“You’re a big man, but you’re in bad shape. With me it’s a full time job. Now behave yourself.”

It’s Michael Caine as Jack Carter, intimidating a small-town gangster, Cliff Brumby, in the 1971 film, Get Carter. Within seconds, Carter has shown Brumby, played by future TV soap star Bryan Mosley, who’s boss - a quick karate chop and Brumby’s on his knees. That’s what Carter does. He’s a hardened criminal, a killer, and now he’s back home to find out who murdered his brother.

Taken from the novel Jack’s Return Home by Ted Lewis, Get Carter changed modern crime fiction. Firstly, it created a new genre British Noir; secondly, it kicked in the French windows at St. Mary Mead, and replaced the anaemic Miss Marple with the harsh reality of professional criminals, and the brutality of their lives, from which ever succeeding British crime writer has taken their cue.

Lewis was born in Manchester in 1940, and raised on Humberside. He showed skill as an artist and as a writer, and attended Hull Art School. In 1965, his first novel All The Way Home, and All Through The Night was published. Lewis then worked as animator on The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, before writing Jack’s Return Home. He wrote a further 7 books, including 2 more Jack Carter novels, and the classics Plender, Billy Rags and GBH. He died too soon, too early, and almost forgotten in 1982. What a fickle fucking world we live in.

At its heart, Jack’s Return Home was in part inspired by a real-life killing that took place during the height of the swinging sixties.

In August 1967, criminal Angus Sibbett bullet-riddled body was found in his Mark Ten Jaguar under Pesspool Bridge, County Durham. Sibbett was a bag man involved in extortion and collecting slot machine money.

Sibbett was employed by notorious, North-East gangster Vincent Landa, a man considered “more important than the Prime Minister”. Sibbett worked with London criminal Dennis Stafford and Landa’s brother, Michael Luvaglio.  Luvaglio had no previous convictions, but Stafford, who went under an alias, had served a 7 year sentence for possession of a firearm, and had notoriously escaped from Dartmoor and Wandsworth prisons, eventually fleeing to Newcastle, where he set up a company, which was a front for fraudulent activities.

When Sibbett was discovered creaming off Landa’s takings - pocketing £1,000 a week - he was killed.

It seemed an open-and-shut case.  The police came after the gang: Landa fled the country, while Stafford and Luvaglio were arrested for Sibbett’s murder. But both men claimed their innocence. However, they were tried, found guilty and sentenced to gaol.

Stafford believed he was charged because of his previous activities whilst on the run in Newcastle, and has since stated, “If it had not been for me, Michael would never have been charged.”

While Luvaglio has said: “When I was arrested, the police told me that I only had to say that Stafford had left me for a while that night and I would go free.”

In hindsight, the whole case seemed like a fit up, as the evidence against both men was flimsy to non-existent. Importantly eye-witness statements and forensic evidence, which could have cleared both men, was ignored.

On that fateful night, Sibbett was to meet Stafford and Luvaglio in The Birdcage nightclub in Newcastle. Eyewitnesses vouched for both men, apart from a period of 45-minutes around midnight - the time Sibbett was murdered.  This 45-minute window proved crucial, as the police claimed Stafford and Luvaglio had left the nightclub, driven 16 miles, pushed Sibbett’s vehicle off the road, then pumped 3 bullets into him, before returning to the club.

In 1967, even in a souped-up cop car, traveling at full-speed, lights flashing, it wasn’t possible to do what was claimed. But it didn’t matter. Luvaglio and Stafford were set for punishment. It was a warning to any other London criminals (most notably London’s notorious Kray twins) against moving their operations north.

Stafford served 12 years but always insisted his innocence, claiming a Scottish shooter committed the crime. This was confirmed in a TV documentary by John Tumblety, who said on camera that he in fact had driven the real murderer back from Pesspool Bridge to the Birdcage club and that man was neither Luvaglio nor Stafford.

In May 2002 Sibbett’s slaying (now renamed The Get Carter Murder) made news when the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the British Home Secretary had kept Dennis Stafford in jail longer than was necessary and ordered £28,000 compensation to be paid.

To this day, both men continue to campaign to clear their names of the crime they didn’t commit

In Get Carter the film’s slot machine king was played by playwright, John Osborne, whose character Cyril Kinnear, lives in Dryerdale Hall, Durham, the very building Landa used as his gangland HQ.

In 2002 Landa said :

“The two (Stafford & Luvaglio) men were wrongly convicted and the evidence was incorrect. If they were tried today they would never have been found guilty. It was a political trial. The Home Office had suffered at the hands of gangs like the Krays and the Richardsons and they stepped in to smash what they thought was an organised crime ring.”

These aren’t the only characters Lewis adapted for his novel, and later the film. Property developer Cliff Brumby was a hybrid of Newcastle City councillor, T. Dan Smith and architect John Poulson. Both men were notorious in the sixties, and were later found guilty of bribery, corruption and giving backhanders to MPs and councillors in order to have shoddy building plans passed.

The pair destroyed most of Newcastle and built cheap concrete housing and offices. At the trial, the judge said that the scandal “now couples corruption with the north east.” So far reaching were their underhand activities that Conservative Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling resigned over the scandal.

Smith was accused of infiltrating councils across the North of England and corruptly forcing them to give business to architect John Poulson. Smith used £500,000 of Poulson’s money as bribes. Smith ruled with an iron hand and was described as a “demagogue”. He ended his life championing pensioners’ rights from the 14th floor council flat in a block he had built.

Get Carter was a flop on its release, described by critics as “soulless and nastily erotic…virtuoso viciousness”, a “sado-masochistic fantasy”, that “one would rather wash one’s mouth out with soap than recommend it.” Since then Get Carter has become arguably the greatest British crime film ever made. 
 

In a wide-ranging talk, novelist William Gibson discusses his affection for Twitter, wonders if there is still a mainstream media, reveals about how he views America as an ex-pat living in Canada and gives some insight into where his ideas come from. William Gibson is currently in the midst of a 36-city promotional tour for his latest novel, Zero History.

Due to increasing competition for scarce natural resources, a barbarism haunts the planet. In the drive for expansion and profits, the endgame of the capitalist system promises imperialism, domination of impoverished peoples and an ecological nightmare. The capitalist path is a death trap, but there is a just, people-based alternative: Socialism. In this wide-ranging interview, Prof. Michael Lebowitz discusses his latest book, The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development.

 
Slim Gaillard was a wonderful jazz performer and inventor of his own groovy dialect he called Vout. He was notably immortalized in the following passage from Jack Kerouac’s On The Road:

‘... one night we suddenly went mad together again; we went to see Slim Gaillard in a little Frisco nightclub. Slim Gaillard is a tall, thin Negro with big sad eyes who’s always saying ‘Right-orooni’ and ‘How ‘bout a little bourbon-arooni.’ In Frisco great eager crowds of young semi-intellectuals sat at his feet and listened to him on the piano, guitar and bongo drums. When he gets warmed up he takes off his undershirt and really goes. He does and says anything that comes into his head. He’ll sing ‘Cement Mixer, Put-ti Put-ti’ and suddenly slow down the beat and brood over his bongos with fingertips barely tapping the skin as everybody leans forward breathlessly to hear; you think he’ll do this for a minute or so, but he goes right on, for as long as an hour, making an imperceptible little noise with the tips of his fingernails, smaller and smaller all the time till you can’t hear it any more and sounds of traffic come in the open door. Then he slowly gets up and takes the mike and says, very slowly, ‘Great-orooni ... fine-ovauti ... hello-orooni ... bourbon-orooni ... all-orooni ... how are the boys in the front row making out with their girls-orooni ... orooni ... vauti ... oroonirooni ...” He keeps this up for fifteen minutes, his voice getting softer and softer till you can’t hear. His great sad eyes scan the audience.

Dean stands in the back, saying, ‘God! Yes!’—and clasping his hands in prayer and sweating. ‘Sal, Slim knows time, he knows time.’ Slim sits down at the piano and hits two notes, two C’s, then two more, then one, then two, and suddenly the big burly bass-player wakes up from a reverie and realizes Slim is playing ‘C-Jam Blues’ and he slugs in his big forefinger on the string and the big booming beat begins and everybody starts rocking and Slim looks just as sad as ever, and they blow jazz for half an hour, and then Slim goes mad and grabs the bongos and plays tremendous rapid Cubana beats and yells crazy things in Spanish, in Arabic, in Peruvian dialect, in Egyptian, in every language he knows, and he knows innumerable languages. Finally the set is over; each set takes two hours. Slim Gaillard goes and stands against a post, looking sadly over everybody’s head as people come to talk to him. A bourbon is slipped into his hand. ‘Bourbon-orooni—thank-you-ovauti ...’ Nobody knows where Slim Gaillard is. Dean once had a dream that he was having a baby and his belly was all bloated up blue as he lay on the grass of a California hospital. Under a tree, with a group of colored men, sat Slim Gaillard. Dean turned despairing eyes of a mother to him. Slim said, ‘There you go-orooni.’ Now Dean approached him, he approached his God; he thought Slim was God; he shuffled and bowed in front of him and asked him to join us. ‘Right-orooni,’ says Slim; he’ll join anybody but won’t guarantee to be there with you in spirit. Dean got a table, bought drinks, and sat stiffly in front of Slim. Slim dreamed over his head. Every time Slim said, ‘Orooni,’ Dean said ‘Yes!’ I sat there with these two madmen. Nothing happened. To Slim Gaillard the whole world was just one big orooni.’

 
So with that in mind here are a handful of clips. He has so many great songs, it was hard to narrow them down !
First a few live clips from his mid-40’s heyday. A young Scatman Crothers on drums:

 
More Slim after the jump…

Legendary rock journalist, performer, novelist and countercultural gadfly since the 60s, Mick Farren discusses his newest book, Speed-Speed-Speedfreak (Feral House). Elvis Presley, The Hell’s Angels, Hunter S. Thompson, Truman Capote, the Beatles, Hank Williams, the Manson Family, Jack Keroauc, Johnny Cash, JFK, Adolph Hitler: all of the above were, at one time or another, to put it bluntly, speedfreaks.
 

 
Wow !, Much thanks to DM reader Ryan who in his comment on Marc’s Beefheart post yesterday hepped me to this book: Beefheart: Through the Eyes of Magic by the Magic Band’s long suffering drummer, John “Drumbo” French. My copy is flying toward me in the mail as I type but I already know to expect tales of tyrannical cruelty (bunch of dudes living in a run down house in Woodland Hills, practicing 12 hours a day, eating only a handful of soybeans per day) and sublime inspiration. In anticipation, here’s a miraculous clip of the Lick My Decals Off,Baby era Magic Band (including Drumbo) playing a suite of tunes live on Detroit TV in 1971.
 

An interview with Dr. Barbara Oakley, Ph.D, the author of Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend, an exploration of how genetics influence psychopathy. Are some people just bad seeds? Hear what the latest science has to say about nasty people and how they got that way.
 

Gina Welch is the author of In the In the Land of Believers: An Outsider’s Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church. Raised a secular Jew by a single mother in Berkeley, Gina spent two years “undercover” in Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA trying to understand, for herself, Evangelical Christians. Her insights will surprise you.
 

Thanks to Soft Skull Press for sending me an advance paperback copy of Daniel Radosh’s “Rapture Ready: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture.” This book is righteously demented—true to the title, it’s a voyage through the bizarre world of Christian pop culture, in a time where it is essentially one more underground scene, a pocket pop universe just like juggalos or furries (though slightly bigger—as Radosh points out, this stuff totals up to a $7 billion a year industry). Radosh takes us on a voyage through the cult of Left Behind, Christian rock, and the rest of the American Christian scene. Along the way we get some serious gems like “BibleZine” (!!!), bumper stickers reading “Any Sex that can Put You in Hell ISN’T SAFE” and Jay Bakker (Jim and Tammy’s son), who runs his own punk rock church.

I mean, reading this, it’s like… this is the alternate universe version of Dangerous Minds’ readers, like we went into a wormhole and came out with goatees and freshly baptized.

There are some absolutely jaw-droppingly great snippets of “Christian” lore from the book. For instance, Radosh includes a depiction of the Rapture from one of the “Left Behind” books:

“[M]en and women soldiers and horses seemed to explode where they stood. It was as if the very words of the Lord had superheated their blood, causing it to burst through their veins and skin… Their innards and entrails gushed to the desert floor, and as those around them turned to run, they too were slain, their blood pooling and rising in the unforgiving brightness of the glory of Christ.

Gloria in excelsis Deo, motherfucker.

Awesome. Or try this one, from a Christian joke book Radosh finds:

One women’s libber started out a speech: “Where would you men be without us women?” A guy in the back shouted, “In the Garden of Eden!”

I gotta remember that one to impress the ladies with.

Anyway, excellent, hilarious, disturbing, sobering book. I imagine it would make a great read alongside Jeff Sharlet’s “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power” for a look at where the Christian right is, both in politics and in culture at large, at this moment. (Interview with author below!)

(Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture)

It gives me great pleasure to announce that Thee Psychick Bible, the complete magickal writings of Genesis P-Orridge and Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth, is now shipping. (I edited it.)

Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth, or TOPY for short, was the group responsible for popularizing body piercing and tattooing, acid house music, and magick, all aimed at personal liberation and the construction of a model of life outside of, and very opposed to, the status quo of the 1980s and beyond. They did a tremendous amount of work at shifting our culture in new and creative directions, and I am proud to be able to help showcase their work in this new, expanded edition of the book.

The group was, of course, conceived and headed by Genesis P-Orridge, the lead singer of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV; the endeavor played a crucial role in the survival and modernization of magick.

The book is hardcover, 544 pages, limited to 999 copies, and comes with a DVD of Psychic TV performances and Derek Jarman videos. (There’s also an introduction written by me.)

From the Feral House website:

Thee infamous PSYCHIC BIBLE from Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth receives an updated, expanded, corrected edition,complete with dozens of new visuals and essays. The Feral House edition is handsomely presented in smyth-sewn hardcover with a red ribbon. Thee 544 pages within are printed in two colors on high-quality 60-pound stock on acid-free 100% recycled paper stock.

This signed, numbered limited edition (999 copies only) is also presented with a remarkable DVD of impossible-to-find videos from P-Orridge archives of early Psychic TV and TOPY creations which includes the work of Peter ?

In honor of the passing of Mr. Jim Carroll, I found an interview with him that I did one month after 9/11, in Saratoga, CA, at a reading from Void of Course. In it, he discusses the effect of the WTC bombing on life and art. Originally published October 24, 2001.

Jason Louv: A lot of your work, especially your diaries, have been about NY and living in it and being a part of it as a city. Are recent events going to affect your work at all?

Jim Carroll: Yes. Yes. I mean it changes my past work, it changes everybody’s past work. But everybody’s work is always changed, with every new book that a person writes. You look at a person who maybe influenced that person in a different way you know? You know when Beckett started writing, we looked at Joyce’s books differently. But, when something like this happens, the psyche of America is changed, you better believe that it changes things. You know, I say in The Basketball Diaries, “I know now that I want to be a writer, I feel it stronger each day.” Then I say that I want to have my writing powerful enough so that one day I’ll write a book that’s 8 pages long, and everytime you turn the page a different section of the Pentagon will explode. Solid.

When I was about 14, I discovered a copy of “The Dungeon Master: The Disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III” in the local library used-book bin. Noting that it had something to do with Dungeons and Dragons (don’t act smug!), and also noting that it cost about $1, I bought it.

That book stuck with me for a long time.

Egbert, for those who are not versed in their nerd history, was the kid who disappeared in the Michigan State University steam tunnels in 1979, apparently as the result of a live-action Dungeons and Dragons session, provoking a nation-wide scare about the then-new role-playing game that would be unrivaled in sheer stupidity levels until the Satanic Panic…