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Post by dem bones on Oct 10, 2011 21:16:06 GMT
George R. R. Martin - The Armageddon Rag (NEL, 1984) Blurb A band, a legend, a generation had died that packed, apocalyptic night in 1971.
Sixty thousand had seen it happen, live on stage: the sniper's bullet that had smashed into the lead singer's head, dropped him dead. The Sixties Summer of Love had finally been killed off by a person or persons unknown and never found.
But now, ten years after, someone was pushing the remnants of the band back on the road again.
Tension-wrought and snarling, they were nerving themselves for a re-run of that last fatal tour through the hate-ridden heart of Amerika. While Jamie Lynch, who'd first found them and made them and grown fat on their success, lay spreadeagled back East, ritually cut down and murdered.
Only Sandy Blair, well worn down into journalistic respectability, caught the crazed jingle-jangle echoes of some risen-again Manson Messiah. Only Sandy, tormented by electric night-time visions of flame-lit horror, knew that the bright, ungrieving Angel of Death waited out on the highway hitching a ride to Armageddon.The NEL's have been thin on the ground in this neck of the woods this past year and that sure ain't likely to improve now interzone@TYPE is R.I.P, but here's one. Not that such a thing counts for much, but i've heard only good of The Armageddon Rag, the story of hippy drugs era psychedelic band, Nazgûl (seriously off-putting name: i'm already thinking twenty minute bass solo's) and a burned out hippy journalist wondering whatever happened to peace, love and anti-materialism. George R. R. Martin is also responsible for the acclaimed Fevre Dream, an innocent casualty of my "i'm never gonna read another damn v*mp*re novel as long as i live!" policy, implemented after a traumatic experience with [best not go there], so i reckon he's due a break. Anyone read either of 'em?
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Post by Dr Strange on Oct 11, 2011 8:21:27 GMT
I've read Fevre Dream, though it was many years ago (probably not very long after it came out). As I remember it, I enjoyed it a lot. Martin did what a lot of writers have tried to do in re-inventing the "vampire" legend and trying to give a sort of quasi-scientific explanation for why they are the way they are (all started by I Am Legend, I guess), but I think this is one of the more convincing attempts. Definitely worth a read I'd say.
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Post by andydecker on Oct 11, 2011 9:12:57 GMT
Only read Fevre Dreams years ago and remember liking it. But the particulars are vague; has this really one of those vampires are just a mutation explanation? Ugh. Must have forgotten it.
Never bought Armageddon Rag though, because it didn´t interest me much at the time. I find books about band deathly dull, and neither Schow´s The Kill Riff nor Rickmans December convinced me otherwise. Or McCammons new one The Five, which was oh so blah.
Maybe I should re-read Fevre Dreams. I really like the setting, a boat on a river, since I translated one of the early Ravenloft novels years ago, Dance of the Dead.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 11, 2011 12:33:19 GMT
thanks for filling me in, gents. I find books about band deathly dull, and neither Schow´s The Kill Riff nor Rickmans December convinced me otherwise. Or McCammons new one The Five, which was oh so blah. i've a soft spot for imaginary bands myself, so some of the horror-rock crossovers have been the top of the pops with me. Ghoul finds 'Michael Slade' at the height of his brilliance, Skipp & Spectors The Scream is bloody tidy and Phil Caverley's Bad To The Bone is a very readable variation on Agatha Christie. i've had no joy getting hold of GNS's Dead Beat, but i'll bet it's great. Have you noticed how so few imaginary groups come across as the type you'd actually want to listen to? Heavy Metal seems to predominate but it's HM with a malodorous stench of Soft Rock ballads and AOR about it, even when said bands are supposed to be the last word in "dangerous". i'd certainly give Ghoul a listen, likewise shock rockers The Ghouls in Sydney J. Bounds' endearing Young Blood, and, at a push, Devastator in Vampirella #3: Deadwalk if i didn't have any Kylie handy but i'm struggling to think of any more. |
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Post by Dr Strange on Oct 11, 2011 15:22:42 GMT
has this really one of those vampires are just a mutation explanation? Something like that... I seem to remember an interesting idea about how vampire "biology" evolved to be based on "reproducing" through infection rather than by having babies (which they can do... but it's not very nice for the mother). |
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