Violins of Hope

James Grymes
Violins of Hope

Harper Perennial, 2014

The history of the Holocaust in violins - you can describe the contents of this book with this sentence. In six chapters (with a prologue and epilogue) Grymes tells the stories of six violins, and, most importantly, their owners in the days when the Nazis came to power, and during the Second World War. Link between these stories is a violin collector, Amnon Weinstein, who originally made violins and became engaged in their repair, and then went over to collecting them. He created a program in the memory of the victims of the Holocaust called Violins of Hope.

All violins, which will be in the center of the book stories, were in his collection, he also later began collecting stories about these violins. Amnon’s parents in time fled Nazi Germany and escaped to Palestine. Amnon’s father Moshe was a violinist, repair master and music teacher. In Palestine, it was difficult to make a living playing music and giving musical lessons, and Moshe went into commerce, thinking that that thousands of Jews would flock to Palestine with their instruments, and it would be a profitable business, to repair violins.

He gave gis craft to his son, who carefully preserved hundreds of violins that waited for their owners, or at least relatives of the deceased owners.

Grymes starts the history of violins in Nazi Germany from the beginning of the thirties.

Violins of Hope is one of those non-fiction books about people that does not pretend to be fiction. Stories told here speak for themselves, in any language and need no preening. Author Grymes is concise and academically calm. All that happened happened, history has shown what’s what, all sides are known, and there is no need to put pressure on the reader with pity or preaching.

This book is especially good in that: you soak in the will to live, and the author does not even cries till the sore throat to achieve that the whole story come down to us. Grymes has a clean style, and the book even has footnotes.

Musical instruments from the book’s title are only mediums, not violins for the sake of violins. This book is about people, not about violins or music, unless it’s the music of pain and suffering. Violins saved lives and helped to survive and overcome the difficulties almost non-human. At the same time the violin is an an occasion to tell the stories of people, almost all of whom were not even professionals. The whole project "Violins of Hope" allows you to look at the Holocaust at unexpected angles.

The choice of characters in the book, probably, was not accidental. The author would like to give the widest range of victims of the Holocaust, and it worked. Grymes, of course, could not ignore the largest concentration camps with their orcestras, which are known to the public now, and at the same time, Auschwitz and Birkenau are given only one chapter. This is surprising, of course.
Grymes made a large geographic sample, this is another advantage of the book. Here are an almost unknown refugee camp in Mauritius, and the atrocities of the Romanians, and Ukrainian partisans, and Nazism in Norway. As they say, all the facets of fascism.

Grymes easily controls the general historical information. The book is rich in a variety of facts. In Germany during the war there were chemical plants, which produced condoms for the army, and they were called "Sanitary Articles." In Palestine, the Arab uprisings put pressure on the British government as to limit visas for Jews. Those Arabs even blew a ship with refugees, fortunately, the number of deaths was minimal. By the end of the war the heads of the concentration camps almost lost their minds and asked to play the "Internationale."

In addition to these small facts, Grymes is generous with the historical background. Each story is accompanied by a briskly written historical information about the country, a concentration camp atrocities of the Nazis and their allies - so the book becomes a treasure trove of information. In a concise and accessible way, we obtain all the necessary information, which helps to better understand the history of a hero.

The book became a pleasant surprise. Subtle, clear, on the point - and touching, of course.

The Drummer

Anthony Neil Smith
The Drummer

Self-published ebook, 2011
(originally published in 2006)

Back in the Eighties, I played drums for a heavy metal band called Savage Night. Todd was the lead singer. We had one platinum album, a bundle of decent videos on MTV, and several years of successful touring. The money rolled in, the chicks wanted us bad, and near the end, radio spun our power ballad all day and night.
We found out we were broke on a tour of Japan. The record company dropped us—grunge was conquering our space—and we owed millions to tour promoters. After a decent show in Tokyo, the four of us sat in a sushi restaurant and tossed around possibilities. Todd thought we should add a keyboard player and do another album more pop than metal to pay off our debts and make us maybe superstars, the way Aerosmith morphed from bluesy bar band to kid-friendly Top 40.

After a decade and a half after his group collapsed the drummer Merle Johnson (it is not his real name) is drinking beer in one New Orleans’s bar. To avoid persecution from the IRS, Merle (then Cal Christopher, though this is not his real name, as well) had staged his own death, burning his house. Transferred all savings to bogus accounts, Merle straightened himself a new identity and settled in New Orleans, make a living as a sound engineer and living in a former funeral home. Merle started a new life from scratch, and the last thing he needs now is that his past reached him, forcing back into hiding. But Todd Delacroix, the band’s frontman, has tracked Merle and started to blackmail him, threatening to reveal the drummer’s whereabouts, if Merle does not agree to participate in a group’s reunion. Merle has almost killed Todd, but the next day Todd is found dead in a hotel room, or rather, Merle himself finds his ex-bandmate still alive after the overdose, but deliberately calling for ambulance too late. And instead of running from the police, the press, and the IRS, Merle remains in the city, wanting to find out how he was found and who faked Todd’s suicide.

The novel at the time was dubbed as heavy metal noir, and in general it is almost accurate designation. How many crimes (especially murders) take place in a musical environment, except for gang-related shootings among rappers and sacrifices in black metal? I doubt that many, the more interesting it was to learn about the behind the heavy metal scenes. Anthony Neil Smith, it should be noted, leans more on noir, rather than on heavy metal. Book protagonist Merle lacks stupid nostalgia: the long hair, snotty ballads in a metal frame, groupies, drugs before and after performances. Merle really leaves the past in the fire of his house, and not just pretending. He now listens to electronic music, does not indulge in drugs, loves (platonically) pious woman, and would not exchange his present to the past, no matter how successful it may seem. Smith does not allow his character annoying whinings about how everything used to be good, but now everything is bad.

Despite the fact that the novel is full of memories of the hero’s past (so we know the background of Merle) the protagonist doesn’t has time for whinings. All the book he is on the run, if not hiding, he is attacking, and his every action, it seems, only worsens the situation. And the protagonist has no much choice: death, prison or a disclosure, which, for him, is worse than death.

This grim story is peppered with charming descriptions of New Orleans:

«The first thing I did in town was to find Bourbon Street and hit as many bars along the way as I could manage in a few hours. My first Hurricane-a sweet drink full of rum-hit me harder than those drunks in England. Tried the tourist drinks at the frat bars, the vampire bars, the jazz clubs, the strip clubs. Washed them down with watery beer. The music was killing me with goodness, the bar bands more talented playing cover sets than most of the high profile LA people I'd worked with back in the day. Fusion guitarists with gritty blues in their veins, bleeding on the strings. The singers straining through a cloud of cigarette smoke and touching my frozen kernel of a soul. I cried. Couldn't help it.

When I asked for the finest restaurant in the city, a sax player pointed me towards the streetcar, told me not to get off until I reached Commander's Palace, smack dab in the middle of the Garden District. So I did. Stumbled past an ancient cemetery until I found the front door of an elegant turquoise house, the name of the restaurant hanging above me. The captain asked if I had a reservation. I pulled a wad of hundred-dollar bills from my pocket and said, "What I don't spend on food will get passed around as tips, comprende?"

Seven courses. My first creole dishes-oh Jesus the sauces, the crawfish, the shrimp, the rich spicy aroma. Three bottles of wine. Bananas Foster for dessert. I had never been happier at the dinner table. I wanted to puke ».

The Drummer is loud, fast and unforgettable.

American Hardcore

Steven Blush
American Hardcore
A Tribal History (2nd edition)

Feral House, 2010

I should start with that: this book is an absolute must-have for all fans of hardcore. Stephen Blush did a great job, took more than a hundred interviews, listened to hundreds of records, found hundreds of flyers, compiled a detailed discography of American music of the suburbs.

The book consists of four parts. In the first author tells about the birth of hardcore movement, the second one focuses on the groups themselves, by region, in the third section the book reveals the principles of the DIY-culture, and the final one tells the different versions of why the hardcore ceased to exist in the form in which it was originally. As I’ve written above that Blush "tells" I was cunning. Fragments of text written by the author there are minimized. Blush just writes short «glue pieces», as if leading the participants to their stories. Book by 90 percent consists of fragments of interviews with musicians, promoters, artists, fans who did hardcore in the early '80s. Juggling quotes are always a dangerous thing, but there is no criticism to the author.

The book not only tells "how it was" through the eyes of the participants, but also helps to understand some important things about the hardcore.

Punk is not equaled hardcore. If British punk bands played daring music at the time, they somehow belonged to the music industry. Punk bands had a team of producers, they were signed to major label, promoters of the record companies booked tours for them. Hardcore was completely DIY. Musicians themselves recorded and sold their music, without the producers went on tour, barely scraped for gasoline and for food.

Even the most hardcore stars at the time were little known outside of the subculture. The names of Henry Rollins, Jello Biafra, GG Allin etc which now seem loud, but when hardcore was born and grew, a hardcore group did not gather stadiums. The group played in front of 15 fans, and it was fine. Over time, the emphasis has shifted, and those groups that were the most famous and influential became half-forgotten, and less popular in the early 80's bands became popular now.

Hardcore was not only music, it was a movement. The book details the idelogy, the stylistic divisions between hardcore fans, and the constant feud between members of the movement.

Hardcore came from the suburbs, and the movement embraced not only the centers of culture, but also all the major states. Regionally hardcore was very different, and the «American Hardcore» opens your eyes to it. You have to understand the specifics of the region to understand the music that was created in the region.

After the release of the book Steven Blush had a lot of complaints, mostly related to the fact that he spoke disparagingly of those groups that have ceased to play hardcore and started playing something else. We should understand the author: if you had been in an subculture from the very roots, and then you saw how it all had broken down, you are inevitably drawn to something familiar, to that you once loved.

Of course, some bands in the book are devoted whole chapters to, and some only a paragraph, but the book is not rubber, it is impossible to please everyone, and it is impossible to add everything. It is difficult to say whether the book will interest a person who was never in hardcore, but for hardcore fans, this book is indispensable. «American Hardcore» has become my reference book for a long time.