Killer Music

What is it that first brings to mind the sense that that there is much more time behind you than ahead of you? It's not the first silver amongst the gold, or the arms growing shorter overnight; no it's the fact that one of the first bits of mail you get on your 50th birthday is an invitation from the AARP to join the over-the-hill club. Forget about the fact that it might be 20 years until you can retire; in some circles you are officially a senior.

Get your motor runnin'

Expecting this invitation in Nathan Walpow's One Last Hit makes Joe Portugal decide he needs to shake up his life. Just the other night during a heady Aerosmith concert, Joe was taking advantage of a different application for a plant, while enjoying Steven Tyler’s antics with the microphone, and he got the idea that it was time to shake off 30 years of a somewhat unexciting life, dust off his Gibson SG guitar and try one last time to be what he once wanted to be when he grew up––a rock star.

Nathan Walpow introduced Joe Portugal in a gem of a small series, which begins with The Cactus Club Killings. Joe is an actor who lives and works in Los Angeles and keeps busy with mostly commercial work. He also happens to be a cactus aficionado, but enjoys working with plants of all kinds. When he finds himself a person of interest in the killing of the president of the Culver City Cactus Club, he finds that he also has a green thumb for investigating murder.

Head out on the highway

After practicing for a few months, Joe begins to feel that he can call himself a guitar player once again and that maybe he can start looking for some of the members of his old group. There were five of them altogether: Lenny on keyboards, Wozniak on bass, Washington on drums, and Toby Bonner on lead guitar and vocals, with Joe himself on rhythm guitar. A singer, Bonnie Morgenlender, rounded out the quintet. They called themselves The Platypuses. Ah, the summer of '68.

Yet somehow, before Portugal makes a move, he finds Lenny and Wozniak looking for him with some of the same motives on their minds. Coincidence? Joe would like to think so, but something is out of tune. Back in the days of the summer of love, the group took off well but, like many small groups, it was the vocal duo of Toby and Bonnie that claimed the limelight and garnered the praise, the contract and the one-hit wonder. Before Portugal can begin the big search, members of the group are being shot at and they haven't even started singing yet.

Lookin' for adventure

The last person from the group still missing is the lead singer, Toby, and most people think he is still isolated at his secret desert hideaway. Portugal is one of the few people who has been there, but his memory of the area is vague, somewhat like 8-tracks in the sand.

Sometimes there are good reasons why Sam shouldn't play it again. Joe can't think of any that apply to his group, but after he himself has been in the crosshairs he has a mission.

Portugal keeps one step ahead of whoever would rather kill the band than see them perform again, and takes the reader on a not-exactly-magical mystery tour of old bands and esoteric music. This story has a background melody about the girl who got away, grilled cheese sandwiches, skipping the light fandango, one VW Beetle after another, cookie tins full of photographs, a hideaway in the desert, midlife crises, eclectic after-hours clubs, dreams, high-speed chases and voicemail hell. I think there is one more in this series and I have it safe in my possession.

And whatever comes our way

Walpow has a rapid, breezy, conversational-type delivery that is so comfortable it makes you right at home. I found a scattering of nicely upbeat humor. The book is also fun for fans of The Who, because it is filled with references to the group. Each chapter is titled after a Who song.

Note: Headings are lyrics from Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild."

Life's Unexpected Turns

A few months ago I was thinking about the unexpected turns life can take when I spotted the following news item:

"My ultimate dream is to be buried in a deep ocean close to where penguins live," explained the former Alfred David, 79, otherwise known in his native Belgium as "Monsieur Pingouin" (Mr. Penguin), so named because a 1968 auto accident left him with a waddle in his walk that he decided to embrace with gusto. (His wife abandoned the marriage when he made the name change official; evidently, being "Mrs. Penguin" was not what she had signed up for.) Mr. Pingouin started a penguin-item museum that ultimately totaled 3,500 items, and he created a hooded, full-body black-and-white penguin outfit that, according to a September Reuters dispatch, he wears daily in his waddles around his Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek. [Reuters, 9-29-2011]

Monsieur Pinguoin

Unlike Mr. Penguin, Sophie Marx's unusual life doesn't result from a fluke accident, but an unconventional upbringing. She was born to parents who were always on the run––from whom, Sophie was never sure. All she knew was that there were many things she couldn't talk about with anybody. So it isn't entirely surprising that she ended up at the CIA, "a building full of weirdos." It was the first time she felt completely understood.

When David Ignatius's Bloodmoney opens, Sophie is no longer working for the "mainstream" CIA. She has been recruited by Jeff Gertz to be part of an off-the-record CIA intelligence unit that he operates out of Studio City, California, under the guise of an entertainment agency, The Hit Parade. Sophie is sending field agent Howard Egan off to Pakistan, where he is to meet with a Pakistani asset. Egan is afraid to go and afraid to ditch the mission once he arrives there, for fear he'll be fired. Turns out he had good reason to be afraid, because he goes missing.

It's a bad week for The Hit Parade, as several other Hit Parade undercover agents are killed overseas. Gertz has to answer to the President's Chief of Staff and a superior in the CIA. How have these agents been uncovered? Gertz is concerned that his agency will be closed. At his request, Sophie investigates in Pakistan and at Alphabet Capital, the London hedge fund that provided Egan his cover.

Ignatius, the author of Bloodmoney, is an associate editor and foreign-affairs columnist at The Washington Post. Bloodmoney's intelligence-agency characters, whether working for Pakistan or the United States, are very believable. I must glumly conclude that I'm not nearly subtle, crafty or sophisticated enough to work in intelligence, either in the field or at the home agency. I enjoyed following Sophie as she learns about global finance at Alphabet Capital, although the close friendship that quickly springs up between her and the fund's manager seems a bit unlikely.

I wasn't surprised to read in this book about the U.S. government's failure to learn from other countries' (or its own) mistakes in the Middle East, and its tendency to ignore long-term policy in favor of short-term fixes like hosing the region with money. Although this is fiction, Ignatius provides insights into the tribal culture of Pakistan. I found Bloodmoney fascinating for that reason, as well as how entertaining it is as espionage. Days after reading it, I'm still thinking about the murky ethics of gathering intelligence and the terrible nature of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I highly recommend it.

Let's segue now from Ignatius's intelligence people to the classic rock jocks of Bill Fitzhugh's Radio Activity. I can't recall how Fitzhugh's Rick Shannon became a radio station DJ, whether it was by accident or design. It may be that he became one because Fitzhugh was one in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1970s. Don't ask me how Fitzhugh found himself in that spot.

Back to the book. As Radio Activity begins, Rick is unemployed. Again. Clean Signal Radio Corporation has bought another radio station and fired all the staff at the Bismarck, North Dakota FM station where Rick worked. A satellite feed will now bounce in voice-tracked jocks from Chicago and Florida. Rick and all the other DJs of his era "were like silent movie stars at the dawn of the talkies." A call offering him a job from Clay Stubblefield, manager of a station in a small town in Mississippi, catches Rick when he's reduced to selling his prized vinyl records. Rick isn't thrilled but he decides to take it.

When he arrives, Rick learns that he's been "Stubbled." He will have to do programming in addition to his night-time FM DJ shift for no additional money. He'd leave, but where would he go? Had Rick known what I knew from page 7, that Captain Jack, the DJ he's replacing, was handcuffed to a fence, pleading for his life while a backhoe dug a hole big enough to hold his corpse, Rick might have left any way. But maybe not. Rick has the chance to formulate his station's classic rock programming. His fellow jocks are good people. Captain Jack left a double-wide trailer full of wonderful records and that's where Rick will live. Plus, the station's sexy receptionist Traci has blue eye shadow that reminds Rick of his younger years and makes his knees weak. Not to mention Kitty's restaurant, which serves tater wads and other non-chain food.

Rick finds evidence that makes Captain Jack's disappearance look very suspicious, and he follows clues that lead to a solution of the crime. I've read more complex mysteries, but I've never read one in which music is so well integrated with the plot. This book is beguiling entertainment and a love offering to classic rock and roll. Defining the era. Describing how DJs perform their craft. Relating stories about the singers. Commenting about the songs, and not just the 50 songs you hear over and over on homogenized classic rock stations. I loved it. It made me anxious to listen to music I've almost forgotten I miss. If you are a fan of mysteries and classic rock and roll, embrace an opportunity to read it. Crank up your stereo and rock out.

P.S. Rock and rollers, if you want to read some great set lists, check out Fitzhugh's All Hand Mixed Vinyl.