“Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”

SHADOWS OVER BAKER STREET edited by Michael Reeves and John Pelan. Culturally speaking, we live in an age of niches. I, for one, trade in a number of specialized, even obscure markets. The editors of the present volume have thoughtfully combined at least two of them under one cover.

Featuring 18 original stories penned by horror and fantasy stars like Neil Gaiman, Poppy Z. Brite, and Tim Lebbon, Shadows Over Baker Street pits the great detective Sherlock Holmes and his trusty cohort Dr. Watson against the elder gods, subterranean terrors, and assorted unmentionables that fill the weird tales of H.P. Lovecraft. Several contributions are well written, smart, and entertaining -- an above average showing for this sort of collection. Neil Gaiman's “A Study in Emerald” is really superb, far and away the best of the lot, though to describe its wit and charm would be to give the whole enterprise away (google the title and read it yourself).

Why the enduring interest in either or both of these authors? That question deserves greater attention than I can presently devote. To hazard the quick guess: in Lovecraft's case, there is the pervasive fear of the unknown, the idea that science and exploration will only confirm the utter malevolence of the universe. Call it a faith in evil. In the case of Sherlock Holmes (if not of Arthur Conan Doyle, who embraced the quackeries of spiritualism towards the end, particularly after losing his son to the Great War), rational thought and sound methodology could pierce any mystery. Each side obviously has its partisans.

Unfortunately, this book tends to ignore the chance to clash the two worldviews. Throughout most of the stories, for instance, Holmes accepts the supernatural with remarkable ease, even suggesting in a few cases that he was already aware of the eldritch evils lurking among us. (On a side note, one wonders how Lovecraft might have handled The Hound of the Baskervilles, which is already a triumph of Gothic horror. Might the baying of the hound actually signal the awakening of a creature of far more sinister portent, covered, presumably, in tentacles? Perhaps the library at Baskerville Hall contains a rancid copy of the dreaded Necronomicon itself?)

But what the hell, just the name Shadows Over Baker Street ought to warm a few cold hearts. I await the sequel.

The Art of Rebellion

SUICIDAL TENDENCIES: SUICIDAL TENDENCIES (Frontier Records). There is a stunning photograph of the punk band Black Flag in Glen Friedman's remarkable collection, Fuck You Heroes: Glen E. Friedman Photographs, 1976 - 1991, that shows singer Henry Rollins straining in the midst of a scream, microphone literally stuffed inside his mouth, while his band rages behind him. Friedman, who produced Suicidal Tendencies' (ST) self-titled 1983 debut, snapped that shot in ST singer Mike Muir's garage. Think about that. Black Flag and Suicidal Tendencies playing together in Mike Muir's garage (the photos of homemade Suicidal shirts on the album’s back cover also come from that date). Every history buff likes to imagine traveling back in time to a favorite era or event. I think I'd attend that show.

Suicidal Tendencies released a series of remarkable records throughout the 1980s and 1990s and are still recording and touring today. The line-up has changed quite a bit over the years, but Muir has always been on the mic. For most fans he basically defines the band. I met him once, briefly and somewhat tragically, after ST opened for the atrocious Insane Clown Posse in Manhattan's Hammerstein Ballroom. He seemed pretty pissed off about being there and I can't say I blame him for it. Still, they played one hell of a good set.

ST's debut ranks among the key albums of early American hardcore. In fact, it was hugely influential on the evolution from hardcore punk to hardcore metal (also called crossover) that NYC bands like The Cro-Mags and Agnostic Front, as well as Texas thrashers DRI, later perfected. Throughout the record, Suicidal stick to fast, technically sharp hardcore with a subtle metal edge. The track “Institutionalized,” which I first heard on an episode of the TV show 21 Jump Street (featuring teen dream Johnny Depp in some sort of “punk” role), became a minor hit and spawned a successful video on MTV. The lyrics—a brilliant and sustained rant against arbitrary and petty adult authority—are worth quoting in full, but I'll just stick with this emblem of teen spirit: “What are you trying to say, I'm crazy? When I went to your schools, your churches, your institutional learning facilities?” I still remember my shock and delight when I brought home Cypress Hill's self-titled debut in 1991 and heard Sen Dog, at the end of “How I Could Just Kill A Man” quote one of “Institutionalized’s” key lyrics: “All I wanted was a Pepsi.”

Mike Muir is obviously a thoughtful and highly intelligent man; no one that reads his lyrics could fail to reach this conclusion. And yet his and his band's reputation is largely one of thuggish brutality. The violence associated with the band and their Southern California following in the early 1980s, as well as their reputed gang ties, certainly didn't help with the image. Still, careful observers had plenty of reasons to question conventional wisdom.

In the October 1984 issue of Maximum Rock & Roll, the legendary punk fanzine still published in San Francisco, Muir addressed his band’s image in a letter that MRR editor Tim Yohannon introduced as an “eloquent rebuttal.” Referring to their so-called gangster fashion (picture East L.A. homeboy: bandanas, shirts buttoned at the top of the neck but unbuttoned towards the waist, khaki pants, etc.), Muir wrote:

“The fact that we choose to dress this way has actually ‘caused problems’ at some punk shows from ‘conservative’ punks who feel uncomfortable when people who don’t look like them are around. This type of prejudice…is ridiculous, especially in the punk scene where people are supposed to be a little more open-minded than the average person on the street.”

Of course, ST didn’t just dress a little differently, the band’s casual multiculturalism (they had white, black, and Mexican members) was and still is unique among America’s lily white punks, despite the scene’s smug claims of individuality. “Our shows run far smoother than the other large punk shows in LA,” Muir concluded. “What’s even more remarkable is that these shows run so smoothly when we have such a diverse following, i.e. minorities, new wavers, punks, headbangers.” Think about it like this: Suicidal Tendencies capture the ideal of hardcore: independent, multi-racial, iconoclastic, and take-no-shit.

Dimebag Darrell, RIP

I spent a handful of really enjoyable hours slam dancing at Pantera concerts during the early and mid-90s. One particularly good bill paired Pantera with the Brooklyn hardcore-metal act Biohazard. Fists and feet were certainly flying that night. In fact, a couple of my favorite memories from that time took place at or around those shows. If you talk with just about anybody that caught Pantera live, you're likely to hear about how good they always sounded -- how technically brilliant the musicians obviously were (particularly in light of the fact that they were usually drunk). Guitarist Dimebag Darrell Abbott and his drummer (and brother) Vinnie Paul consistently executed blistering, CD-perfect blasts of thrash and grindcore, with the occasional foray into classic metal gallops and acoustic arrangements. At some later point I’ll probably write about the time I sang back-up vocals for the band during an Ozzfest date, but for now I'll just say that watching them play at close range was very impressive. Those fuckers could shred.

Everything about the band was great -- from the bruising rhythm section to Phil Anselmo's shredded throat vocals -- but for me, Dime was always the star. I'd probably argue that Far Beyond Driven is the best record, though I'm not going to fight anybody that prefers The Great Southern Trendkill. As for the songs, “Suicide Note Pt. II” has one of the heaviest guitar lines to ever inspire “moshing activities” (as the disclaimers usually put it), while “This Love,” “5 Minutes Alone,” “Walk,” and “Fuckin' Hostile” also contain some serious riffs. Needless to say, Dime practically defined Pantera’s killer sound. Two nights ago, performing onstage with his new band in Columbus, Ohio, an obsessed and deranged piece of shit shot and killed Dimebag Darrell and several others, including at least one audience member, before being shot and killed himself by a police officer. RIP, Darrell, you’ll be sadly missed.

Stalin the Terrible

KOBA THE DREAD: LAUGHTER AND THE TWENTY MILLION by Martin Amis. Confronted with the rare case of a defendant who simply refused to break under “questioning,” an enraged Josef Stalin asked the interrogator-torturers, “How much does the Soviet Union weigh?” The answer to that chilling question gets at the very heart of this book and goes some ways towards explaining how twenty million died. The subtitle's second point, laughter, refers to novelist and critic Martin Amis' argument that while one could always joke about the Soviet Union, laughter about the horrors of Nazi Germany has never been permitted.

Now, this is not actually true (the premise of Hogan's Heroes comes to mind, as does the episode of Seinfeld when Jerry makes out with his date during Schindler's List), but I still think there is a valid point to be made. The Bolsheviks have had their dupes and apologists for the better part of a century, including some of the brightest minds in Europe and the U.S. The enormity of the atrocities committed -- even welcomed -- by Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin (terror-famine, the peasantry’s virtual return to serfdom, the suppression of Kronstadt, the purges, the show trials, etc.) still goes unacknowledged in some “progressive” circles. Yes, the Bolsheviks killed millions and built a totalitarian police state, I have actually heard someone argue, but they were at least trying to build a better world.

I have also heard that cheap and callous excuse regarding omelets and broken eggs offered in more than one college classroom. And then there is the merchandise. Not counting Che's pretty face, you can shop for a dazzling array of hammer & sickle t-shirts at your local retail outlets. (How about “Got famine?” for the ad campaign?) In 1968, when Robert Conquest published his seminal book on Stalin's purges, The Great Terror, many on the left denounced his findings as the suspect conclusions of a Cold Warrior. Well, Conquest was right and his critics were wrong. When the book's publisher asked for a new subtitle to accompany the revised 1991 edition, Amis reports that Conquest replied, “how about, I Told You So, You Fucking Fools.”

Part memoir, part biography, part polemic, and part essay on the depth of man's inhumanity to man, Koba the Dread is an interesting and disturbing book. It is also the most controversial and poorly received work of Amis' career. No, he does not break any new historical ground and yes, he does rely heavily on both Conquest and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's devastating Gulag Archipelago. Still, I wonder just what percentage of Amis' large readership has even skimmed those authors or could sketch the importance of Sergei Kirov's murder? I’d wager that quite a few could explain, however, the significance of the Reichstag fire or the Night of the Long Knives. That is not an insignificant point.

As for the personal being political, Amis is certainly at his best when he's most outraged or disgusted. Thus he is particularly striking on the ghastly specifics of torture chamber, gulag, and firing squad, as well as the innocence of most men, women, and children inhabiting them. “When it was their turn to be purged,” Amis writes, “former interrogators (and all other Chekists) immediately called with a flourish for the pen and the dotted line.” In other words, they knew their part in the charade. Equally compelling are Amis' reflections on his celebrated father, Kingsley, who went from Communist Party member to red baiting Cold Warrior; his father's and his own friendship with Conquest and other anti-Communists during the Vietnam War; and his enduring political rows with “best friend” Christopher Hitchens. Again, the critics are correct, you ought to read the original material that is so liberally quoted. But Amis' haunting, literary treatment of one of this ravaged century's most despicable figures and the foul movement that spawned him deserves your attention as well.