Camera in hand

 

Stumbled across these photos and decided to find out more about the guy who took them.

Fred Herzog immigrated from Germany to Canada in ’52 then hooked up with a medical photographer called Marincowitz and taught himself how to take a picture. Camera in hand, he travelled from Vancouver to San Francisco. 

Fred captured street life in the 1950s and 60s. ‘‘He used colour, to get over the way he saw the city and the way he wanted others to see it.’

There's something cool about his work. The way he transports us back in time to an everyday street or alley and brings out the beauty of it. And (getting a bit profound here) he gives us moments, stories... 

I mean, that's a seriously cool dad and his daughter walking down the street with their dog. That guy's cut himself shaving. Damn, has he just spotted a UFO...?  Clothes on a line never looked so, well, lovely actually.

Those brief moments Fred caught, they're ours too now. Mm.

Lao Border Boogie or Everyone Met at Alan's

Back in the early 1990s I used to escape Bangkok by taking the overnight submarine-train to the end of the line at Nong Khai. Buffalo grazed by the tracks. There wasn’t a backpack in sight. I remember taking a perverse pleasure in being the only foreigner to get off the train, and wearing brogues and a suit. I would then cross over into the People’s Undemocratic Republic of Laos by boat (they hadn’t built the bridge then) to a) try and sort out my tangled business affairs and b) make a bit of extra wedge by delivering consignments of Physignathus Cocincinus or Thai Water Dragon on behalf of an Austrian ex-con called Otto K (who makes guest appearance in Zen City).  I used to carry the little blighters in specially converted egg boxes.  

Vientiane had a curfew on those days and militia would prowl around on motorbikes searching for foreign miscreants. The “Russian Club” was a wonderful restaurant overlooking the Mekong that once hosted Soviet advisers. In my day it featured an enormous blue parrot, a beautiful head waitress with very long black hair called Bernard and I was locked in the toilet (but not with the parrot or, thankfully, Bernard) by a heroin-addicted friend of mine who was being very silly. 

Men in white coats used to inspect the Vientiane watering holes, Joan Jet and the Blackhearts were on at the only nightclub in town and all the girls wore traditional pha-sin. I should add that Bier Lao on draught, not the bottled stuff, is – was – excellent.

After returning from the PUR Laos I would normally ended up spending a few days recovering in Nong Khai at a guesthouse called the Meeting Place. This was a sort of Rick’s Place – but on the Mekong not in Hollywood's Casablanca – full of nefarious characters with activities to match. It provided the inspiration for the Double D guesthouse in my second novel, Neville Changes Villages, and the sequel. Many of the characters in the Double D are based on real people, including Ivan the Mexican, the CIA folk in their natty shorts, the humourless Dutch SS helicopter pilot and, of course, the Aussie proprietor: the much lamented Alan Patterson. 

 

In the story, Neville meets a weird character called the Prince of Enigma. He’s based on a guy I think I met over a series of Mekong whisky-fuelled nights when Alan unwisely left me in charge of the guesthouse while he went on a trip to the Plain of Jars.The POE told me he was staying in the temple opposite the Meeting Place but later, when I asked the abbot, neither he nor his monks knew anything about him. Still, the hugely entertaining tale POE related to me over the course of those nights provided the basis for Shadows and Pagodas. Oh, yes, he also makes an appearance as a barman in the R n’ B club in Zen City. Many of the details in the Double D are based on the Meeting Place. The Kangaroo Bar down the road, Pappaya Girl poster, the limes in the urinals and the terrible jokes. 

The Meeting Place was – as Junior Parker and the Blue Flames sang – a great place to sit, drink and think...and write. I probably overdid it on the whisky, though.       

Postscript:

I think you can still visit the Meeting Place and even the temple opposite (the latter is a good place to do a bit of mindful walking meditation). But Pappaya Girl has long been taken down, Alan P died of cancer back in Oz, they’ve built a bridge across the Mekong and you can buy organic fruit juice in Vientiane. The Russian Club was demolished to make way for a concrete promenade which looks rubbish.

Honestly, you couldn’t make it up.      

Man in a Zen Ambulance

 

Crime and dark comedy in the Atomic Age 

Everyone is getting out of town. Teddy Boy yakuza fight it out with the Shoho girl gang while a Rita Hayworth film plays at the deserted cinema. The local temple being pulled down. A mean old lady wanders the streets with a mysterious shopping bag as a young barber gets his kicks out of a hand-held King Tut Multi-Speed. Out in the scrublands a nun tries to free a wartime bomber sticking out the side of a gigantic Buddhist statue. And don’t even mention those goddamn chimps doin’ that Elvis thing of theirs...

Enter Milo the Monk armed with a big gun trying to figure who exactly he’s meant to kill. The Colonel orders Luther and his bad-arsed girlfriend to take him out first. Then all hell breaks loose. Murder and mayhem as Milo, the yakuza, Luther, Rei and the Colonel all head into town for the final bloody showdown.  

https://www.jackfieldingauthor.com/books-hub 

Cairo 1961

Louis plays to Lucille

 

Ode to the Griffin

See that posh cafe place?

That was our pub, that was

Back in the Seventies

Teds, rockabillies

On a Tuesday night

Drinks and maybe a fight

Order another rum and black

Warren Smith

and a Red Cadillac

That was our pub

News from the NASA

Yves Lecoq

Transgender Elephant Blues

Meet three former British merchant seamen from Hull: Eric Suggs, Bert Fluckley and Ronald Bones

After sex reassignment surgery, the talented friends underwent a change of national orientation and became South Koran. They formed a signing trio, called themselves the Broken Blossoms and hit the road. The Blossoms toured throughout Thailand for the next eleven and a half months and proved immensely popular with audiences both young and old. Their biggest (self-penned) hit was the upbeat Elephant Blues Boogie. Tragically, the Blossoms’ promising career was cut short when their tour bus collided with a rogue buffalo outside the cement factory in Roi-Et.

Eric’s last words were, “Ladies, I think I’ve snagged my nylons…”

You can still see the bronze plaque, green with age, honouring the Blossoms in the garden of the Por Jai temple. The garden itself is now sadly neglected.  

Here’s a link to the only surviving footage of the three singers. It’s from 1954 at the old Tai Tai Recording Studios, which was on Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok. The Blossoms are rehearsing a cover of Mr. Sandman.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2wqi1qnnt4

Meet Virginia

Date: August 1942.

Meet Virginia Davis.

Virginia is a supervisor in the Assembly and Repair Department at Corpus Christi Naval Air Base in Texas. She's hard-driving rivets into the tail section of a fighter aircraft. It's a tough job.

An important job.

She is being assisted by Charles Potter, an NYA rookie from Michigan.   

mediadrumworld.com

Killing Time

Jack: If I'd been a famous actor in Hollywood during the 60s like Lee Marvin this is exactly how I would have dressed. Sharp suit with narrow lapels and short-brim trilby. Big gun. Very cool, very dangerous. Mind you, I would have probably taken off my sunglasses inside Mrs Von Klippenhopper's house so I wouldn't keep bumping into things all the time.

Jeff Raye and other uncanny tales

The Fleshless Ones

I love comic books, especially Golden Age. Back when I was a kid I couldn’t get enough of those square-bound comics printed on cheap paper with their extraordinary cover art and wonderful short stories, everything from sci-fi to mystery, crime, horror and the, well, just plain weird.  And they all featured the fashions, language and motor cars of the forties and fifties. Nearly all my meagre pocket money went on getting those wonderful stories – and they were worth every precious penny.   

Actually, for a long time I thought those comics had come hot off the presses in America and didn’t realise that many were pre-code and been out of print for years. In fact, an English guy called Alan Class had bought the rights and given them a new lease of life, importing them to Britain for eager kids like me. I don’t know why but I just didn’t get a kick out of Captain Marvel and 

Jeff takes an unwelcome trip

more famous superhero type stuff. No, it was Alan’s other stories that I went for. Maybe it was the thrill, the shock of the explicit pre-code material that grabbed me; the sheer diversity of all that bloody noir crime, fantasy, shock-horror, sci-fi and the speculative. I mean, even now the hairs on the back of my neck start to rise when I see Jeff Raye, scientist, trapped between two worlds! (horrified wife, suitably attired in  evening dress and pearls).     

Now, of course, Creepy Worlds and all the rest are pretty much unloved except by discerning fans and collectors. The corner shop that sold them is still there but pipe-smoking Mister Schalken and his daughter left years ago. The place is unrecognisable and sterile, plastic-franchise new; the old musty wooden and glass cabinets, stacked with snuff, tobacco, comics and pencils have been replaced with shiny white shelves and lottery tickets. I guess nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. Looking back, though, one thing I’ve never quite figured out was did the

Ringo Starr, fan

original comic influence TV series like The Twilight Zone or was it the other way around? Or did they all just sort of take-off on their own separate weird and wonderful trajectories? Perhaps an uncanny case of pulp-cultural-cross-pollination – a bit like the birth of rock and roll and all those early independent records labels and radio stations.   

Anyway, when I got into writing, a steely determination grew to figure out a way of celebrating Alan’s comics; to celebrate the thrill I got every time I opened the cabinet in Mister Schalken's shop and stepped into another world. And, I guess, a way to say thank you for inspiring me to write my own stories.

Funny thing is, even now, I still wonder if Jeff did manage to escape and return safely to his wife…

Alan and selection of his titles

Relativity

Jimmy Harris?

Einstein's Field Equation Train Wreck (in a desert)

Before social media

Meet the Hirschsprungs! How families ignored each other before Facebook and smart phones were invented:

Peder Kroyer 1881

Thanks to http://comicsidontunderstand.com/wordpress/category/leigh-rubin/ 

If you love noir, you'll love this

This is my favourite reference book on noir. Everything on all the films out there, from the classic to the obscure and overlooked. Plot, detailed analysis, cast and crew, and some fab quotes. The referencing lists at the end are particularly useful and inspired. Nice section on modern 'neo noir', too.

Browsing through the book last week, I re-discovered House of Bamboo (1955), starring Robert Ryan and Shirley Yamaguchi. Hard-boiled crime tale set in post-war Tokyo, with some great location shots. 

Highly recommended - the book and Bamboo!

The Vintage Ambulance and Miss Ducktail

Miss Ducktail is crazy about anything vintage. She sports a Grace Kelly hairstyle and wears vintage negligees to bed. She also does the artwork for my books. I recently asked her to redesign the cover art for Man in a Zen Ambulance; go back and refine an earlier version. Basically, I needed to better showcase the book’s mean-streets cool, hints of Zen and early rock and roll music. So, a gritty grainy image with low tones. Rays shooting out like the Japanese Setting Sun flag from left to right. Shadowy guitar. An ambulance packing plenty of chrome in the foreground.

And that building it’s parked outside of?

Hell, maybe that’s a recording studio just like good old Sun Records!