosevelt After Inauguration’, a savage parody of American politics in which ‘a purple-assed baboon’ is appointed to the United States Supreme Court, was omitted from…

John Prine Returns with a Gem

John Prine’s The Tree of Forgiveness is his first collection of fresh material since 2005’s Grammy-winning Fair and Square. That means fans have endured a 13-year wait, but it was worth every minute, because the new album is a gem.

It’s hard to put your finger on just how Prine works his magic. Though he certainly knows how to turn a phrase, there are few fancy metaphors in his lyrics; his folksy vocals, which seem effortless, have more power than you might expect from such an understated, gravelly voiced singer; his melodies and instrumentation are simple and straightforward; and Nashville producer Dave Cobb keeps studio embellishments to a minimum, appearing to focus largely on just letting Prine be Prine.

Perhaps part of the secret behind the artist’s appeal is contained in his recent answer to Rolling Stone’s Patrick Doyle, who asked Prine…

“Astral Weeks is the second studio album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. It was recorded at Century Sound Studios in New York City during three sessions in September and October 1968, although most participants and biographers agree that the eight songs were culled from the first and last early evening sessions. Except for John Payne, Morrison and the assembled jazz musicians had not played together before and the recordings commenced without rehearsals or lead sheets handed out. The cover art, music and lyrics of the album portray the symbolism equating earthly love and heaven that would often feature in Morrison’s work. When Astral Weeks was released by Warner Bros. Records in November 1968, it did not receive promotion from the label and was not an immediate success with consumers or critics. Blending folk, blues, jazz, and classical music, the album’s songs signaled a…

Mosaic at the memorial at My Lai

“Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the My Lai massacre. On the morning of March 16, 1968, American forces entered the village and gathered up all living things: elderly men and women, infants in mothers’ arms, pigs, chickens, and water buffalo. Then, the Americans proceeded to kill them all, slowly, carefully, methodically. It took four hours (this was no sudden outburst of passion), until all 504 people and all the animals were massacred. Fifty-six of the people killed were under seven years old; some of the infants were bayoneted to death. Women were raped before being shot. After the killing orgy, two of the American soldiers (one a religious Mormon) sat down to lunch nearby. Unfortunately, their meal was interrupted by the moans of a few villagers shot and left for dead, but not yet fully dead. The two soldiers, disturbed by…

“When it comes to the influence of the arts on everyday life, it can seem like our reality derives far more from Jeff Koons’ ‘augmented banality‘ than from the Fluxus movement’s playful experiments with chance operations, conceptual rigor, and improvisatory performance. But perhaps in a Jeff Koons world, these are precisely the qualities we need. Mainly based in New York, and ‘taking shape around 1959,’ notes the University of Iowa’s Fluxus: A Field Guide, ‘the international cohort of artists known as Fluxus experimented with—or better yet between—poetry, theater, music, and the visual arts.’ Big names like John Cage and Yoko Ono might give the uninitiated a sense of what the 60s art movement was all about. An ‘interdisciplinary aesthetic,’ writes Ubuweb, that ‘brings together influences as diverse as Zen, science, and daily life and puts them to poetic use.’ Of course, there’s more to it…