Fort Worth Star-Telegram from Fort Worth, Texas • 60

8K wstur li'Ict'i'ttiiU'iMii KING Continued from III Humdrum Drummers beat at their own game by technology un 'rimrsduy Inly 10 2001 So now we have a newly revised edition of The Gunslinger to pick over In the introduction King explains many of his reasons for revisiting the book detailing his hubris as a young author and his use of techniques glonuned off of any number of writing workshops taken And what is the result? That depends on whom you ask a King purist or a King newbie (if such a thing really exists) We asked both a longtime King fan who has read almost everything the author has ever published and a reader who was scared off of fiction by The Shining and read The Gunslinger for the first time in its newly altered form Meanwhile King has turned 55 That matches our prediction for the number of books end up writing after he officially un-retires Or he could have added something really really familiar King has finally decided to offer up the last couple of books in his Dark Tower series the first of the new works is set for a November publication To prime that pump reissuing the first four installments of the Dark Tower this summer Of course going back to older material new to King he has already reissued The Stand with lots of material that was edited out of the original version But this time not just putting old material back in he has done some rewriting King claims in the foreword to The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower I that a quarter-century after he serialized the first chapters of the series in a sci-fi magazine he simply no longer could abide various inconsistencies and instances of overwriting in the original novels Wv'l TWO VIEWS LOS ANGELES TIMESGINA FERAZZI Drummer Hal Blaine 74 kept time on some of the most memorable American recordings of the 1960s Including California Dreamin Strangers in the Night Mrs Robinson and I Cot You Babe Drum machines have over time elbowed out the human player By GEOFF BOUCHER LOS ANGELES TIMES LOS ANGELES Sometimes the past hard to find Leave Los Angeles drive 125 miles into the oven heat of Palm Desert down Sonny Bono Memorial Highway and across Frank Sinatra Drive and the past might even greet you at his front door found Hal Blaine says from behind huge sunglasses on Inside a few gold records adorn the wall all hits by John Denver all featuring Blaine on drums missing from the walls of his modest home says far more about the back- beat of life today used to have oh 150 other ones but I had to sell them Blaine kept time on some of the most memorable American recordings of the 1960s California Dreamin Strangers in the Night Good Vibrations Mrs Robinson Help Falling in Love I Got You Babe among them but that was during what he calls "the absolute golden age of session It was also he adds before changed the making of music Blaine says the phone that never stopped ringing in the 1960s and early 1970s went silent in the following decade as the drum machine arrived and music trends veered away from him A bitter divorce left him without his Rolls-Royce yacht and the house above Mulholland have to be honest with you be homeless today without my Blaine was the king of Los Angeles session drummers and today the weary 74-year-old royal in the desert reflects his former kingdom a tough time now a real tough time especially if one of those young people trying to get says Jim Keltner the drummer who became a titan of the field in the 1970s playing on major recordings by Bob Dylan John Lennon and many others Keltner remains a player in great demand but now that makes him a rarity in his field The rudimentary drum machines of the 1970s were alarming to many of the old guard who predicted then that the robotic drumstick eventually would elbow out the human player They were right Entire pop albums are sometimes recorded today BY TODD CAMP KING PURIST A royal read Stephen King has been writing mammoth bestsellers for some 25 years Yet even he a writer who inspires such slavish devotion from his readers that the literary equivalent of a rock star has had difficulty creating buzz for the dusty post-apocalyptic alternative universe of his Dark Tower series Why? For one thing one of his departures from the horrror genre that made him a publishing phenomenon Yet King let go of gunslinger Roland Deschain and his quest for the mysterious Good for him Fans of the series are keenly aware that the post-apocalyptic world of the Dark Tower is closely attuned to our own post-modern reality Readily identifiable cultural signposts still exist whether a recognizable pop song or a turn of phrase Yet King refrains from his usually colorful approach to product placement the brand-name references and ad sloganeering that has always helped make his work approachable and real Many of additions to The Gunslinger it tons out are brand-name references not to popular culture but to Stephen King culture in the form of nods to future books in the series Other reworkings include refinements of the language a curious dialect known as the For newcomers and even casual King readers many of these additions will come off as misplaced arcana But for diehard King readers they will act as crucial reference points akin to another popular King conceit his self-referential mentions of characters from previous novels Purists can relax: The original book receives no cuts and it actually ends up better for careful ministrations after all these years Indeed even the best moments such as encounter with the slow mutants at the desert way station take on a sharper edge thanks to subtle reworkings of the original text (817)390-7691 tcampstar-telegramcom The Dark by Fiction Viking BY KATHY HARRIS RELUCTANT READER No thanks I swore off reading Stephen King long ago I read The Shining back in high school it scared the bejeebers out of me and left me with a deep fear of topiaries But The Gunslinger I found is a different animal altogether than the kinds of novels that made King famous more surreal than scary more sci-fi than horror Neophytes to the series will need to know that Roland Deschain a gunslinger and the last of his kind is hot on the trail of the Man in Black who has magical powers Along the way Deschain encounters a curious boy Jake who seemingly has walked through a time warp from 1970s New York into the strange post-apocalyptic world The pursuit soon turns even more bizarre as the boy joins the gunslinger on his quest for answers from the Man in Black about a mysterious King alludes in the introduction to being a fan of JRR The Lord of the Rings and its influence on this book is unmistakable But deja vu moments for Rings fans the problem The chief flaw especially if King is hoping to draw readers to the subsequent books in the Tower series is that Jake carry on past The Gunslinger The quest and the Man in motives just particularly intriguing or satisfying If Jake the most compelling character had remained in the mix throughout the series I might have continued on to the next book Without him the story loses its heart (817) 390-7674 akhamsstar-telegramcom The King without a traditional drummer in the studio and one of the premier genres of the age hip-hop is almost defined by the computer creation of beats by celebrity producers not by a drummer Then the overall malaise in the session recording business Laptops and modest home studios can be used to make professional-level albums now and many of the lavish recording studios in Los Angeles and New York are wondering if in a few years they will have the allure of say an extremely well-appointed typewriter factory Sales are down record labels are shaky and cutting back and film and television work the lifeblood for players in Local 47 of the American Federation of Musicians is often taken offshore for the discounted costs It makes the president Hal Espinosa long for the days in the 1960s when he and other players scrambled across town to play session after session were 11 or 12 variety shows going on I was doing Dean show the Bob Flope specials Carol show We were running from one studio to the next Today you have that because of new technology gone not coming Jimmy Bralower once believed drumming was a science only in the way boxing and whistling are sciences Playing drums is holding two clubs in your hand It get much more primitive than that Bralower is a New York record executive these days a prominent vice president at Atlantic Records but once he was a scrappy Long Island kid who dreamed of being a drummer He bounced among bands in the 1970s and by the 1980s he was working in the session Gunslinger: Tower I Stephen $25 rooms of SoHo with artists such as early hip-hop figure Kurtis Blow It was cusp time live music and disco were giving way to the protean sound of hip-hop and the beat of the new music was still being shaped one day someone brings in this box it was a foot long and a foot wide and it had all these buttons on it It was a Roland TR-808 a drum machine They turned it on and well it was pretty daunting There were beats and rhythms that were kind of impossible to play This box could do stuff I do It was a very threatening Advocates of the machines and software that create beats for so much of pop albums say they are cheaper faster and easier than bringing in a human drummer But veteran producer Rick Rubin (Beastie Boys Red Hot Chili Peppers Johnny Cash) says it goes beyond practicality He says the rise of hip-hop in the 1980s created in pop an artist and audience taste for the relentless inhumanly perfect beats of the machines instead of the more expressive and organic rhythms of era you buy an album by somebody like Britney Spears today you find a drummer on it and because the sound the flavor of the drum machine is what people want Rubin said The drummer is not dead in rock music not by any means In bands drummers be they Dave Grohl Meg White Larry Mullen Jr or Lars Ulrich have inspired a new generation to pick up sticks and they will continue to do so For session drummers the new model may be Josh Freese the gifted young player who also has ongoing and formal membership in three bands: Perfect Circle the Vandals and Devo Blaine has no idea what the future will be for session drummers but he expresses a solemn gratitude that he was at the right place and time BOOKS Continued from IE July 12-13 Sat Sun 11am 4pm WILL ROGERS EXHIBIT HALL 1 Amon Carter Boulevard Fort Worth Largest Wedding' Event In Tarrant County $7 At The Door Children Under 14 $3 Bring this ad for $100 off admission (One coupon per person) The most important information your family will ever need! For information call Bridal Shows at 972-608-9749 or visit us wwwbridalshowsinccom A Family Matter A Guide to Organizing Your Personal Estate FWST CN: Good grief I already have enough children sulking in real life Nobody sulks in Snicket by the way The baby Sunny is an especially amusing character despite all her problems As she might say a phrase that here means forget to tell your book-club readers how I had to handmake staples when I was employed as a secretary at Prufrock Preparatory These books are flat-out funny and I love the way Snicket gradually develops this series into a complex mystery in which he himself is one of the characters CK: read the first two Snicket books myself and I liked them quite a bit At her best Rowling has that same wonderful snarky sense of humor such as the scenes in Phoenix set in the Ministry of Magic a brilliant parody of soul-sucking corporate culture But really letting herself get bogged down with detail and self-indulgence such as the endless scenes here devoted to Hagrid and his half-brother the giant Grawp Enough with Hagrid and his stupid creatures Can we start the war already? CN: I hate Hagrid Thankfully the only truly miserable thing about series is that actually written by a 1992 graduate of Wesleyan University named Daniel Handler Handler is talented young and wildly successful I have to hate him a little bit for those last two things Oh and only going to get more popular when Unfortunate Events becomes a movie tentatively set to star Jim Carrey and due out Christmas 2004 CK: Speaking of movies I seen a good one in weeks which has me counting the days until fall (you know when the movies always have a number after the title) In which case it might be fun to get a jump on a couple of the Oscar-bait releases by reading the books they are based upon CN: heard Nicole Kidman and Meg Ryan both have big movies coming out this fall based on novels give those a try next week Christopher Kelly (817) 390-7032 i cmkellystar-telegramcom I Catherine Newton (817) 390-7828 cnewtonstar-telegramcom Speaking of my daughter she is away at her first-ever sleepaway camp this week and it is making me absolutely crazy The book been reading together is perched on bedside table and viciously tempting me to read ahead another Lemony Snicket on book eight of A Series of Unfortunate Events CK: right Rowling writing for kids anymore but not sure writing for adults either She mostly seems to be writing to indulge her own love of all these wizards witches and magic tricks that she invented It pains me to say this because I love the first four Potter books so much but this new one is dreadful 870 pages and nothing happens CN: Not much happens in a couple of books either but as you were saying I still find these books more original witty and character-rich than most of the grown-up fiction slogged through lately For the uninitiated: The Snicket series is one long story about the three Baudelaire children who become orphans when their parents die in a fire They are tossed about to a series of clueless guardians while the evil Count Olaf (a relative) tries to steal the fortune they are due to inherit when the eldest turns 18 The series is expected to have 13 volumes None of them involves any sort of happiness or hope for the Baudelaire children at all CK: The problem with Phoenix is pretty simple no plotline In previous books Harry has had to protect the Stone or compete in the Tri-Wizard tournament here he sulks for 870 pages as Rowling repeats all of her good jokes from the previous books (Enough with Peeves the Poltergeist already) interesting to me that the final chapter of book four is called and the final chapter of book five is called Second War How many beginnings do we need before they start the war? Phoenix is 870 pages of transition WillsPowers of Attorney Investment Records Charitable Donations Retirement Statements Insurance Polices Net Worth Statements Income Tax Returns Places of Business Accounts Family AdvisorsAssociates Available through Jubilldy Interests Inc 817-265-3971 wwwafamilymatternet booksfamilymatternet 12 PRICE SHOE SALE The Best Brands The Most Sizes RIDGLEA 6333 Camp Bowie 817-731-2555 HULEN 3900 South Hulen 817-377-9399 JH i IS.