Desert Island Short Stories

In 1942 the BBC programmed a radio show called "Desert Island Discs" where celebrities would come on and talk about what eight records they would take with them if they were stranded on a desert island. Since then there have been millions of variations on that concept, and I'm going to borrow it myself to list ten of my desert island short stories.

Short stories probably have more of a chance to reach a larger audience than ever before due to the rapidly decreasing attention span in most people these days. You could probably get more people to read a short work of fiction than a full-length novel, which isn't necessarily a bad thing considering how many great short works there are waiting to be read and enjoyed.

It's also interesting how many writers are better served by the short fiction medium than they are by full-length novels, writers like Paul Bowles, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Cheever, John O'Hara, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and many more. I think brevity in storytelling wins the game every time.

Anyway, for all intents and purposes here are my ten favorite short stories I could read again and again if I were stranded on a desert island - kind of like Burgess Meredith in that Twilight Zone episode where he's alone in the library with millions of his beloved books after the planet's been blown up and everybody else is dead - in no particular order:

1. A Distant Episode - Paul Bowles: An American professor of linguistics arrives in an Arabic Maghreb town conducting a survey. Everyone is gruff towards him, but nevertheless he maintains a friendly demeanor. An irritable guide leads him to an increasingly darker part of the desert to buy local goods, where he is abandoned by the guide and abducted by a gang of thieves. The thieves tear out the linguist's tongue and tie a stream of tin cans around him like a common dog, making him perform tricks like an animal. Although he has been degraded to being treated like a common animal, even an animal eventually turns on its master.

One of the best things about this story is the way Bowles shifts the topography of the desert sets the mood of the story, ranging from bright and hilly to dark and flat. This is one of those short stories that stays with you forever.

2. Torch Song - John Cheever: Torch Song is told from the POV of a man named Jack who has a crush on a woman named Joan. Both newly relocated to New York City, Joan keeps spurning Jack as he watches her date creep after creep, Jack's love always unrequited by her. As she keeps turning him down he watches her descend lower and lower in her taste in men.

Well! This is as believable as it gets. I can't even count how many fucking losers I've known like Joan, sinking lower and lower into the toilet with their bad romantic choices. By the end of the story we finally get an idea why she picks the damaged men that she loves, and it's pretty creepy. I also loved The Chaste Clarissa, O Youth And Beauty!, and The Swimmer. John Cheever may be the greatest short fiction writer I've ever read.

3. Billenium- J.G. Ballard: The most claustrophobic story ever written, one where staircases are crowded with dozens of people living and sleeping in. Tides of people moving in waves against the direction the main character's headed in, a simple task of going somewhere takes hours! People sitting on top of each other like nests of roaches, it's one of the most powerful statements on overpopulation ever written.

4. Exactly Eight Thousand Dollars Exactly - John O'Hara: A wealthy industrialist gets a visit from his brother, a snotty, deprecating snob who's only dropping by to put the pinch on his brother. As the story progresses we discover that the corporate building was once a country club both brothers frequented in their youth. We also learn that the prosperous CEO was bullied mercilessly by his less industrious brother. The industrialist writes a check to get his brother out of his hair, the snobby brother maintaining an ugly, unrepentant attitude.

Although John O'Hara wrote many great short stories, this is my favorite. It's one of those stories that reveals more and more as you continue reading, not letting you really know the score until you reach the end. There's a rawness in the emotions and an ugly truth so many writers fear to tread.

5. Big Blonde - Dorothy Parker: Big Blonde is the classic tale of a woman who measures her self-esteem according to her ability to make men happy. Written in the Roaring Twenties, it is as relevant today as it was when it was first written. Big Blonde is the story of Hazel Morse, better known as Haze (dig the irony) who's the ultimate party girl, and like all party girls dumped by one man after another as the years go by.

It has often been said that both Dorothy Parker and Patricia Highsmith wrote misogynistic stories, but I don't think the men fare any better than the women in them. I believe both writers don't harbor any hatred for women, but more likely don't think much of women who use men left and right like Hazel Morse.

6. The Ice Palace - F. Scott Fitzgerald: Ice Palace begins with the main character Sally Carrol looking out her window in her home in hot and torrid South. Engaged to be married to New Yorker Harry Bellamy, she travels up to New York with him to visit his family and friends.

The trip turns into a revelation of sorts for Sally when Harry drops his guard and shows his snobby, insensitive side to her, cursing all Southerners among other things. On a cold and wintry night the pair go to a large auditorium carved out of ice to watch a hellish pep rally. Sally's snooty fiancee disappears during the rally into a dark, narrow channel of ice with Sally following him, eventually becoming lost in the cold, narrow darkness.

Ice Palace may very well be Fitzgerald's Fuck You to New York and literary society, depicting small town Southerners as a soulful bunch and meat head Yankees as a load of loud, boisterous Pagans. Maybe, maybe not. Nevertheless, Ice Palace is a brilliant work.

7. The Hyannis Port Story - Kurt Vonnegut: Published shortly before the Kennedy Assassination, Hyannis Port Story is a very funny story about old Commodore William Rumfoord, a staunch Goldwater Republican who's unlucky enough to be the neighbor to President John F. Kennedy's off-duty hideaway. The Commodore's already pissed off to death that his small hometown has turned into a shrine to the President complete with gift shops, noisy tour guides and even noisier tourists.

Yes, The Commodore is so pissed that tour guides refer to his house as "The Ugly One Next To The President's" that out of spite he posts a huge billboard of Goldwater's face with spotlights all around it. The last straw comes when The Commodore finds out from a Secret Service agent that his pride and joy son has been sneaking around with a Kennedy relative.

I liked this Vonnegut story over his others because he didn't seem to try as hard as he did with others. I felt a very effortless humor in this one that I found very appealing. I also liked Next Door and The Foster Portfolio, too, and Vonnegut's sense of humor never fails.

8. Memory In White - Budd Schulberg: Washed-up boxer Young Pancho Villa The Third makes a go at being a ring announcer by buying a white suit and a megaphone in a pawn shop. He shows up at the gym he used to box at and announce all the fighters sparring in the ring. Trouble is he has a thick Puerto Rican accent as well as a sever speech impediment. Through the miracle of annoying persistence he graduates from gym announcer to all-time ring announcer. His debut as a legit ring announcer is of course met with tragedy.

Schulberg was a genius at capturing the sounds and mood of the New York streets, never romanticizing them but breathing them to life, warts and all. Although he will always be known as the writer of On The Waterfront and A Face In The Crowd his short works definitely deserve to be rediscovered.

9. Confessions Of A Man Insane Enough To Live With Beasts - Charles Bukowski: Probably the most compressed version of the Bukowski legend that many remember from the Barfly and Factotum movies. There's the story of his awful skin problems, even more awful jobs held at rock-bottom wages, and the girl he meets in a bar who brings him home to the nutty old yacht-boating sugar daddy. Everything you ever wanted to read about Bukowski is distilled in this 21-page story.

10. The Monster - Stephen Crane: This is actually a novella rather than a short story, but I added it here, anyway. Henry Johnson is the black coachman for a well-to-do white family in upstate New York. He forms a strong bond with the boss' four year old son, Jimmie Trescott, which supercedes any racial barriers. When Henry isn't working for the white family he courts the prettiest black girl in town and dresses like an absolute dandy.

While on his date the town goes into an uproar over a fire at the Trescott's house and Henry runs over to save Jimmie by racing into the burning house to save him. Consequently he is severely burned beyond recognition from the fire and has lost what was left of his sanity. Out of guilt Dr. Trescott keeps him at home, away from prying eyes. The whole town, white and black alike have now ostracized Henry Johnson for his disability in spite of the fact that he committed a completely charitable act.

The Monster is a brilliant mediation on racism, societal intolerance and personal guilt. It's arguably Stephen Crane's finest work, a writer more people should seek out. The Blue Hotel and The Open Boat are pretty brilliant, too.

Unfortunately I've left out many great short fiction writers like Graham Greene, Joe R. Lansdale, Harlan Ellison, Elmore Leonard, Bernard Malamud and Raymond Chandler, to name a few, but that's the beauty of libraries and books. There are a million stories to be told and it's all in your grasp, anytime, anywhere. Even on a desert island.

Let's Talk About Guns

Well, I had to do it. I really did. Anyone who's going to write a novel which employs firearms needs to handle them so they can get a general idea of what they're talking about. Writing a crime novel without ever actually handling a gun is a lot like writing about the Tour De France without ever having ridden a bike. In order to get my savvy together I went to the Los Angeles Gun Club in downtown Los Angeles, an excellent indoor shooting range where you can either rent a gun and buy bullets or BYOG (Bring Your Own Gun).

I went with my friend Alex (aka Axis) not only because he was into it but also because the Gun Club has a mandatory buddy system. There are no lone wolves allowed to shoot - you must bring a friend in order to use the facilities.

Showcases of guns are by the front desk and you're presented with a very large choice of pistols (there may have been rifles, too) to choose from. Axis chose a 9mm. Glock and I chose the Sig Sauer 1911-45, the 1911 because it looked powerful and intimidating.

I saw the legendary .357 Magnum made popular in the Dirty Harry film series and couldn't see myself firing a gun with a barrel that large. I learned later on that the Magnum was originally designed as a hunting pistol meant to shoot deer and other wood creatures and not psychopathic killers in San Francisco.

After a quick safety lesson on how to fire a gun and a brief tutorial on how to load bullets into the magazine we were off and running to the firing range. The Gun Club also had a wild selection of targets to choose from, varying from the standard round bullseye target to a drawing of a zombie girl in a string bikini whose skull and arms were decayed but still managed to have a prodigious set of breasts and legs.

We were given headphones because the combined gunfire blasting from a dozen firing booths is positively deafening! I went first and have to confess that the experience was fairly intimidating at first. My gun felt heavy in my hands and just squeezing the trigger felt like I was shaking hands with Death. And it was!

The Sig Sauer 1911-45 is a powerful piece of work. The gunshots were deafening and with every shot a burst of flame leaped out of the barrel of my gun, followed by the bullet shell flying out of the breech like crazy right by my face. An attendant walked by every five minutes with a garden rake pushing all the spent bullet shells off the floor. Too many bullet shells on the floor would have sent everyone slipping and sliding all over the place.

While I was firing the gun it dawned on me at how frightening and powerful a gun can be and how ridiculously flippant it gets treated on TV shows and the movies. When you see guns tossed around as if they were toys and fired with one hand oh so casually it defies credibility. Once a pistol is held in your hand you realize it takes both your hands to fire it properly.

Axis let me try out his 9mm. Glock and it was a much lighter pistol that was easier to load and fire. The action was a lot smoother than the Sig Sauer but the sheer terror that the SS struck me and the other shooters - people were staring at me with the fear of God, no small feat at a firing range - was enough to sell me on using it again when I return to the firing range.

Like a lot of ignoramuses I expected to see a lot of fatsos in Army fatigues busting caps to their heart's delight but that wasn't the case. I saw a lot of young couples, mostly Asian, making it their Sunday afternoon dating rendezvous having fun shooting zombie targets and laughing. I don't think anyone there fantasized about shooting the President. Sorry.

I'm glad I spent some quality time with a gun, a good, scary one - I honestly believe it helped me with the novel I just completed (out soon!). Any asshole can write about guns as if they're just an average tool like a monkey wrench but they're nothing of the sort. When a gun's fired it seriously demands the drama it's inspired through the years in books and film. Like shaking hands with Death.

The Pickpocket In The Slam Pit

11:45 PM. Skipjack's. Long Beach, California. Skipjack's was a hardcore punk club in the South Bay area. The club was an old wrestling-cum-roller derby auditorium framed in stucco and neon lights with a lot of rotting wood inside. The auditorium itself seemed to be slowly decaying from the salty sea air that wafted northward from the harbor a few miles away.

Punks from all over the hoods of Wilmington, Lomita, and Pedro all converged every Friday and Saturday nights at Skipjack's. Stew Rat Nickson was no exception, a miserable specimen of lowlife punk rock, a skeletal, gangly youth with clammy white skin housing a relentless network of freckles and pimples. He had so many freckles and pimples nobody knew where one began and the other one ended.

His head of short hair was dyed a sickly orange with bald patches that had other colors dyed in there, and dyed so badly that some of the dye stained his neck and ears. Mr. Stew Rat simply didn't care.

Tonight was the night of Stew Rat's big score. It was simple: his tartan bondage pants had a long zipper running down the length of his right leg with a cargo pocket running from upper thigh to his ankle for hiding things...like wallets.

The plan was to get into the slam pit and find himself the better, aka well-fed, suburban punks and pull their wallets and cram it down his secret pocket. The club was so booked with moshers he would easily score, and no one would be the wiser. The quickest smash and grab ever.

Crank Call were on stage and tearing it up, playing a mile a minute and roaring as ferociously as a jet plane taking off. The lead singer, a beefy sunburned monster in a crewcut stepped up to the mike and bellowed, "HOW MANY OF YOU DICKS CAME HERE TONIGHT TO FUCK SHIT UP? YEAH!"

The audience roared and Stew Rat pushed and jostled his way through the crowd, knocking over a few beers in the process.

"THIS FUCKIN' TUNE'S CALLED 'BOMBS AWAY'. 1-2-3-4!!!!"
Crank Call pounded into the song, drums beating machine like rhythms like runaway oil pumps and guitars stuttering like the screaming factory noises straight outta Long Beach.

Stew Rat shoved his way further towards the pit, bodies parting further and further away from the chaotic dance of destruction, a sausage fest of tribal brutality. Young men careening and bashing into each other like wayward steel balls hitting bumpers and flippers in some god-forsaken pinball machine.

Stew Rat grinned with his decaying orange teeth glowing in the darkness. An occasional mosher would bump into him, some smiling and saying, "SORRY, DUDE!".
Stew Rat didn't care, they were fair game to him.

He pulled the zipper halfway down the long cargo pocket, readying himself for the big steal. He was about to hit his first victim when the song ended abruptly as all hardcore songs go.

"FUCK YOU, DUDE! THIS ONE'S CALLED 'PIT BULL NUMBSKULL'! 1-2-3-4!!!!"
Crank Call's bassist played a rumbling groove, shaking the walls like a 10.5 earthquake on the Richter scale. The guitar flew right in like a Space Shuttle gone berserk.
"PIT BULL...NUMBSKULL! PIT BULL...NUMBSKULL! YOUR BRAIN'S HALF EMPTY, YOUR BRAIN'S HALF FULL! PIT BULL...NUMBSKULL!"

Stew Rat licked his lips and chortled.
"Come to Poppa, fucker!" He angled his way in to a clutch of young punkers all collapsing in a heap. He half-humped the cleanest looking one from behind and quickly slipped his fingers into his back pocket and slipped the fancy crocodile skin wallet down the cargo pocket.
"Score!"

He moved over to another clutch of guys ready to collapse in a heap and dog piled underneath, pulling one wallet, then another out of the range of anyone's vision. Both wallets went straight down the cargo pocket.

As soon as he got up on his feet he saw a big fat dude crowd surfing, the kids around him holding up the surfer with their arms suspended above their heads.
"This is too easy!" Stew Rat chuckled. "Easy pickings to be sure!"

He spotted a wholesome looking punk and leaned in on him, slipping his fingers effortlessly into his rear pocket. He didn't have a wallet in there because he pulled out a lump of snot rags.
"YUCK! He probably keeps his wallet in the front. That sucks".

Stew Rat saw another clean-looking punker hoisting the fat surfer with both arms up and rubbed up against him. Sliding with the agility of a ferret, he slipped his fingers into the back pocket and quickly pulled out a wallet with punk rock stickers all over it and tossed it down the now bulging cargo pocket. He finished his steal just in time as Crank Call finished their song.

"Ho, ho, ho, this rules! This might be my best night ever! Long Beach is the greatest!" He laughed to himself. He looked around feeling mighty smug about himself until he caught a huge, dark Latino dude in a wife beater staring at him across the pit with sheer hatred.

"Shit, is this asshole onto me? He looks like he saw something. Maybe everything", Stew Rat got nervous.
The Latino dude was about to cross the pit and attack Stew Rat.
"What does this fuck face want? Does he want a split, is he gonna narc on me or is he gonna pound me for all my shit?"

Stew Rat began walking away backwards, but it wasn't necessary. Crank Call's singer stomped up to the microphone and barked.
"YOU JAGOFFS ARE WEAK!!!! I WANNA SEE SOME SERIOUS MOSHING, DICK FACES! THIS SHIT'S CALLED 'BREAK, BROKEN, BROKE'! 1-2-3-4!"
The band busted out a stormy wail of radioactive waste, guitars feeding back and spitting out electric noise and the singer howling like a witch doctor fished out of the Pacific Ocean.

The guys in the slam pit were now doing the circular chicken dance like demented Navajo warriors, stomping their feet and pumping their arms like a circular locomotive around the dance floor.

The Latino quickened his pace towards Stew Rat, dodging the slam pit circle and getting closer and closer to catching up with him. Stew Rat began to panic, wet himself, whimpered and broke out in a nasty sweat. A musky odor filled the air.

Just when his pursuer was about to catch up with him a stage diver leaped off the stage and landed feet first on the big, dark man's head, kicking him unconscious. The slam pit opened up and bouncers pushed their way in to take away the unconscious Latino. They grabbed him by his legs and pulled him across the club like a limp wheelbarrow.

"OFFICER DOWN, OFFICER DOWN. NO SERIOUSLY, LET'S DO ANOTHER SONG, THIS ONE'S CALLED 'PISSPOT PRINCESS'". The band ripped into their newest number with a vengeance.
Stew Rat calmed down in the knowledge that his pursuer was knocked out cold and put out of the way.

He spied his next victim, a beefy well-fed punk rock jock. Everyone in the pit pressed up against his body so his pressing up against him wouldn't look conspicuous at all. This was too perfect. He shoved and slammed his way towards the jock, ricocheting with the rest of the guys in the pit.

"CLOSER, CLOSER, ALMOST...THERE!" Stew Rat practically humped the jock with his torso, quickly slipping his fingers into the back pocket and pulling out the wallet. Just as he was about to toss it down the secret pocket, he heard someone yell, "LOOK OUT!"

The bondage strap that ran across his trousers was caught in the jock's left leg and he was stuck to him and couldn't extricate himself, meaning he was stuck when he saw Crank Call's guitarist jump off the stage and land on top of him with the guitar's head stock impaling him deep into his skull, the stainless steel machine heads knifing into his cranium, thus ending the short lived crimes of Stew Rat Nickson.

Copyright 2014, Andy Seven.

Top Illustration by Rebecca Seven. Lower Illustration by Jaime Hernandez.

Now Playing ABSOLUTELY FREE on You Tube

Once upon a time, well a few years ago I wrote a periodic blog called "Stuff I Burned From TCM" which was a regular round-up of movies I burned off the TV set from Turner Classic Movies because they weren't available on video. TCM probably caught wind of that happening too often so now they're in the business of selling overpriced dubs of these films.

Well, there are still a ton of things you can't buy from TCM but you can definitely see for absolutely free on You Tube, and not just scattered film clips but the movies in their entirety. You can even save them and burn them, too. Life is wonderful!

In addition to the movies listed below I've also burned dozens of Heckle & Jeckle cartoons (Fifties Terrytoons genius) and a funny Shemp Howard solo short called "Mr. Noisy", where the moonlighting Stooge spends all his leisure time heckling tennis players, golfers and baseball pitchers at the top of his lungs. Wicked!

Alias Nick Beal (1949) Ray Milland breaks the bank playing a demonic apparition who helps a civic minded District Attorney (Thomas Mitchell) with framing a untouchable racketeer and consequently tempting him with a shot at the Governor's race, seal with a pact.

Many of the scenes with Mitchell and Milland either takes place on a foggy wharf or in some oceanfront dive (Don Burnham returns!). Of course, no noir is complete without a femme fatale so the great Audrey Totter provides a moral base, veering from dockside slut transformed by Beal into a politico temptress, a la Monica Lewinsky.

Totter delivers a great, convincing performance in her two phases but it's clearly evident that this is Milland's show all the way. He plays The Devil with great relish and seems to enjoy himself quite a bit playing a nasty, evil spirit.

Asphalt (1929) is a German silent film classic directed by Joe May, and if you liked the Louise Brooks classics "Pandora's Box" and "Diary Of A Lost Girl" you'll very likely enjoy this one, too. The film begins with breathtaking scenes of Berlin night life in the Twenties with the serpentine underworld slithering through the crime-ridden streets.

Joining in the larceny is Else Kramer, played by the great Betty Amann (shown above), conning an old jeweler with seductive behavior. While she's teasing the old fogey out of his diamonds we see a big, dumb lug of street cop Albert Holk (Gustav Frolich of "Metropolis") doing his boring job of guiding cars across the street.

After Else is accused of swiping diamonds in the store they grab a cop down the street, and the next thing you know Officer Holk takes Else in for booking. Unfortunately, Else turns on the water works in the cab and persuades Officer Holk to take her to her flat first so she can grab a few of her things.

She turns on the charm and the cognac and Office Holk finds himself in bed with the criminal. Was their love making real or was it just another con job pulled by Else? It's hard to tell especially since her current boyfriend, a big-shot criminal busts in on them later and things come to a deadly head.

Asphalt is another great film about an honest man fallen from grace by a demonic woman. The Germans seem to be fond of this plot since The Blue Angel mind the same territory with dramatically different results.

Amann may not be as endearing as Brooks or as humorous as Dietrich but had she moved to the States she probably would have had a great career as a film noir femme fatale. If you like great silent films then Asphalt should be at the top of your list (right after Piccadilly).

Woman On The Run (1950) An excellent noir completely owned by Ann Sheridan as you've never seen her before. After playing the reliably good girl in so many Warner Bros. films in the Forties she becomes a nasty bitch in this film, looking and behaving a great deal like Rita Hayworth did in "Lady From Shanghai".

The great irony of the story is that the real person "on the run" is Sheridan's husband who suffers from major paranoia after witnessing a drive-by shooting. Since Ann is the only one who can lead the police to a husband she hates she builds up a hard as nails attitude. You wonder who she has more contempt for: her husband or the authorities.

Filmed almost entirely on the streets of San Francisco, portions of the film almost verge on being some lo-fi travelogue, Ann hitting the pavement of Market Street, Fisherman's Wharf and old North Beach. The street scenes put the location shots of "D.O.A." to shame!

What makes the film so brilliant, however, is the way both the police detective, played by Robert Keith, and the pesky news reporter, played by Dennis O'Keefe, force her to give them more and more information about her much hated husband. The woman on the run flees the streets of Frisco Town like a demented harpy confessing her feelings about a man she once loved.

The great climax to this film takes place on a roller coaster in an amusement park (shades of "The Burglar"!). Robert Keith you'll recognize as the small town sheriff in "The Wild One" and Dennis O'Keefe is great as usual just as he was in the Anthony Mann noirs "Raw Deal" and "T-Men". Highly recommended!

Stone Age Electronica (1968-1971)

One of the most fascinating periods in the history of pop music was the electronic revolution in the late Sixties, most notably the inauguration of the Moog synthesizer in pop music. Very few revolutions in music disturb the record buying public: punk rock, for example, rap when it really mattered, but arguably the synthesizer might have been the most radical.

Just when rock music was getting set in its ways in 1968 with Cream and Jimi Hendrix-influenced long guitar solos, drum solos and rock operas a bizarre classical album by Walter Carlos and Benjamin Folkman called “Switched On Bach” was released and proceeded to sell half a million copies. Robert Moog’s delightful instrument had arrived to the mainstream public and they responded in alternate shades of delight and horror.

Horror because the synthesizer wasn’t considered a warm instrument by many seasoned musicians, who seriously believed at the time that it was a cold computer set out to replace real musicians. To a certain degree this has actually happened, but at the same time we’ve heard the synth long enough to understand that it can also enhance what real instruments do, and beautifully.

Prior to Bob Moog’s invention there were several electronic keyboard predecessors that made their way in pop music, most notably; (i) the mellotron, all the rage in prog music with bands like King Crimson and The Moody Blues, and; (ii) the ondioline, invented in France by Georges Jenny in the late Forties which could emulate the tone and pitch of any conventional musical instrument.

But it was the Moog that created the biggest splash and controversy when it hit the scene. The emergence of the synthesizer almost appeared to be a logical response to the ubiquitous psychedelia that was all over pop music at the time. Finally, here was a keyboard that sounded so psychedelic it would put any fuzz guitar sound to shame. It couldn’t have come at a more auspicious time in musical history.

Once the synthesizer became employed heavily in rock music it was utilized in either one of two ways: (i) as a legitimate keyboard playing conventional melodies, as Emerson, Lake & Palmer did in 1971, or (ii) as a wallpaper of musique concrete, as The Monkees did with “Daily Nightly” in 1968, or Eno’s work with Roxy Music in 1972.

To synth or not to synth, that is the question: some musicians even bypassed the super expensive keyboard altogether and created their own brilliant electronic keyboards. Some of the bands that featured their own electronic keyboard inventions were The Silver Apples and Fifty Foot Hose.

The Silver Apples were a two-piece band from New York featuring a guy named Simeon (pictured above) playing his invention named, what else, The Simeon, and a drummer who played a 13-piece kit (!) with five cymbals – this is pre-heavy metal, remember. Diagrams of both the Simeon and Dan Taylor’s drum set up were both printed on their great CD set.

Silver Apples sound not unlike another New York band, Suicide, with droney oscillations playing repetitive hypnotic melodies while Simeon sings in that dreamy voice Alan Vega made popular. Just to keep things down to Earth there’s an occasional banjo plunking in the background and it sounds just as exotic as The Simeon.

Fifty Foot Hose came around the time of the San Francisco explosion (1966-1968) and featured a great singer named Nancy Blossom. What made them stand out from the rest was a unique electronic instrument invented by band member Cork Marcheschi made up from combination of elements like the theremin, several fuzzboxes, a cardboard tube, and a speaker from a World War II bomber. To the average listener it sounds like a synthesizer.

Fifty Foot Hose released one album, “Caludron” on Limelight Records which also released “The Minotaur” by Dick Hyman, which I wrote about several years ago. The most popular track from Cauldron is the slow dirge rocker “If Not This Time”, which did well on FM radio back in the day.

While Fifty Foot Hose and Silver Apples came off as serious and dramatic there was also the more playful bunch like White Noise from England. In June 1969 White Noise, fronted by David Vorhaus released the groundbreaking album “An Electric Storm” on Island Records. The album was created using a variety of tape manipulation techniques, and used the first British synthesizer, the EMS Synthi VCS3.

Tracks from the album like the FM radio favorite “Here Come The Fleas” have a funny cartoonish vibe featuring member Delia Derbyshire’s zany vocals enhancing the surrealism. Vorhaus adds a beautiful, melodic poignancy to tracks like “Firebird” and “Your Hidden Dreams” which recall Van Dyke Parks’ album “Song Cycle”.

Annette Peacock released an equally innovative album in 1971 on RCA Records titled “I’m The One” that deftly merged jazz, funk and electronics (from a Moog prototype given to her from Mr. Moog himself). There’s some great electronic treatments used on her voice, especially on her unique cover of Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender”. Annette Peacock pretty much paved the way for artists like Tara Busch to flourish today.

What makes all these artists so special was their dedication to creating new sounds and risking commercial failure and critical disapproval – yes, even critics showed absolute contempt for electronics for years. The role of the artist is to continuously explore, discover, innovate and show us the way of the future, not follow old paths.

The artists listed above and many others not mentioned (like Perrey & Kingsley, Curved Air, Bruce Haack, etc.) were pioneers of electronics and have left behind a legacy of brilliant electronic sounds for us to enjoy forever.