Samuel Snoek Brown's "Hagridden" is Bone Rattling.

Several years back, a man I greatly admire, film critic Roger Ebert turned to the internet to explore how others reacted to a film. He described their quotes as "dealing with their feelings"


That's what Hagridden will do.  Make you deal with your feelings.  

Hagridden is a simple construct wrapped in complexities built around two female primary characters, who by being victims of circumstance, have to do horrible, reprehensible things to survive in the Louisiana marsh as the Civil War is flaming out. 

And Sam Snoek-Brown makes you feel empathy, even sympathy for them as they murder without restraint. 

It takes a hell of a writer to do that. 

Much like the Japanese horror film, "Onibaba", the story centers on a woman, and a girl, and they go by no more for names than that, living alone and like feral animals.   This after the loss of both their husbands, one in the war.  They are mother-in-law and daughter-in-law which complicates things as "the girl" wants to shirk loneliness with a returned soldier.

Things get darker as they struggle to survive, drowning in fear, paranoia, and hatred, particularly the woman, who's only real tie to the world and reality is the girl.   Characters with malicious intent and dripping hatred wander this landscape, and Hagridden really makes you come to terms with the concept of "the lesser of two evils" as you try to hash out your understanding of these poor souls while they do what you would never consider.  Snoek-Brown's book creates a nature of lethal violence becoming as easy as you or I would buy something we take for granted.  

You become immersed in the Hagridden world as you are repelled by it and one of the reasons that is so easy is Snoek-Brown's attention to detail.  He's steeped in his knowledge of individual locales as well as real characters and battles of the back end of the civil war.  Equally as sharp is  his vivid and detailed, yet at times wistful descriptions of the day to day minutiae of surviving the unforgiving beauty of delta swamp life and second nature gruel of existence in this time and place, that seems alien to us now. 

Just as real is his grasp of human loneliness and sadness and how they tie to desperations within.  Snoek-Brown details how quickly those emotions lead to free-wheeling lust and need, and just as quickly to greed, suspicion, betrayal and murder. 

Hagridden isn't just a story, it's an experience. And as Ebert described "Halloween", you're not just reading it, it's "happening to you."  Sam Snoek-Brown has created a quietly violent world, enhanced by the lack of quotation marks in it's dialogue, where the silence of it's brutality is just as unsettiling as it's reality. 

Cheap Trick: Defining Perennial

I wrote a piece several years ago that remains unpublished, sort of one I prefer to "keep in the clip", as it were. I hate firearms and their analogies, but since I write from the hip, I'll leave it.

It's called "AC/DC at my side". Sort of a look back at how that Australian group of hooligans remained in my life and the public eye like a "rock and roll Forrest Gump".

I guess that could apply to Cheap Trick as well. Some will accuse them of being fluff, but that's awful short-sighted. They are worthy and deserving of much more than that for several reasons. Rick Nielsen, Tom Petersson, Bun E. Carlos, and Robin Zander popped up out of Rockford, Illinois, stepped in the Leprechaun's pot o' gold, and became one of the biggest bands in the world (a couple of times) and did it almost accidentally and in the most odd way.

One of their biggest hits came off of their fourth LP, (which was live, no less) containing an odd track introduction, "This is the first song off of our new album, it just came out this week, and it's called 'Surrender'", which indicates that this album, "At Budokan", was released not long after a studio LP. Odder still they bucked the trend of 70's Double Live LP, making "Budokan" a single platter, with the opener and closer, "Hello There" and "Goodnight" mirroring each other save for the interchangeable title lyrics. An obvious waste of album space in my eyes, as the entire concert, available now, had scads of material that could have been utilized.

Odd, indeed.

But I get away from myself here.
Right now, people steadily join the cult of the Replacements, following them to Big Star, and the death of Alex Chilton has also raised awareness. Truly, the historical kings of  American Power Pop are that Tennessee foursome, but Cheap Trick was right there with their melodies, scorching guitar work, and charismatic members. The latter of these being very visually obvious.

The band has had their ups and downs, from the short-lived Jon Brant era, to the decline of the early to mid 80's, to the huge upswing of the end of that decade, and another pitfall before hitting the public eye again with the theme from "That 70's Show". (Oddly co-written by Alex Chilton himself).
There's a lot of "70's" (unfair term for them, that) bands wandering the County Fair Classic Rock Circuit, but Cheap Trick are among the few that hold that original framework together, and continue to bring out fresh, pertinent material to this day.

 I just wanted to make that clear, I'm not looking back at them here, although I did use the past to push the button on the flashlight that I am now directing on them today. The Trick within the last handful of years, while touring extensively, has released a full album of new material and recorded their take on "Sgt. Pepper" in it's entirety.

Hard work, this rocking. And they could teach today's youngsters a few lessons. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. Especially Cheap ones.

Long live Cheap Trick.
....and with that, here's what's what: