I'm uninformed about authors and their music preferences, but
Brian Long's
note prompts me to mention a possible thread I've been
thinking about. As a
followup to my note about hard-boiled non-fiction, I've been
considering
hard-boiled music. (Why do I pursue these weird themes? I
dunno. It's in my
nature, I guess. My wife would simply roll her eyes and say
I'm goofy.)
Side-stepping the whole gangsta rap scene, which I basically
know nothing
about, we can all probably find a variety of jazz works --
including plenty
of standards -- that have some sort of hard-boiled
association. The first
that pops to my mind is "Harlem Nocturne," which has so
effectively served
as the theme music to the Mike Hammer TV series. But to stray
from jazz a
bit, I've been mulling over various pop and rock songs and
musicians that
fit the hard-boiled mold.
This is a bit tricky. For example, "Mack the Knife" comes to
mind
immediately as a likely candidate, but the versions by Bobby
Darrin and
Frank Sinatra that I've heard are so jaunty, I think more of
Damon Runyon
than Dashell Hammet.
Likewise, some songs by British writer/performer Robyn
Hitchcock have
hard-boiled elements -- "My Wife and My Dead Wife" and "The
Veins of the
Queen," for instance -- but the performance by Hitchcock and
his band, The
Egyptians, turns these tunes into black humor ("humour," I
suppose, for the
Brits), veering away from the hard-boiled world.
More on-target are a number of songs by Warren Zevon, best
known for
"Werewolves of London." More recently, on his album MUTINEER,
Zevon
featured a song titled "Rottweiler Blues," co-written by Carl
Hiaasen. The
narrator keeps "a Glock in the bedside table, a Kevlar vest
for trips to
the store. . . He'll be mauling with intent to maim/Don't
knock on the door
if you don't know my rottweiler's name." I think Hiaasen
co-wrote another
song on the album, "Seminole Bingo."
On the album MR. BAD EXAMPLE, the narrator of the title track
starts small
-- operating from his father's carpet store, he womanizes
various
housewives and auctions off customer's furniture -- moves
into bigger cons
until he goes international -- pauperizing Aboriginals
working his
Australian opal mines. Elsewhere, in "Angel Dressed In
Black," the song
describes a self-deluding loser's love for his drug-pushing
junkie
girlfriend.
There are others, but this note has gone long enough. If this
post
generates any interest, I'll mention others. I'd like to
see
recommendations by other folks on the list. -- Duane
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