For most people, Timbuk 3 is the answer to that music trivia question of what band had the one hit in the mid-1980s about the future being so bright you have to wear shades. But for those of us living in Austin, Texas in the 80s, they were the little band made good on the same Indie label as R.E.M., and when their second album didn't strike the same national chord as the first, we shrugged and thought the third would. But it didn't, nor did the fourth or the fifth even though fans like myself bought them. Pegged as a novelty band, their fifteen minutes were used up in that one song, to be replaced on national radio by quirkier bands like Smash Mouth, Barenaked Ladies and Cake.

I like all their albums, but I find this debut to be the most consistent although certain later individual songs are stronger. At the time of this release, Timbuk 3 were the husband and wife team of Pat and Barbara McDonald. Pat played guitar and harmonic while Barbara played bass or guitar. The unofficial third member of the group was the boombox with drum loops. For their live shows, for example, Pat would place the boombox on a stool on the stage of the Hole in the Wall, a burger joint on the Drag next to the University of Texas, and he and Barbara would swap out cassettes depending on the song they wanted to play. (They would later expand to an actual four piece with a rhythm guitar and drummer.)

Greetings from Timbuk 3 captured perfectly the quirky and unconventional arrangements fostered by being a two-piece trying to sound larger (think They Might Be Giants). The opening one hit, signifying its difference from the run of the mill with the opening funky guitar and harmonic, then the nasally voice of Pat singing, "I study nuclear science / I love my classes / I've got a crazy teacher / He wears dark glasses." Personally, the song appeals to me as much for the intertwined voices of Pat and Barbara (recalling some kind of 80s indie Fleetwood Mac) as the implied sarcasm (or is it understated irony) of the lyrics. Like the Mac, each song features the harmonies of a male and female singer, with one voice taking a slight lead.

The album switches between the goofy ("Hairstyles and Attitudes"), the serious ("I Love You in the Strangest Ways"), and the indescribable ("Facts About Cats"). But all of the songs have infectious melodies on the order of "The Future's So Bright," albeit neither vocalist has a strong or soothing voice, typically sounding more like Stan Ridgway and Exene Cervenka than Elvis Presley and Karen Carpenter. What then becomes the focus is the lyrics, which, even in the love songs, are clever and surprising. For example, in the song "Just Another Movie," Pat sings:

"Presidential elections are planned distractions
To divert attention from the action behind the scenes
Like a game of chess when the house is a mess
Or a petty money squabble when your marriage is in trouble
Or a football game when there's rioting in the streets"

I'm sure some of why I like this album is its Austin routes. But the main reason it appeals to me is its strange blend of cynicism and humor and the egalitarian union of male and female. It's an album that reflects me, my beliefs and style, and that proves it irrestible.

As music lovers, we all have certain styles or similarities that mark our musical tastes. This was illustrated for me recently when my friend Steve made me a mixed CD that was heavy on multi-part harmony, something I'm not sure Steve even realized when he was selecting favorites to include, but which makes sense as Steve himself is a bass in a local a cappella group called BlueLine. My wife, although she jokes that the only musical instrument she can play is the radio, tends to favor songs that feature a solo piano and even fell for my poor keyboard skills when we were courting. I personally love music with horns, possibly a result of my high school band days when I played both the baritone and trombone. While I like plenty of songs without a brass section, that sound will likely make me pay closer attention to it.

Not every song on Michelle Shocked's Captain Swing has horns, but those that do are my favorite moments on this album and also responsible for making this my favorite Shocked album, although I also quite like Short Sharp Shocked and Arkansas Traveler. The inclusion of a brass section also underscores how much of a metamorphoses Shocked went through on her first three albums, from the recorded-on-a-Walkman (and basically released without her permission) The Texas Campfire Tapes to this multitrack, multi-instrument album. That first album, where one can even sometimes hear crickets in the background, was just Shocked's voice and her guitar, recorded live during the Kerrville Folk Festival. Her second album didn't add much in the way of instruments, but Short Sharp Shocked was made in a studio with multiple takes that smoothed out imperfections while maintaining her intimate style. For Captain Swing, the pendulum had swung all the way over into lush production although not so much that it overshadows Shocked's clever songwriting, but does transform her at least somewhat from the doyenne of the piney woods past the "skateboarding punk rocker" into a folky k.d. lang-inspired torch singer.

The theme is swing and Shocked is catholic in how she applies it to her songs. She transforms her earlier composition, "(Don't You Mess With) My Little Sister," into a hard-rocking set piece of Bakersfield that wouldn't be out of place on a Dwight Yoakam album. "It Must Be Luff" comes straight out of a dance hall of Basin Street, New Orleans with its combination of tuba bass rhythym, slightly out-of-tune jangly piano, and slide-and-muted trombone. Shocked anticipated the big band revival with "God is a Real Estate Developer," "Too Little Too Late" and "Sleep Keeps Me Awake," while "On the Greener Side" and "Silent Ways" highlight the fast and slow moods of Texas swing. The cool later jazz stylings that combined Glenn Miller with Duke Ellington can be found in "The Cement Lament," with some of the best clarinets you'll ever hear in a rock song; "Streetcorner Ambassador" even makes a play for a modified Miles Davis BeBop groove with its muted trumpet solo and cool jazz rhythm. Even "Looks Like Mona Lisa," where the horns are replaced by a plaintive string part, has at its core a swing bass rhythm part.

The subject of the songs match her earlier albums, though: concerns about the homeless and the inner city, memories of growing up in small towns, and satirical takes on life. But more than anything, these songs have a sense of fun to them that was sometimes missing in those first two albums. They are fast and bouncy and funny at times, sometimes so much that you miss the serious message of some of the lyrics. Shocked duplicated some of this chemistry in her next album, Arkansas Traveller, although the musical theme there was less interesting to me as it was based on bluegrass instead of swing.

When my mother was in high school she joined the record club where they automatically sent you that month's selection unless you told them not to by sending back the selection card saying 'not this month.' Because of this, when I was growing up there was a strange melange of records in our home: Elvis Presley, the Ventures, John D. Loudermilk, Bobbi Gentry, Homer and Jethro, and the Kingston Trio. I listened to every one of them, and some so much that they have left catchphrases in my vocabulary that can be traced directly to certain recordings.

The two live albums in the collection were most responsible for this, not solely for the bits where the artists chat with audience, but because they come from the era of intimate settings when you could actually experience the camaraderie of the performers (something MTV's Unplugged and VH1's Storytellers series tried to recapture). From Homer and Jethro at the Country Club I picked up sayings like, "You're blackballed! Put on your shoes and go!" long before I understood the sorry history of racism and elitism that the two, supposed, hicks were playing on in their club setting and "You don't look mad," right after badgering someone into anger and forcing them to admit their ire.

It's not too surprising that a comedy album might provide memorable lines, but the other major influence was The Kingston Trio's ...from the "Hungry i". From that album, I acquired, "You're all alone, you know," from the novelty tune "Zombie Jamboree," as well as some of the general cynicism of "Merry Minuet" best expressed in the line "...and I don't like anybody very much." Those two songs do represent the more humorous portions of the album and lend themselves to quotation, I admit.

For those not familiar with the Kingston Trio, they burst onto the music scene in the early 1950s with a coffee-house update to traditional folk music, paving the way for the folk-rock movement. (The faux trio, The Folksmen, from the recent mockumentary A Mighty Wind, is a parody of the Kingston Trio, matching their instruments, voices and musical style if not their lives.) Prior to this live album, they had released two albums and had a major radio hit ("Tom Dooley"), but those studio albums just don't do justice to their easy camaraderie onstage and their imprompto musicianship, which does come through in this recording.

Unlike modern live albums, which tend to showcase the band's hits, every song here had yet to appear on a Kingston Trio album, although some are traditional songs ("When the Saints Go Marching In"). Most of the songs are taken from the pre-Dylan folk idea, where ancient texts or melodies were updated. Songs like "Wimoweh" (aka "The Lion Sleeps Tonight") and "Gue, Gue" are modern adaptations of African and French folk songs, respectively. The songs switch between light-hearted, amusing songs such as the opener, "Tic, Tic, Tic," the up-tempo "New York Girls" and the aforementioned "Zombie Jamboree" to the morose story-song like "South Coast" and the biblically-inspired "Dorie." My favorite song on here is the haunting "They Call the Wind Maria," with its fascinating opening lyric, "Way out here they have a name / for rain and wind and fire / the rain is Tess, the fire is Joe / and they call the wind Maria."

Unlike other, more popular albums from the late 1950s, ...from the "Hungry i" doesn't sound very dated at all, although other Trio albums from the time period do due to the production. There's something timeless, however, about three guys on a stage with acoustic instruments and great harmonies, a trend that popular music has embraced in each decade since the Kingston Trio's heyday, from Crosby, Stills and Nash to last year's Thorns.

Like many others, I once imagined a world where I was a famous rock star. In high school I wrote songs at the permanently out-of-tune upright piano and Casio keyboard my parents had purchased for me. I even joined a band for a brief shining moment (one 'gig' only). But most of my music career was in my imagination, which I indulged by crafting an entire persona complete with transparent pseudonym (Gil Chase), a wish-fulfillment history and albums complete with titles, tracklists and lyrics. At one point in college, I attempted to turn it all into a short story.

I am not unusual in this, as the allure of fictional rock bands has nearly become a sub-genre in fiction, including books such as Iain Banks' Espedair Street, George R.R. Martin's The Armageddon Rag, and Roddy Doyle's The Commitments and movies such as Alan Parker's adaptation of Doyle's novel and Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous. Although the real stories of rock bands have plenty of drama, an entirely fictitious creation allows the author to emphasize a particular theme that history might obscure.

Such is the case with Lewis Shiner's Say Goodbye, a meticuously crafted fiction about a female rocker in the mold of Sheryl Crow or Edie Brickell. Shiner, who had previously shown a deep understanding and connection to the music world in his award-winning previous novel, Glimpses, creates his star, Laurie Moss, out of his own small-town Texas experiences and dreams while also distancing himself from the subject by a gender-switch thinly veiled stand-in jounalist narrator. The supporting band cast are convincingly individuals and not just foils to Laurie.

While the main plot centers on Laurie's LA musical experience, from opening act in small bars and waitressing in coffee shops through a finished debut album and first tour, it is the framing tale of the narrator's search for the woman behind that song he heard on the radio that has a kind of revealing pathos for those of us for whom music is life-affecting. The book has two climaxes--one for Laurie and one for the narrator--both of which are not exactly the neat little endings of dreams but the bittersweet half-conclusions of life.

Reading Shiner's in-progress auto-biographical essay at his website fleshes in some of the details of the lives of all his characters. While not necessary to enjoy the novel, the essay provides a rare glimpse behind the art, like knowing that Sting was a high school teacher before becoming the leader of the Police and singing about a "young teacher the subject / of schoolgirl fantasy." Like much of the best art, Say Goodbye comes from Shiner's real experiences, filtered into order and meaning from which the reader can obtain much more than a simple story or song. This is the kind of book that makes you as interested in the person behind it (hence my visit to his web site and his essay), although at the same time it warns you about creating false pictures of that person based on your own hopes and dreams.

I feel the need to throw in a final comment as a disclaimer: I know Lew Shiner, having spent time discussing writing with him both as a student and a peer, as well as drinking a beer or two with him. Even though I haven't talked to him in years, I count him as an acquaintance and quite possibly a friend. I do not feel this colours my impression of this book, although it might be why I found the things not written as interesting as the things present in the text.

I finished this book over a month ago, and have not been able to formulate my thoughts on it, because I didn't really care for it, but I can't pin down why. It's not badly written at all, and it has some interesting ideas, but there's nothing truly outlandish about it all--it's speculation about, at most, ten or twenty years from now--and the plot and characters seem unadorned. This is, of course, in comparison to William Gibson's earliest books, the more pyrotechnic Neuromancer or Mona Lisa Overdrive. The stylistic quirk of this novel, the oh-so-first-person, seems too studied and not organic or flashy, as it often broke me out of the fourth wall of the novel, reminding me that I was indeed reading and not experiencing.

To me, Gibson is like a rock musician who's left his blues roots and has taken to dabbling in classical music. While it may be rewarding for him, and even some of his dedicated fans, others are a little bewildered by his change, including me. Gibson's peer, Bruce Sterling, has been able to do his dabbling on the side, but still release every now and then a work that recalls his original stuff, albeit in a more mature style. I'm of the opinion that Gibson, instead, has thrown out the mirrorshades with the virtual world, leaving something basic, just not as appealing. Your mileage may vary, and I've not written Gibson off yet. At least, compared to some musicians and authors, he is trying to still challenge himself.

My memories of Friday nights when I was in high school center around two things: playing in the band at football games and watching late night TV while eating a much-delayed dinner afterwards. In the early part of the 1980s, the show that I tuned in was Wolfman Jack's Midnight Special, where I was first exposed to the music video form, since we lived outside of town and didn't have MTV. I recall seeing Nick Lowe's "Cruel to Be Kind," Elvis Costello's "Accidents Will Happen," Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," Alice Cooper's "How You Gonna See Me Now," and Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House." These songs were staples of rock radio, even if the artists weren't, and the video portion did exactly what it was supposed to: increase my interest in the artist.

I didn't buy Speaking in Tongues until 1985, when most others had already moved on to other, newer, albums. But I was commuting back-and-forth between my home in Gatesville and community college in Killeen, a trip of roughly 40 minutes, and my soundtrack for that commute quickly became this album by Talking Heads which I had found in a used cassette store outside the local army base, Ft. Hood.

Why this album? A combination of circumstances surrounded it, making it appropos of the moment. I was living at home and attending Central Texas College because I had flunked out of the University of Texas at Austin, and the white-guy funk of David Byrne somehow matched the awkwardness of my situation, while being bouncy enough to keep my spirits up on that depressing commute, taking my mind off my failure and uncertain future. The fact that the lyrics of this album are an associative mass rather than a logical series allowed me to connect every song to my personal situation.

I can recall as if it were yesterday putting the steering wheel of a Ford Escort in my hands, bouncing in my seat as I sing-a-long with Byrne. From the gospelish chorus of "Swamp" to the infectious beat and call-and-response of "Slippery People," I would join in on each song, probably surprising a number of the pickups that passed me by with my spasmodic renditions of Bryne's stage moves.

And then there's that last song, a paeon to the comfort of home. Byrne sings, "Home is where I want to be, but I guess I'm already there" perfectly captured my confusion of appreciating that I had this generous spot to fall-back on while at the same time wanting to be somewhere else (a home of my own, not one made by my parents). The song always seemed to be playing as I drove up the hill to the house, too. It, and the other songs on this album, never fail to take me back to that time, even now that I've moved far from that home. But then, isn't that one of the functions of music?

Living in Washington, D.C. has, of course, made me much more aware of politics, although there's something about getting older that has something to do with it as well. Browsing the video store racks the other day brought up this classic, which neither of us had seen, although I had tried to catch it at the AFI Silver Theater last year.

Labeled as film-noir, The Manchurian Candidate is actually a bit of science-fiction, albeit of the psychological/sociological 1970s type rather than the 1950s/1980s big idea type or the 1980s/1990s we're all living in the grimy future type. Laurence Havey plays Raymond Shaw, a stuck-up sticky-beat of a 'Nam Sergeant, whose company dislikes him, even his second in command, Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra). But when Shaw brings in most of his company from deep behind enemy lines, Marco puts Shaw up for the Congressional Medal of Honor. His homecoming is greeted with fanfare, as much choreographed by his mother for her own purposes of keeping Shaw's stepfather in the limelight as he's up for re-election to the Senate next year. But something's wrong, because Marco's having nightmares about that time spent behind enemy lines, and it may have something to do with Shaw.

To write anything more about the plot is to give some of the mystery away, and while it's not that hard to figure out by modern audiences, now blaise from the trickery of more recent films like L.A. Confidential, The Usual Suspects, and Memento, it works toward a solid conclusion with some nice twists along the way. There's a bit of a red herring involved in a sudden and strange romance for the main character, but the writer remains honest with the audience for the most part. Everyone sweats a lot here: Sinatra actually can act, and Angela Lansbury gives one of the best performances as the grasping mother that puts Joan Crawford to shame.

I see from the Internet Movie Database that Jonathan Demme is remaking this movie, with Denzel Washington in the Sinatra role and Meryl Streep as Shaw's mother. I hope it's not a straight remake and that the new film plays upon the deeper cynicism that we have today. This 1962 version made a strong statement about McCarthyism; perhaps a 2004 remake could point out some of the similar neoconservative, "Patriot Act," flaws?

Bend It Like Beckham is a thorougly entertaining movie about Jess, a girl who just wants to play football while her parents want her to be a traditional Indian girl and marry a nice Indian boy. While playing football in the park with her guy friends, Jess is approached by Juliet, a caucasian girl who plays for a girl's team and thinks Jess would be a good addition. This sets up the familiar plot where young child tries to follow her dream, gets in trouble with the parents, before a successful conclusion of all the plot threads.

Although there's nothing new in the plot of this story, it's the ethnographic details and the extreme likability of the actors that makes this film a joy to watch. Aside from the obvious gender-switching (girl playing sports), the setting (London) and the family (traditional Indian), there's a number of small touches that raise the movie above what could have been simplistic Disney fare, such as Juliet and her not-quite-similar situation where her father supports her while her mother doesn't and the young Irish male coach with another dissimilar home situation in which the father supported him too much. It's as if you get a cross-section of the possibilities of parent-child relationship, to compare and contrast and realize that for all their differences, it still comes down to the need for the child to make his or her own way in the world.

Like another ethnic take on a traditional theme, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Bend It Like Beckham succeeds because it reveals that while the food, dress, or customs may be different, parents are parents and children are children. It also provides an amusing glimpse into that other culture and helps us all realize that, underneath it all, we have the same concerns as each other.

Look to Windward is the seventh book in Banks' science fiction universe based on a utopian society of advanced artificial intelligences and the humans (and other organic life forms) that originally created them, loosely termed the Culture. With each book, Banks has built his plots out of the interstitial area where the idea of this utopia fails, typically in its dealings with other, different societies, through its para-military/intelligence arm called Special Circumstances. This time, the Culture has interferred in the "advancement" of another society, failing miserably, and then must deal with the diplomatic fallout from their actions. That the other society, the Chelgria was a predator-based race with a rigid class structure and a warlike demeanor, makes this all the more difficult.

On this backdrop is placed several interesting characters: the Chelgrian Ziller, a composer who has ex-patriated himself because of his support for the rebels who attempted to overthrow the class structure, and wishes to have nothing to do with his old society or race; the Chelgrian emissary, Quinlan, whose despair over losing his wife in the war between the traditionalists and the rebels will drive him to commit the unthinkable; and the orbital Mind known as Masaq', who has hosted Ziller for years and asked the composer to create a new symphony based on the fading light of two suns--suns that went nova two thousand years ago when Masaq', as a warship, set off a chain reaction that destroyed them and the two orbitals around them.

As in his other novels, this one has several storylines to follow that eventually come together by the climax. Each storyline is given its own chapters, which some people find difficult to follow but I've always enjoyed, although it makes keeping track of the story much more difficult when the time spent reading the book occurs over weeks rather than hours.

It's not that Banks brings anything new to science fiction in his Culture novels; even the Culture itself can be found by looking at some mixture of Cordwainer Smith and Isaac Asimov. His ideas are culled from the classics as well, as in this book the orbital is roughly Larry Niven's "ringworld" mixed with John Varley's world-mind Gaea from his Titan trilogy. But what Banks can do better than those four, and a host of other published SF writers, is create believable characters whose motivations mesh with the unlikely locations and situations he sets for them. There's a reason why this type of SF is called space opera, but in Banks' hands it refers not to the televised soap operas but the sturm und drang of classical music. Yes, there are exaggerations here, but when a Banks' character has amnesia, it becomes a thematic device, not just a crutch to get you from one chapter to the next.

Although both emerged from similar roots, the cross-pollination of rock and jazz is fairly limited. There's the heavy horns of 70s groups Chicago, Tower of Power, and Blood, Sweat and Tears; the cool jazz fusion of Steely Dan; and the modern mix-it-up hip-hop of Us3. The only other jazz-influenced rock artist to make much of a name for himself in the general public is Bruce Hornsby, who combines the better aspects of jazz-lounge piano (like Dave Grusin or Keith Jarrett) with the folk-rock sound of Jackson Brown and James Taylor.

After his debut with the massive hit, "The Way It Is" (from the album of the same name), Hornsby has released successive albums that build upon the formula that worked for him so well in that first single: a rock rhythm section with a standout piano that takes both the melodic part and also adds the gracenotes to the lyrical lines (think of how "The Way It Is" has the three-note-three-note touches after the line, then switches to taking on the full melody between chorus and verses).

For me, Hornsby's best album to date is not that first one, but 1993's Harbor Lights. The jazz solos are much longer, and stronger, than on previous releases ("China Doll"), while the folky lyrics of philosophical musings have a touch more poeticism ("Fields of Grey," "The Tide Will Rise"). The best songs, though, are the ones that reveal Hornsby's funky side, like the horn-laced chorus of "Rainbow's Cadillac" (complete with wonderful backing vocals by Bonnie Raitt) and the infectious rhythmic drum on "What a Time." My favorite song is "Talk of the Town," about a mixed-race couple in a small town told in the first person with a medium speed, yet driving drum track.

If your only exposure to Hornsby has been his 80s hits, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by this album, by his increasing musicianship, and the maturity of his lyrics. This isn't teeny-bopper pop, but truly adult alternative music.