"Come on out, the dark is beginning..."

Hey, Michael DeCapite has an excerpt from his second novel, RUINED FOR LIFE!, up at the 3:AM Magazine site (click on the above title if you dare), and here is an excerpt:

There was a sensation of stepping out, in Manhattan. A downplayed fear, an eagerness. Of rejoining humanity, slipping into the current. History’s now and you’re it. I drove down Avenue A, which was congested on a Friday night.

Cooper waited in the car while I went to the coke store on 4th Street. It fronted as a bodega. The only thing they stocked was tartar sauce. There was a wall of tartar-sauce jars behind the plexiglass at the counter. There was a soda cooler back there too——they made you take a soda to baffle the cops. I pushed a folded twenty through a hole in the wood and walked out of there with a packet of coke and a grape Shasta. I popped open the can, took one sip, and dropped it in the trash.

Meanwhile, Cooper was chopping lines on a paperback. I put the car in gear. “Let’s go up to Times Square and get a drink.” We rolled to the light at Houston. He did a line, the light turned green. He held the book and handed me a rolled-up bill and I shifted into third gear, leaning over with an eye on the road and Houston rolling by. Cooper moved to New York with his band and lived on mustard and bread behind a candy store in Red Hook when it was still possible to move to New York and starve. He had talent and attitude to spare——he was a natural. He’d taken his licks on the street and in the bars and his band was just about the best band I’d ever heard. They were a few years ahead of their time, so nothing happened. He started other bands and knocked around and still nothing happened. He should’ve been rich, which he knew. It was a case of too much of nothing, that’s what we had in common. Nothing. He wiped...

****************************************************************************

As for myself, I too knew Cooper, and in fact lived with him behind the candy store. He would often erupt with an evangelical, nay, Biblical fury about certain songs or records. Even now, his endorsement of the following song is embezzled in my brain:

Born Today: Les Baxter

Above is the man in action, swinging a stick to calm the massed natives...
Below is Mr. Baxter's rendition of "Unchained Melody," coming to us from
a parlor in Italy:




From Michael DeCapite's novel RUINED FOR LIFE!, a scene of high school kids
cruising around in Cleveland in the mid-70s:

We drove around. Jake was in the backseat cracking jokes. He kept asking
us to stop where there'd be people he knew. It was dark, we were covering
distance, killing time, waiting to be free of school and out in the world.
The streetlights ran out.
An airfield went by. Lost Nation Road. The Roxy Music tape ran through
and popped itself out and the radio came on. An old song was beginning, just
a voice. Jake eased right in, he knew all the words. Luke glanced at him in
the mirror and I turned around. The song was coming from the night, we'd
driven into it.
There were strings and voices in the background, but the voice was trying
to leave them behind. Jake's eyes were closed. We thought he was camping it
up. And then, in the continuous darkness of the car and the night, the song's
drama and reality hit me and the back of my neck tingled. Jake's voice
cracked and soared and broke into falsetto. I turned and watched the road.
Luke lowered the radio and we drove on while Jake sang "Unchained Melody".

You can read more of DeCapite's writing at sparklestreet.com.

Les makes a quick appearance in this essay by Brian McMahon of Cleveland's
the electric eels:

http://www.blastitude.com/17/moovymusic.htm