1. The Wire Temple.

2. Somebody dies tonight.

3. Dawn of (Wo)man.

4. One small step.

5. Sacred text.

6. High note.

7. Belle of the ball.

8. The good life.

9. London calling.

10. Don’t look down.

11. Crystal palace.

12. Welcome home.

13. I prefer “gabacho.”

14. Late bloomer.

15. Night of the comet.

16. Before the betrayal.

17. Founder mode.

18. Peekaboo.

19. “I met a traveller from an ancient land…”

20. Serial killer rest stop.

21. Full mast.

22. War is over.

23. Goodbye cruel world.

Postscript

This was my tenth visit to Houston, though the first without any particular goal in mind. Originally I was going to listen to a Beethoven recital at Jones Hall, but the performer fell ill and the concert was canceled. I received the message before I left Austin, yet decided to go anyway, because what is better than to get lost amid the strip malls, to discover new wrong turns and dead ends, to ride the rings of Saturn? Houston is unknowable and will remain so until the heat death of the universe. And yet, from time to time, I am compelled to grapple with its mysteries. The deeper I go, the less I know. And then I am engulfed.

In 1716, Thomas Pellow, a boy of eleven from Penryn, Cornwall, pleaded with his parents that he be released from the tedium of school so he could go to sea. Although they thought it better that he continue his education, they eventually gave in, and Fellow joined the crew of the good ship Francis as a cabin boy, serving under his uncle John, the ship’s captain. However just as his nautical career was getting started it came to an abrupt end as Pellow, his uncle, and some 50 sailors were captured at sea by Barbary pirates and taken to Morocco to be sold in a slave market.

Pellow was one of an estimated 1.25 million Europeans who were enslaved between 1500 and 1800. In those days, corsairs would attack ships and raid towns and villages up and down the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, even venturing as far afield as Reykjavik, Iceland. In 1575, the great Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes was captured and taken to Algiers where he was held as a slave for five years, until some friars paid his ransom. In 1801, the newly independent United States of America fought its first major war against the Barbary pirates who had taken to enslaving U.S. merchants, now that they sailed without the protection of the British navy. This conflict lasted until 1805, and was followed by a sequel in 1815. The white slave trade went into drastic decline after an Anglo-Dutch assault on the Ottoman province of Algiers in 1816, but persisted until 1830, when the French conquest put an end to the surviving pirate strongholds.

The vast majority of slaves never returned home. Pellow, however, did — although it took him some time. After being sold to the sultan Moulay Ismail he served in the royal court, and then as a soldier in the imperial army where he helped suppress multiple revolts against the tyrant. Finally, after 23 years in captivity he escaped by boat and made his way back to England.

Upon Pellow’s return he wrote a memoir, which today serves as a major source not only for our understanding of white slavery but also of the texture of life in 18th century Morocco. When I read historical memoirs, however, I am especially drawn to the digressions and anecdotes that provide glimpses of people, customs and places that have otherwise completely vanished from history. I have extracted a few of my favorites from Pellow’s memoir and edited them into a series of postcards which I present here for your edification, delight and — possibly — horror. For the most part I reproduce Pellow’s words verbatim, but as his memoir was produced in collaboration with a Grub Street hack it is no masterpiece of English prose. In service of clarity I have therefore done some light editing for clarity and flow.

Arrival

We were all, in number fifty-two, taken out and sent prisoners to Mequinez; some being put on mules, some on asses, and some on horses. We travelled the first day to Lorshia, being obliged in our way hither to pass through the woods of Sallee, which were plentifully stored with most stately timber trees, of oaks, and vast quantities of wild hogs, lions, tigers, and many other dangerous creatures. The second day to the River Teffifille, though by some called Teliffla, in the province of Wolelsager; the third to Darmulsultan; and the fourth about sunrising (it being about three miles’ travel into Mequinez), all the way lodging in tents, as being in that part of the country the only habitations, and which are at the discretion of the people removed from one place to another.

A mile before we reached the city, we were commanded to get off our beasts and to take off our English shoes (that is to say, as many of us as had any), and to put on yellow pumps which were brought to us by the Moors for that purpose. At our entrance into the city we were met and surrounded by vast crowds of them, offering us the most vile insults, and they could scarce be restrained from knocking us on the head; and which I verily believe they would certainly have done had not the Emperor’s guards interposed. Yet even they could not, or at least would not, hinder them from pulling our hair, and giving us many severe boxes, calling us “Caffer Billa Oarosole,” which signified in English that we were “Hereticks,” and knew neither God nor Mahomet.

Becoming a Muslim

After some time, I was given by the Emperor to Muley Spha, one of his favourite sons (a sad villain). My business now, for some time, was to run from morning to night after his horse’s heels; during which he often prompted me to turn Moor, and told me, if I would, I should have a very fine horse to ride on, and I should live like one of his best esteemed friends. To which I used to reply, that this was the only command wherein I could not readily gratify him, for I was thoroughly resolved not to renounce my Christian faith, be the consequence what it would.

Then said he, in a most furious and haughty manner, “Prepare yourself for such torture as shall be inflicted on you, and the nature of your obstinacy deserves.” He committed me prisoner to one of his own rooms, keeping me there several months in irons, and every day most severely bastinading1 me, and furiously screaming in the Moorish language,” Shehed, Shehed! Cunmoora, Cunmoora! in English,” Turn Moor! turn Moor!” by holding up your finger.

And now is my accursed master still more and more enraged, and my tortures daily increasing; so that I was, through my severe scourging, every day in expectation of its being my last. But the Almighty did not then see it fit. My tortures were now exceedingly increased, burning my flesh off my bones by fire. I was at last constrained to submit, calling upon God to forgive me, who knows that I never gave the consent of the heart, though I seemingly yielded, by holding up my finger.

Source: The Wellcome Collection

The emperor’s wrath

The Emperor’s wrath is terrible, which the Christians have often felt. One day passing by a high wall on which they were at work, and being affronted that they did not keep time in their strokes, as he expects they should, he made his guards go up and throw them all off the wall, breaking their legs and arms, knocking them on the head in a miserable manner. Another time he ordered them to bury a man alive, and beat him down along with the mortar in the wall. Nor is the Emperor less cruel to the Moors, whom he’ll frequently command to be burnt, crucified, sawed in two, or dragged at a mule’s tail through the streets, till they are torn all to pieces.

In the year 1721, the Emperor dispatched, in the most cruel manner, Larbe Shott, a man of one of the best families in Barbary, being descended from the old Andalusian Moors. Part of the crime laid to his charge was for going out of his country, and living in Christendom considerable time, without the Emperor’s knowledge, and having been friendly himself with Christian women, and often been in liquor. He was also accused of being an unbeliever, and one of those who have invited the Spaniards to invade Barbary.

Early one morning he was carried before the Emperor, who commanded him to be sawed in two; upon which he was immediately carried to the place of execution, which is at one of the gates of the town. And there he was tied between two boards and sawed in two, beginning at the head and going downwards, till his body fell asunder. It would have remained there to be eaten by the dogs, had the Emperor not pardoned him. An extravagant custom, to pardon a man after he is dead! But unless he does so, nobody dares bury the body.

It was reported the next day after, that the Emperor dreamt Shott had appeared to him, and asked him, “What he had done to deserve such treatment?” telling him, “There would be a time when God would judge between them both.” This gave the Emperor so much concern, that he sent to the place of his execution for some of the dust his blood was spilt on, with which he rubbed himself all over as an atonement for his crime.

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How to scare a lion

I shall acquaint you by what means any going the road about their lawful occasions may best escape wild beasts.

First for the tiger, which I take to be by far the most dangerous creature, he generally lying near the roadside on his belly, with his legs under him in a proper posture for leaping. He is on his prey before it can well avoid him, which cannot be done at all, but by a due observance of what I am about to tell you.

Travellers in such countries must carry their eyes before their feet, whereby they may, before too nigh approach, the better discover the enemy. If they do not, they may repent it when too late. Having so discovered him, they must take their eyes instantly off him and continue to walk on their road, and if he is not hungry they are quite safe. Should they happen to make the least stand, and stare him in the face, it is a hundred to one if they escape with life.

The lion, on the other hand, shows himself boldly sitting on his breech with a very sour look in the road, about twenty or thirty paces before travellers. In this case, instead of walking on and keeping their eyes off him, they must stand still and stare him full in the face, hollowing at him and abusing him all they can; and for fear he may not understand English, in the language—if they can—of the country.

Upon this hollowing and staring at him, he gets on his legs, and, severely lashing his loins with his tail, walks from them, roaring after a terrible manner. He then sits himself down again in the road, about the distance of a mile or two, when both traveller and lion behave again in the same manner. After proving them thus a third time, the lion generally leaves them without interruption.

This I know to be true, having been obliged several times in my travels through the country to make the experiment.

An entrepreneur

We had with us in this expedition several blacks, and amongst them one (a very stout, active, cunning fellow) named Bushmough, a native of the Brazils, to whom one of the chief men amongst those Laurbs2 had a very great fancy, and was several times very desirous of buying him.

Bushmough asked me why I did not sell him. Sell you,’ replied I, ‘why so? No, no, Bushmough, by no means.’ ‘Foil,’ said he, ‘sell me for good gold and mutton, and you shall see I will be soon with you again.’

I sold him for twenty gold ducats and sixty sheep. And now is honest Bushmough about to depart with his new master, calling to me in Portuguese that I should not be under any the least doubt of his honour. For that if he could not, according to his inclinations, get off so soon as he intended, yet I might depend on his coming back so soon as he possibly could. Bushmough was gone for seven days, coming back to us again on the eighth, about day-break, mounted on one of his master’s best horses, calling to me to me to be let in.

I inquired of him the particulars of this comical adventure, first asking him what reception he had met with there. “Oh, very good, very good; I was used very courteously indeed, and wanted for nothing they had.” “Very well,” said I “but are you not afraid your old master will be soon here again to inquire after you?And how will you manage then?” To which he (walking on tip-toes laughing) told me “that he would leave that to me, and that if I should let him go, it might not be in his power to get his friends any more gold ducats or mutton.” I could not forbear laughing, no more than himself, I being really surprised to see the subtlety of the creature.

The next morning Bushmough himself brought me the news, running hastily, and saying to me in a soft, though pleasant manner, “My old master Laurb is come! My old master Laurb is come !”

“Very well,” said I. “And don’t you intend to go with him ?

“Oh no, no,” said he. “But you shall see (if you will suffer me to put on a rich dress and to mount a good horse) that I will ride out, and soon make him glad to depart again without me. Tell him that I am a very near relation to the Emperor.”

Therefore, to try his dexterity, he was soon rigged in a very rich dress, a turban on his head, a scimitar by his side, a lance in his right hand, and mounted on an exceeding fine horse richly accoutered. I, with some others of our people, rode out with Bushmough in the midst of us, appearing very grand, bold, and as unconcerned as you please.

The Laurb told me that he was come to inquire after the black that we had sold him about eight days ago; who was, he said, gone off in a base manner with his best horse and lance, and that he was seen riding that way.

“Indeed ! said I, in a seeming surprise; but how came you to let him go ? Certainly you must have used him very ill.”

No,” said he, “He had all the encouragement imaginable.”

“Oh, the rogue,” said I; “A most ungrateful base rogue! He knew better than to come here. I wish I could light on him, that I might make an example of the base villain, to the terror of all his countrymen.’

Bushmough was all this while close by the Laurb, whistling and behaving after the most unconcerned manner, though hearing and understanding our discourse on both sides perfectly well. When casting my eyes round, I soon found the Laurb had fixed his on Bushmough, muttering to himself that he thought him extremely like him. At which I asked him what was the matter; when he said aloud that the black riding the fine horse was very much like his, and that had it not been for his rich apparel, and grandeur of his fine horse and furniture, he should actually have concluded him to be the same.

Bushmough still keeping his countenance, without the least alteration of temper or behaviour, rode up and down by the Laurb as close as he could. When he seemingly agreed that it was not the same black, he asked if this one was to be sold.

Sold! said I. “Oh fie, what are you talking of ?

“Why,” said he, “What harm is in that ?

“He is a very near relation to one of the Emperor’s wives, and should he know what you said of him, he would no doubt be very angry with you. As he is a man extremely passionate in his nature, making no more of killing a man than looking him in the face, it might not only prove of very ill consequence to you, but it is even a hundred to one if he did not cut off your head!”

At which he seemed, and was, no doubt, in a very great hurry to be gone, and glad if he might depart in a whole skin, desiring me not to tell the Emperor’s cousin of his so scandalous opinion of him, bowing to him with the most profound reverence, and Bushmough behaving like the Emperor’s cousin indeed, not so much as giving him one nod in return, but in a scornful manner turned upon him his back.

I sold him again to two other masters.

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Four brothers

I being out in pursuit of some of those rebels, and straying a little from my party, in passing by an old ruined house I heard a most dismal groan, repeated in different accents. When stopping at the entrance, I was soon given to understand that there were four brothers (stout young men) lying on the floor, having all of them their hands and feet cut off, through the cruelty of their enemies of a neighbouring town. They humbly implored me to go to their father’s house and acquaint him with their fate. After they had given me directions, I went, found the house, and was in a little time back again with their father and mother, and with them sufficient help and light. At the entrance we found two of them already dead, and the other two almost ready to expire. However, they had time enough to tell them by whom they were thus used so that I was, to my very great satisfaction, freed from all suspicion of having any hand in it. Had they all died in my absence, I might very reasonably have lain under a very great one, and have been very innocently punished. And now are they all at work in removing the two surviving unhappy wretches; who, on their being moved, died also. Then I was courteously entreated by their father to go to his house; which, as thinking myself to be altogether unsafe till I had again joined my own party, I did not think fit to do; therefore I went directly in quest of them.

How to eat a camel

The Laurbs’ food is chiefly the flesh and milk of camels, as being of all others most in esteem with them, though sometimes they eat mutton, antelopes, and, in short, any other sort of flesh they can catch, as lions, tigers, ostriches, &c. The camels and sheep are tolerably well fleshed, which I think to be pretty strange, there being but here and there scarce anything of pasture to be seen. When the natives kill a camel, they make him first kneel down on his knees with his nose close to the sand, and then they cut his throat in that posture, always beginning to take off his skin from the bunch on his back (which is all fat) and so downwards. Then they cut him into small long pieces, drying all but what they reserve for present use by the wind and sun. Then it is hung up in their tents, and though it is not at all salted, yet will it, if kept dry, remain good for a long time. They are not very squeamish, generally (to save themselves the trouble of dressing) and eat it raw.

A mummy

After this skirmish we travelled on un-molested, I riding as often as I could alongside the old Laurb, asking him a great many questions, and particularly concerning his so wonderful and surprising knowledge in smelling the sand. To which he, after a most courteous manner, answered me that this was his thirtieth journey over this ocean, therefore in going and coming his sixtieth time.

One day as I was riding pretty near him, my camel happened with one of his feet to hit against something which sounded very hollow. He told me it was a mummy. “A mummy,” said I, “pray what is that ?” “It is,” said he, “a human corpse, which hath for some time lain buried in the sands, till through the excessive heat thereof it is dried to a kecks.” “Well, father,” said I, if I should be so lucky to light on another, I think I should have curiosity enough to take it up.”

Riding again the next day near the old man, he bade me to get off my camel, for his camel had with one of its feet struck against a mummy. By his directions, with the point of my sword I soon found it, and with a spade digged it up in a little time. It was as hard as a stock-fish, had all its limbs and flesh (though shrivelled) in their entirety, and all the teeth were firm in the gums. As to its being any way nauseous, a man might without offence have even carried it in his bosom.

After this, we travelled on till we safely arrived at Tedlah, where we found Muley Abdallah waiting our coming, diverting the time in plundering the country, and murdering his subjects.

Postscript

…and with that we take our leave of Thomas Pellow. Interested parties are directed to his memoir, which is available for free on the Internet Archive (you can also buy it from various print-on-demand merchants on Amazon). Giles Milton also used Pellow’s story as the narrative center of White Gold, his book on the history of North Africa’s European slaves, though I haven’t read it myself. Finally, if you would like to read some postcards from other lost worlds, the link below will take you to my edit of sections of Xenophon’s Anabasis.

Greetings

Is it that time again? Yes it’s that time again. Or, as Jon Anderson from Yes once sang: “Cause it’s time, it’s time in time with your time and its news is captured for the queen to use”. No, I’m not sure what that means either. But enough of this shilly-shallying. Let’s get down to it, shall we?

• Chuck and Me

• Prog Odyssey 2026

• Pop-up Incal

• Steven S…

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1. We used to be a proper country.

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Greetings

Well if it isn’t that time again. Coming up:

• Is it wrong to enjoy Limp Bizkit?

• The man who read the dictionary

• Word up

• Reviews in brief: Mystery Train and All My Cats

• Black Moses sings The Carpenters

  Thus Spake Daniel Kalder is a reader-supported guide to the abyss that gazes also into you. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becomin…

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Avvakum’s Exile in Siberia (1898) by Sergei Miloradovich

Many years ago a friend made one of the most perceptive comments I have ever heard about Russian writers. “Yeah,” he said, “they’re profound and all that. But they’re also incredibly hard. I mean, there’s Pushkin: died in a duel. Lermontov: died in a duel. Tolstoy: fought in the Caucasus. Dostoevs…

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Warning: this essay contains spoilers, but the works under discussion are rubbish so don’t worry about it.

Shortly before Christmas I stepped out of my car in a wonky way, spraining a muscle in my foot. Although I was at first annoyed, I soon realized that this injury removed any obligation to do much running around over the festive season. So, as soon a…

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1. Hi how are you

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Greetings

Where does the time go? One minute Colonel Sanders is alive and dropping some hot wax featuring his favorite Christmas songs, the next he’s been dead for 45 years and young people don’t even know he was a real person, let alone a man who loved Christmas. Yet there he is, beaming with happiness, holding up what looks suspiciously like a bucket o…

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I was awestruck at Nelson’s indefatigability and sustained creativity. What does music by a 90-year-old sound like? I wondered. It turned out that A Beautiful Time sounded exactly like a Willie Nelson record, albeit with added grain in the voice and a heightened focus on mortality. In songs like “I Don’t Go to Funerals” Nelson made it clear that he knew he couldn’t go on forever, but he was going to die trying.

This led me to think of other megafauna of popular song who have been fixtures of our lives for so long. It used to be that a “dinosaur” was a rock star in his forties; now, we have grown accustomed to septuagenarian and even octogenarian legacy acts who are “on tour forever”. When playing live, they stick to the hits. But some, such as Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney, follow Willie’s lead and continue to release new music, even if it rarely makes the setlists.

What were these old folk singing about? They had lived extraordinary lives during a period of radical social and cultural change. Perhaps they had something to teach me. I decided to make a systematic study of their music and find out.

My original plan was to draw up a list of records made by anyone who had reached retirement age. These days, however, everyone from Madonna (67) to Phil Oakey from The Human League (70) qualifies for a bus pass so to keep things manageable I raised the qualifying age to 77. Partly this was in reference to the “27 club” of stars such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison who burned bright and died young, but also because 77 is a point at which the reality of aging becomes undeniable. To keep creating and performing in the face of accelerating frailty is itself an achievement, regardless of whether the music is any good.

Unfortunately, this eliminated the exceptional records Johnny Cash made with Rick Rubin at the end of his career, which set the standard for popular music made in the shadow of mortality. Cash was a mere 61 years old when he released the first of those LPs, and only 71 when he died, a decade later. I decided instead to start with the equally legendary Bob Dylan, who has released two albums since turning 77 in 2018: Rough and Rowdy Ways, a collection of new songs, and Shadow Kingdom, reinterpretations of classics.

Rough and Rowdy Ways had some good tracks; I especially enjoyed “Mother of Muses”, a humble invocation to the creative spirit from a man who had written hundreds of songs and was unsure how many were left in him. But it also contained “Murder Most Foul”, an interminable dirge about JFK that demonstrated for the umpteenth time that it is long past time to put the 1960s to bed once and for all. Shadow Kingdom was extremely dull, though maybe if I had known the originals better I would have appreciated the old man versions more (I am at best a casual Dylan listener). Both records demonstrated that Dylan had the advantage that, as a folk singer, he could draw upon traditional American musical styles like blues and jazz that had no intrinsic association with youth, so there was nothing jarring about the thought of him continuing into his 80s. Like Willie Nelson, he leaned into the aging in his voice to add poignancy to his performances.

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Next I turned my attention to that other living monument from the 1960s, Paul McCartney. McCartney III, released when he was 78, was a pandemic project. Holed up in his studio, he had played every instrument on the record himself. At first I quite liked it. The tracks were for the most part upbeat and lively, although they sounded more like exercises in song construction than actual acts of self-expression. Things deteriorated about half through on a “joke” track about a gold digger called “Lavatory Lil” that was at least as bad as anything he had ever done, including the one with the frogs in it. Curiously, McCartney’s many years on this earth did not appear to have left him with much to say about anything; or if he did, he wasn’t putting any of it into a song. He had more insight into the human experience in his 20s when he wrote “Eleanor Rigby”. The lyrics left no impression, certainly there was nothing that came within a thousand miles of the image of Father McKenzie “writing a sermon that no-one will hear”, or the face left in a jar. On the other hand, I was impressed at how sonically forward looking McCartney’s record was in comparison to Dylan’s retro stylings, until I realized that it, too, was in its own way rooted in the past. The Beatles had pioneered the idea of the studio as instrument, while McCartney had twice before made records where he played every part: McCartney and McCartney II. But maybe there is no way around that when you’ve been recording music for more than sixty years?

The past lay heavy on Kris Kristofferson’s The Cedar Creek Sessions, a collection of stripped-down reinterpretations of songs from his back catalogue released five days before his 80^th birthday; and it was almost as overwhelming on Loretta Lynn’s Wouldn’t It Be Great? which mixed a handful of new songs with classics from her career, released when she was 86. Van Morrison, meanwhile, had succumbed to nostalgia entirely. At age 77 he put out an album of the skiffle music he had enjoyed as a teenager, then followed it up with an album of early rock n’ roll covers, Accentuate the Positive, a year later.

By contrast, Paul Simon’s Seven Psalms, released when he was 81, was a collection of new songs. Like Dylan’s late period work, it drew upon classic American styles, such as folk, blues and jazz, but it took these influences into strange territory. The record was a mystical rumination on God, love, forgiveness and death, inspired by a dream and the Biblical book of Psalms. Insofar as I was looking for messages from the end of life, it was exactly the sort of record I hoped existed, though it was so internal and personal I thought it might be a few decades before I could understand it, if I ever did.

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The ranks of the 77 club were larger than I had anticipated. I discovered that Ron Carter, who played double bass in Miles Davis’ second quintet, was still going strong in his late 80s and had released several records of retro jazz, while John McLaughlin, who joined Davis’ group during his fusion period, was putting out new music that featured a high degree of guitar gymnastics, even as he was pushing 80. I discovered records made by the legendary bluesman John Lee Hooker in the 1990s, and a totally superfluous album Jerry Lee Lewis had released before he died, revisiting his early work with neither energy nor enthusiasm.

After a while, all the looking backwards got to be a bit suffocating. I also noticed that (John McLaughlin notwithstanding), the older you got, the slower you played: listening to the 77 club was a bit like getting stuck behind a particularly cautious pensioner in the slow lane. Besides that, the music suffered from a surfeit of nothing left to prove. These artists were not competing with their younger selves: they had written their hits, made their money, perhaps even helped define an era, and now they were making music because they felt like it. More power to them, but I missed the hunger of youth that gave their early records such potency.

Consequently, Dolly Parton’s Rock Star, was strangely refreshing. As a collection of classic rock songs featuring superannuated guest vocalists such as Rob Halford of Judas Priest and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, it too looked backwards. Yet it was not something she had ever done before, and as an overtly commercial product designed to give the young whippersnappers ruling the charts a run for their money, it was a genuinely ambitious project. And it worked: Rock Star entered the Billboard 200 at number three, making it Dolly’s highest charting album ever. By no means was it any good — you might even say it was terrible — but I appreciated Rock Star nonetheless because she was clearly having fun and there was still joy in her voice (even when she was singing about how much she hated herself). Also, she was still capable of doing fast songs; the bright and energetic production was refreshing after so much rootsy plodding along.

The Rolling Stones’ Hackney Diamonds was even more ambitious. Like Rock Star, it was an overtly commercial product; Mick and Keith had not released a record of original material in 18 years and didn’t need to, having settled into an extremely lucrative twilight touring their greatest hits. Returning to the fray, they obviously felt that they had something to prove. The record adhered closely to the template of their late 60s/early 70s peak to such an extent that it almost sounded like a pastiche of themselves — but its energy was undeniable, and I enjoyed it more than I expected. It wasn’t an essential record, but it wasn’t bad either, and it had better hooks than anything they had done since Some Girls in 1978. Like Dolly, they were rewarded for their ambition: Hackney Diamonds also debuted at number three in the Billboard 200, and topped the charts in the UK.

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We place a high value on innovation in Western culture, and many members of the 77 club were once revered as trailblazers. As should be clear by now, however, for most of them that was all in the past. Paul McCartney’s ears at least were still open; he had handed off McCartney III to younger musicians to “reimagine” the record, but he was not the one weaving electronica into the tracks.

There were exceptions, however. John Cale, who was responsible for all the avant-garde aspects of the Velvet Underground, puts out records that sound nothing like the ones he made as a younger man, featuring sounds and styles such as hip hop beats, loops and electronica that he first started experimenting with in his 60s (there are no hip hop or techno legends in the 77 club; none of them are old enough, though Karl Hyde of Underworld is 68 so grandpa rave music is already a thing). Indeed, Mercy, released when he was 81, sounded a little too much as though it had been composed and performed in-computer to me; I found myself wishing he would scrape on his viola for a bit, or mess around with guitar feedback. Meanwhile, on The Source, the Nigerian-Ghanaian drummer Tony Allen who rose to prominence as Fela Kuti’s band leader in the 1970s, fused Parisian jazz with Afrobeat rhythms, taking an old sound and making it new again. Allen was a true musical adventurer: before he died in 2020 at the age of 79, he jammed with hip hop artists many decades his junior. I much preferred The Source, but admired his ambition. As he put it himself: “The line of music, there is no end. We just have to explore.”

But is the pursuit of the new actually the highest value by which to judge a work? I found I was at least as impressed by a group of prolific artists who more or less did what they always did. For them, making music was like breathing.

Willie Nelson belonged to this cohort, obviously. A Beautiful Time was actually his 17^th release since turning 77; he has made four more since, the most recent being Workin’ Man, a collection of songs by Merle Haggard, which was released just last week. Similarly, Dave Brock of Hawkwind, who has put out seven albums since turning 77 could be relied on to make psychedelic space rock, whether he was in his 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s. After turning 77 this year, Brian Eno released a pair of LPs in quick succession, with a third coming in October. Two feature a female vocalist, Beatie Wolfe, but all of them float along on the ambient music that has been his stylistic hallmark for decades (it would no doubt offend Eno to find himself categorized with artists who stick to a specific approach, but to quote a great philosopher “I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em”). Hans-Joachim Roedelius, a former Eno collaborator, also fell into this category. He was a child star in Nazi Germany, then conscripted into the Wehrmacht in the dying days of the war; at 90 years old, he maintains a steady stream of experimental electronica and tranquil piano music.

If we are to judge by consistency and dedication, however, then the greatest member of the 77 club is Leonard Cohen, whose output in his final years was, uniquely, on a par with his earlier work. After disappearing up a mountain to meditate for the best part of a decade, Cohen discovered that his retirement fund had been pilfered by his manager, and threw himself back into work. That final streak included three records that were released after he turned 77, and a fourth that followed posthumously. Of these, You Want it Darker, is a masterpiece: Cohen talks with God, reflects on yearning and loss and aging, looking backwards and forward with wry humor and wisdom. In fact, I would put You Want it Darker on my turntable before Songs of Leonard Cohen or Songs from a Room, the records on which he built his reputation. Unlike Paul Simon’s Seven Psalms, it is highly accessible. I already understand what Cohen is talking about, all that remains is for me to catch up with him and feel it.

And what of today’s stars? Will the likes of Taylor Swift or Beyonce keep making new music into their dotage? At first, I thought it unlikely, because pop music is inextricably bound up with youth. But then again, Petula Clark released an album of perfectly pleasant pop music at age 83 so perhaps I am wrong and we can expect 60 more years of Sabrina Carpenter. A greater obstacle is likely to be the changing nature of how people listen to music. “Kids these days” are less invested in artists and more focused on songs, which they discover via viral clips on social media or playlists without knowing or caring about the performer. It is difficult to imagine many careers enduring for decades on that basis. There are exceptions, of course. Taylor Swift, at least, could return to her country roots — perhaps an album of Dolly Parton covers awaits us fifty years in the future.

However, I doubt that even if today’s pop stars do keep creating into their 70s and 80s, that the output will be as varied, or as interesting, or as voluminous, or even as annoying as that of the artists who still bestride the world’s arenas like time-worn colossi. From Roger Waters’ dismal re-recording of Dark Side of the Moon to his ex-colleague David Gilmour’s innocuous Luck and Strange, from Ringo Starr’s genial country album Look Up, to Alice Cooper’s unexpected reunion with his original bandmates after half a century, from Rod Stewart’s swinging collaboration with Jools Holland to John Fogerty pointlessly re-recording his Credence hits, from Yes’ Jon Anderson making True, his best album in forty years, to 83 year old Smokey Robinson singing lasciviously about “Gasms” the 77 club can’t stop, won’t stop.

Their extraordinary energy creates the illusion that they will be around forever. The truth is, however, that era of megafauna is almost over. In five years, many of them will be gone, in ten years most of them will be gone. We will not see their likes again. That being the case, let us enjoy their long goodbye, including the music they make today. For those about to rock/swing/croon/strum/pluck/groove/twang/jam, we salute you.

The Devil and friends.

Greetings

Gather round children, for Halloween is almost upon us and I have once again compiled a selection of misfit horror films for your viewing (dis)pleasure. As with previous lists, these movies could never be described as classics, but each is special in its own way; perhaps for an image, an atmosphere, a performance, or simp…

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Mural of Marx, Engels and Lenin in Ethiopia, 1980s.

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It’s going to be a pretty freewheeling one this time around, Jah Rastafari. Here’s what’s on deck:

• Quixote’s Dinner Party

• The Greatest Sound Effect in the History of Comics

• Valid Uses of AI, part I

• Paleofeces Inspector

• Valid Uses of AI part II

• ¡Ay, caramba!

• In Brief: Days of Rage and The Cowshed

• The Wi…

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I

One evening not so long ago, I went searching for some relics from my Russia days in my parents’ attic. I always had to be careful when I went in there, because it was little more than a crawl space under the roof. Neither my parents, owners of the house since 1977, nor Mr. and Mr…

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A Kirghiz “magician” attempts to heal Gustav Krist (from Alone Through the Forbidden Land.)

Last year I joined the library at the University of Texas, Austin, and rediscovered a literary form I hadn't encountered much since my student days — readers' inscriptions in the margins of library books. The conventions of the genre are simple: you state somethi…

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1. Return of the repressed.

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Welcome to Thus Spake Daniel Kalder issue # 71, wherein we shall investigate fresh signs and wonders. Coming up:

• The Philip K. Dick Society

• Electric Funeral

• Dead Birds

• Goodbye, Visarion

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Source: Korroziya Metalla

The first time I saw Alexander Shishkin, the greatest Adolf Hitler lookalike in the history of the planet, I was in awe. This tall, cadaverous man didn’t just look like Hitler, he looked like a Hitler that had died and been dug up again. It was eerie: the sunken cheekbones, the severe parting and of course the black moustache were almost enough to persuade you that Hitler was indeed back from the dead.

This was in 1997. I’d see Hitler on Red Square, where he and Lenin hung out waiting to have their pictures taken with tourists. Lenin was frequently drunk, and leering. Hitler was sober. Then one day in the early 2000s Hitler disappeared. I sometimes wondered what had become of him.

Last week I found out. He had returned to his home city of Tashkent in Uzbekistan, where he spent the last eleven years of his life living on a pension of $17 a month. Then he died. The obituaries had few details, just his real name (the first time I had heard it) and a few facts: he was the son of a Red Army pilot; he used to appear on stage with the heavy metal group Korroziya Metalla; he was once photographed with Boris Yeltsin.

I wanted to know more. So I did some research using Russian language sources and was able to flesh out the skeleton of his strange life.

Shishkin’s father was indeed a Red Army pilot. But he was shot down in 1941 and spent the war in a POW camp. Once it was over he was condemned to 25 years in the Gulag as an “enemy of the people” and his son was prevented from entering educational institutions. Eventually he trained in aeronautics, and then again in theater criticism, graduating in 1979. But Shishkin never worked in his specialty: instead he joined Uzbekfilm as a “simple worker,” scraping by on five rubles a day (extras made six).

Shishkin eked out this dismal living, and he was only occasionally bothered by people telling him that if he grew a moustache he would look just like Hitler. He married; had a daughter; got divorced. Then he played Hitler in a movie in which the Fuhrer had survived the war and was running a restaurant in Kazakhstan, playing the accordion for customers while Eva Braun danced. In 1990 he flew to Leningrad to participate in a lookalikes contest. There were many Alla Pugachevas, Lenins and Saddam Husseins. Shishkin was the undisputed champion among the Hitlers.

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And so a star was born, of sorts. Shishkin returned to Tashkent to play Hitler in local films, before embarking on a tour of the USSR with other doubles and the cheesy pop singer Igor Talkov. Everybody wanted his picture taken with Hitler. In 1993 he appeared in a movie, “Cage” which was aired on Channel One, making him even more famous, but he remained hungry and impoverished. In 1995 he met Spider, leader of the heavy metal group Korroziya Metalla. Spider wrote a song for him- Nicht Kaput, Nicht Kapitulieren - and Shishkin was a regular fixture at the band’s concerts until 1998, snarling in German at the audience, which responded with boos and Nazi salutes. But Spider was “pathologically stingy” and Shishkin still had to scrape by on the money he made posing for photographs on Red Square.

By the year 2000, the weight of history was starting to crush him. Lenin, also from Tashkent, was locked up in an insane asylum for a while. But on his release he went to the Arbat, where on Victory Day he and Nikolai II made $1,000 each from posing for photographs. Hitler on the other hand was attacked by cops, chased and beaten, or simply abused: “You started the war! You, Hitler, get out of here!”

Shishkin getting his Hitler on at a Korroziya Metalla concert in Moscow, 1995.

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Exhausted, alienated, lonely and depressed, Shishkin left the cold, gray megalopolis for the sunny skies of Tashkent in 2001. There he was promptly ripped off, selling his ground floor apartment for $3,000 when, he subsequently learned, it was worth around $60,000. He was incredibly poor, but his Uzbek neighbors took care of him, sharing a bowl of plov and whatever else they had with this strange Russian “uncle”. He rode the trams of Tashkent in full Hitler gear, attracting attention and smiles. “The Uzbeks don’t know Hitler,” claimed Shishkin. Those who did invited him to their weddings.

On New Year’s Eve Shishkin broke an arm and a leg. No source I have found explains how this happened. His suffering lasted three months before he died from “complications.” It was a bad death after a difficult, yet interesting life. His neighbors and friends spoke well of the Hitler from Tashkent. He was a “quiet, honest person,” said the Uzbek writer Rifat Gumerov, “with a purely soviet upbringing”. He had been planning a return to Moscow, Gumerov added. But having “flourished” in the nihilistic 90s, and then disappeared in the cynical 2000s, I doubt there would have been a place for him in the new world that is being born, whatever form it finally assumes.

RIP.

Note: during the brief, bizarre interregnum in Putin’s long rein when Dmitri Medvedev was ostensibly the president of Russia, an English language Russian news service named RIA-Novosti hired a bunch of Western journalists to edit their site. Simultaneously, a Russian magazine called Snob, funded by a billionaire, was publishing dissident authors such as Vladimir Sorokin and Edward Limonov. It was a different time. I was hired to write a weekly column and left to do as I pleased. There was a remarkable lack of supervision, the likes of which I have never experienced before or since. Anyway, things swiftly changed when Putin returned to the presidency. A new, native-born editor was installed, most of the Westerners were fired, and my column was abruptly canceled. This piece, one of my favorites, was originally published on 23rd March 2012.

Coming up in Kalder’s cabinet of curiosities: a mixture of recent commissions plus some exceptionally fine obscurities for your edification and delight. Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go, and make our visit.

• How the World Really Works, Episode III

• A Planet for Texans

• The World Diddling Championships

• More Metal Machine Music

• Peep Show on Skis

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1. Polite request.

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