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Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Mar 14, 2009 20:55:09 GMT
"Horror Cafe" wasn't it? And they attempted to write a horror story to tie-in with the millennium, taking Jekyll and Hyde as the start point. People cutting their own faces off to reveal their inner monster? And it was all tedious, boring rubbish.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 14, 2009 22:05:24 GMT
.... they attempted to write a horror story to tie-in with the millennium, taking Jekyll and Hyde as the start point. People cutting their own faces off to reveal their inner monster? And it was all tedious, boring rubbish. Horror Cafe! That's the one. I think my self-defence mechanism kicked in at some point as i've successfully developed a mental block over the exact details of the story, but, dear God, your reference to Jekyll & Hyde sounds horribly familiar ..... This is, of course, no exaggeration! Lemme see, how do i go about making that bit an announcement across the board .....? Caroline, i so wish you had got the inside story from him!
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Post by benedictjjones on Mar 15, 2009 1:04:11 GMT
noooooooooo! the 'books of blood' were one the things that really got me into writing horror and to this day i think they're brilliant. 'the damnation game' is, for me, barkers best novel and one of the few full length horror novels that has ever 'satisfied' me - but yes from reading douglas e winters biography of barker i'm convinced he is very up himself - however there's nothing wrong with smoking cigars...
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Post by mattofthespurs on Mar 15, 2009 7:37:03 GMT
I think I still have "Horror Cafe" somewhere either burned onto a DVD or still on the original tape.
I remember so looking forward to it and being very, very disappointed.
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Post by carolinec on Mar 15, 2009 10:26:26 GMT
Caroline, i so wish you had got the inside story from him! If only I'd known you 'orrible lot at that time (that was before I'd discovered the Vault), I might well have done!
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albie
Devils Coach Horse
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Post by albie on Mar 16, 2009 11:04:00 GMT
Scared Stiff has its moments. Not many. But Loveman's Comeback is a grim story indeed. I haven't been that urged to read many more in that anthology, but I might one day.
I recall HORROR CAFE. Ramsey got a laugh when in the round robin he said "Meanwhile..." altering the run of the story.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 21, 2011 16:38:26 GMT
hi Ramsey, apologies to pitch in with such a stupid question, but just on the off-chance that you see this - one of the Scared Stiff stories that fascinates me is The Other Woman; Phil is haunted by the girl with odd eyes (one blue, one brown) he painted from imagination for the cover of a lurid pulp novel entitled Throttle. it's a big favourite of mine but the "fascinating" part is, i am almost sure i've seen a vintage paperback cover featuring an odd-eyed strangulation victim, possibly on a Hodder & Staughton yellowback? or is my mind playing tricks. No, it's me playing tricks with your mind... Seriously, I don't recall the cover, but perhaps my subconscious did. I had the awful realisation recently when I reread A Gun for Sale that in The Count of Eleven I'd echoed (= pinched from) Greene without realising. Found this scan on the mighty Galactic Central. not sure if this is the cover that's haunted me for years and the unfortunate victim doesn't have different coloured eyes but it certainly puts me in mind of the artwork The Other Woman's poor doomed Phil might have provided for Throttle!
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stavner
Crab On The Rampage
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Post by stavner on Aug 21, 2011 21:37:10 GMT
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Post by markus1986 on Aug 21, 2011 22:56:00 GMT
I think I still have "Horror Cafe" somewhere either burned onto a DVD or still on the original tape. I remember so looking forward to it and being very, very disappointed. Same here - I thought it was extremely disappointing. Might ruffle a few feathers here but I've never been a fan of Splatterpunk. I've met Clive Barker several times and he is a great guy - it is just that I don't particularly like that type of dark fantasy. I recall after a lengthy discussion on the Horror Cafe programme John Carpenter saying that he didn't find what they were discussing frightening and that they should perhaps make a film of maybe one of Ramsey's books (was it something about a well and a monster down there? The Hungry Moon??) Anyway, I thought the programme was pretentious nonsense.
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Post by dem bones on May 22, 2016 19:04:10 GMT
"Nobody rebels like a good Catholic boy ..." One of my all-time favourite fetishes. Strange as it seems to me, had never seen a copy of the paperback edition (Futura, 1991) in the flesh ... until this morning, when a copy propositioned me from a market stall on Sclater Street. Contents same as MacDonald hard-cover as described in initial post.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2016 21:08:45 GMT
"Nobody rebels like a good Catholic boy ..." One of my all-time favourite fetishes. Strange as it seems to me, had never seen a copy of the paperback edition (Futura, 1991) in the flesh ... until this morning, when a copy propositioned me from a market stall on Sclater Street. Contents same as MacDonald hard-cover as described in initial post. One of my all time favourite collections. I picked up a copy of this very edition from a market stall in Blackpool sometime, I presume, in the early 90s, alongside the Futura edition of INCARNATE. A very educational and inspiring pair of novels for my young self.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2016 21:12:03 GMT
Later I thought it was a case of overhyping, a typical writer´s writer. A bit off topic, but I never really got on that great with Clive Barker's stuff. It's hardly his fault, but i'd been so browbeaten into expecting to be impressed like never before with The Books Of Blood that they couldn't possibly live up to the hype. Nothing could. To top it all, I caught him on TV in the early 'nineties, "a round table discussion with Barker hosting Ramsey Campbell, John Carpenter, Roger Corman, Lisa Tuttle and Peter Atkins" on BBC's The Late Show. There's Clive, big fat cigar in mouth, presiding over some kind of lavish banquet, spouting off about horror, life, the universe, everything with these people i'd previously admired for their work, and all i could think was "you snobbish, self-important, pretentious, totally up yourselves wankers!" Only Campbell emerged with any credit, wisely neglecting to join in unless he had to and concentrating for the most part on doing justice to the food and drink. The ultimate horror was when Mr. Barker led them in an impromptu round robin story. Close to twenty years later, i still can't bring myself to open The Damnation Game. I so hope they repeat it one day. I only just saw that roundtable recently, and described it to my wife as 'horror's prog rock moment'. My favourite bit is when Barker bangs on a great length about the social and progressive possibilities of the story idea he's come up with and John Carpenter interjects: 'One thing -- I'm not scared yet.'
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Post by pulphack on May 23, 2016 4:29:42 GMT
As someone who likes prog rock I take exception to that! Although it does sound a bit like Rick Wakeman's King Arthur on ice moment... The aforesaid keyboard king once said something like 'people have said prog is pretentious, overblown, self-indulgent... good, innit?' And he has a point - to advance something, you have to take the risk of looking absurd but be prepared to take it on the chin if it fall flat. Most experiments end in failure, it's just that you forget them when you reach the ones that work.
In this instance, I blame the kind of TV thinking that's the equivalent of a manager or label putting together a 'supergroup' with a 'concept' regardless of whether or not the bits fit together, and is what gives this kind of experiment a bad name. Writers - like musicians - should work together because they have an affinity for the work, rather than be put in a room and expected to work miracles with nothing in the locker. The idea of prog was the word 'progressive' - moving forward, which got lost. Most writers try to do this anyway, as do most musicians, regardless of what genre they work in. You want to stretch yourself and get better at what you do, surely? Might not always work, but the intent is usually there.
To stretch this analogy further, I always think of Clive Barker as like Marillion - a late-comer to the party who was all flash and little substance, whereas Ramsey is like Henry Cow - quietly beavering away on barrier stretching work with little mass recognition.
It was NEVER going to be a good show, and Mr Campbell concentrating on the meal at the BBC's expense*. The Late Show tended to be arse as a rule anyway.
(Edit hours later - * was the wisest move...)
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Post by dem bones on May 24, 2016 10:20:46 GMT
Prog Rock is a broad church and no mistake. Due to some unfortunate encounters with up themselves types in my early teens ("Maybe one day you'll listen to some real music" etc.), I can't help but think of it in - very narrow - terms of Yes, ELP, Pink Floyd at their directionless, post-Syd worst, Genesis, J. Tull circa Thick As A Brick/ A Passion Play, the unmentionable ones, and - bah! fair cop - the mighty VDGG, but have seen the term attached to such dem idols as SAHB, Kevin Coyne (!!), P.I.L. and Wire (!!!!). I reckon Ramsey's classic short, Potential, in Demons By Daylight would appeal to you, Mr. Hack.
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Post by pulphack on May 24, 2016 15:41:08 GMT
That looks quite good - I shall hunt down a copy, just for that story alone!
But to derail poor Mr Campbell's thread a little more and not talk about books... thing is, there is a difference between prog and progressive rock. The latter was originally a term applied to anything post psychedelia that tried to do something other than beat and blues. I used to buy loads of label samplers from this period second hand as they were dirt cheap thirty years back, and under the umbrella of progressive you had the acoustic ragas of the Third Ear Band, folk pop and folk rock, electric Brit jazz like Nucleus, free jazz like Tony Oxley, Black Sabbath, the God-knows-you'd-call it of Mick Farren, and then the likes of Yes and ELP... now whereas the other bands and styles all had definitive roots and sounds to label them in the press (Heavy Metal, folk-rock, jazz-rock, etc) the likes of the last two ended up as last men standing to be called progressive, and so muso-wank 'I know classical scales, me'* stuff became Progressive for want of a better term, and later Prog for short. Journalists are lazy bastards. I know, I was one. And now this is the depressingly narrow style that now gets it's own magazine, for God's sakes.
But yes, Kev Coyne at his free-form Marjory Razorblade best, SAHB taking musical theatre and applying it to hard edged r'n'b, and Wire relearning and re-writing rock tropes - that's what I call progressive rock; and the bands from an earlier era who tried to do something a bit different are why I love it, unhip as I've ever been. When I was at school, no-one could grasp why I could like The Fall and Van Der Graaf^ - to me it's obvious, it's because they don't sound like anyone except themselves, and that's priceless.
Rant over, carry on... Sorry, Mr Campbell.
(* and this coming from someone who actually has four Rick Wakeman albums and likes them, mark you) (^ Mike Barnes the drummer and journalist once wrote that 'Van Der Graaf Generator were of prog, but only in the same way that Captain Beefheart was of psychedelia', which sums it up)
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