Joboxers: 'Just Got Lucky'

Joboxers
'Just Got Lucky'
Fall 1983

If you turned on MTV in September 1983, it's likely that you saw the video for the single 'Just Got Lucky' by the UK group The Joboxers. The single, off their 1983 album Like Gangbusters, was released in May of 1983. The appearance of the video that Fall pushed single into the top 40 before the year's end.

It's a great song, and a great video............the little white dog in the green turtleneck sweater and tweed cap has become an iconic figure of the Music Video era..............

Your technique

It leaves me weak

My heart knows

It's the beat I seek

And I found it

(Just got lucky)

Oh yes, I found it

(Just got lucky)

I never worry

That your love is fake

I'm free and easy

And I'm feeling jake

'Cause I found it

(Just got lucky)

Oh boy, I found it

(Just got lucky)

'Cause I never felt

This way before

Like a dog always

Begging for more, yeah

I've been fooled

By love so many times

I gave up on all the silly rhymes

Kept my feelings

All inside my heart

A locked door

No key was cut

There was no fit

Now I'm such a very lucky guy

Gang way one side now

Come on here me say

We found the answer

And it's plain to see

(Come on here me say)

I'm for you and you're for me

'Cause I found it

(Just got lucky)

Together we found it

(Just got lucky)

I feel a quiver

Every time we kiss

The sky's the limit

With a love like this

'Cause I found it

(Just got lucky)

Together we found it

(Just got lucky)

'Cause I never felt

This way before

Like a dog always

Begging for more, yeah

I've been fooled

By love so many times

I gave up on all the silly rhymes

Kept my feelings

All inside my heart

A locked door

No key was cut

There was no fit

Now I'm such a very lucky guy

Gang way one side now

Come on here me say

We found the answer

And it's plain to see

(Come on here me say)

I'm for you and you're for me

'Cause I found it

(Just got lucky)

Together we found it

(Just got lucky)

I feel a quiver

Every time we kiss

The sky's the limit

With a love like this

'Cause I found it

(Just got lucky)

Together we found it

(Just got lucky)

'Cause I never felt

This way before

Like a dog always

Begging for more, yeah

I've been fooled

By love so many times

I gave up on all the silly rhymes

Kept my feelings

All inside my heart

A locked door

No key was cut

There was no fit

Now I'm such a very lucky guy

Gang way one side now

Come on here me say

Come on here me say

(Just got lucky)

(Just got lucky)

Your technique

It leaves me weak

My heart knows

It's the beat I seek

And I found it

(Just got lucky)

Oh boy, I found it

(Just got lucky)

'Cause I never felt

This way before

Just got lucky

Just got lucky

Just got lucky

Just got lucky

Just got lucky

Just got lucky

Just got lucky

Just got lucky

Just got lucky

Book Review: The Ringway Virus

September is Outbreak Month........at the PorPor Books Blog !

Book Review: 'The Ringway Virus' by Russell Foreman

2 / 5 Stars

Russell Foreman (1921 – 2000) was an Australian author and artist. Among his friends was the author Nevil Shute, who of course wrote 'On the Beach’.

‘The Ringway Virus’ first was published in 1976. This New English Library paperback version (288 pp) was published in August 1977. The cover artist is uncredited.

The novel is set in the late 70s. As it opens the Lamberts, a British family comprised of husband Percy, wife Nell, and daughter Barbara, come into wealth. To celebrate, they set off on a lengthy journey to Australia, where they visit a remote hamlet in the outback. During their transit back to the UK Barbara becomes ill; she eventually is hospitalized in New York City with what looks like a severe case of influenza.

But the virus that has infected Barbara is no ordinary flu virus. It is in fact a highly lethal strain that will come to be called the ‘Ringway’ virus. As a team of British medical doctors struggle to characterize the agent and endeavor to create a vaccine, the number of cases – and deaths – continues to grow. Will a cure be found in time to prevent global catastrophe ? Or will the Ringway virus eliminate Mankind from the entire planet ?

I won’t be disclosing any spoilers to state that in some ways, ‘The Ringway Virus’ is much like ‘On the Beach’, but with a virus, rather than nukes, as the culprit. Indeed, ‘Ringway’ is not, as the cover blurbs would seek to have you believe, a medical thriller in keeping with ‘The Andromeda Strain’, but is in fact a melodrama built around the theme of an outbreak of plague.

The narrative is heavily reliant on dialogue, with little in the way of the documentary-style approach to exposition that is common in most ‘outbreak’ novels. The mechanics of the spread of the plague and the attempts by the public health establishment to address it almost always take place off-camera, and usually are related via telephone conversations: ‘That was Quiggley at the East Norwich Royal Infirmary. The news is not good – twelve new cases in the last twenty-four hours.’

The second half of the book covers the travels of the lead character, an epidemiologist named Michael Canning, around Australia. Here the epidemic recedes into the background, and the novel takes on the form of a travelogue; for example, author Foreman devotes nearly an entire page to describing how a ‘Crocodile Dundee’ – type Outback eccentric prepares to feed his dog some cooked lamb (!). Much space is devoted to conversations held on verandas, during which various supporting characters expound on philosophical matters.

Episodes of moralizing frequently crop up in the narrative of ‘Ringway’; these are aimed at Mankind’s Hubris, his relentless despoiling of the environment, his casual neglect of the less fortunate, his ruinous reliance on nuclear power, etc., etc. These episodes of moralizing quickly become tedious, particularly when author Foreman decides to rant against American involvement in the ‘War in Indochina’. Whatever momentum the story gains from the growing dangers of the epidemic is effectively neutralized by the inclusion of these sermons.

Although Foreman’s prose is straightforward and unencumbered, when all is said and done ‘The Ringway Virus’ doesn’t deliver as a medical thriller, and is nothing all that special as a melodrama. I really can’t recommend this novel to anyone seeking ‘epidemic’ thrills.

Jerry Pournelle dies at age 84

Jerry Pournelle dies at age 84

Jerry Pournelle, born August 7, 1933, died on September 8 at age 84.

Pournelle was one of the few major sf writers who, during the stylistic upheavals of the New Wave era in the 70s and early 80s, continued to write stories and novels in the 'old school' manner, placing emphasis on plot and narrative. This stance likely was a reflection of Pournelle's conservative / libertarian political beliefs. Pournelle's willingness to write on military themes, without reflexively condemning the military itself, also made him stand out among fellow sf writers of the New Wave era. 

While he and frequent co-author Larry Niven did not always get the critical praise bestowed on other sf writers of the 70s and 80s, their novels were consistent best-sellers, and for me, a welcome relief from the increasingly self-indulgent nature of the New Wave as it began to decline in the latter 70s.

One of Pournelle's best novels was A Spaceship for the King (1973), which I reviewed here. If you read one novel by Pournelle, I would argue this is the one to read.

His collaborations with Niven, and later Steve Barnes, were by and large worthy of recommendation. While I thought Oath of Fealty was a dud, The Legacy of Heorot (1987) was a standout sf adventure novel based on a credible backdrop of a unique alien ecology.

Footfall (1985) also was a worthy novel, featuring sf writers as the heroes, rather than the usual square-jawed Men of Action.

Summing up, Pournelle, along with Niven, played an important role in keeping 'hard' sf commercially and culturally viable during a time when most publishers were concentrating on showcasing New Wave content. When publishers first began to return their attention to releasing hard sf novels in the late 70s, Niven and Pournelle played a large role in ensuring that the readership was there to welcome this change in the literary landscape. 

Moebius' Airtight Garage issue 3

The Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius
by Moebius
Issue 3, September 1993
Epic Comics

issue 1 is here

issue 2 is here

Book Review: The Black Death

September is Outbreak Month.......at the PorPor Books Blog !

Book Review: 'The Black Death' by Gwyneth Cravens and John S. Marr

4 / 5 Stars

‘The Black Death’ (354 pp) first was published in 1977 in hardcover; this paperback version from Ballantine Books was issued in March, 1978. The artist who provided the effective cover illustration is uncredited.

The novel is set in New York City in the late 70s. It’s Labor Day weekend, and the city is in the grip of a major heat wave. A strike by the Sanitation Worker’s Union means that garbage has gone uncollected for weeks. The city’s financial crisis means that many agencies and offices are underfunded and understaffed.

Sarah Dobbs, a sixteen year-old girl from an affluent family, has just gotten off a bus at the Port Authority terminal. She is returning to the city from a vacation spent in California. Sarah isn’t feeling well, and she just wants to get home and get some rest. When a pimp named Flash tries to recruit her, Sarah can’t help coughing right into his face……….

Within the next 48 hours, Sarah Dobbs is deathly ill, and in the intensive care ward of Metropolitan Hospital. The attending physicians have diagnosed her with a particularly virulent case of pneumonia. They think the scratches on the girl’s forearm are from injecting drugs. Little do they know that Sarah is not a drug user. But she did take an up-close photograph of ground squirrel while vacationing in California…..and the squirrel had fleas. Fleas that have infected Sarah Dobbs with plague……..

‘The Black Death’ is a medical thriller that deals with an outbreak of plague in New York City. It’s an effective book, probably due in part to the fact that author John S. Marr (b. 1940) is a physician, and the book reflects his knowledge of the intricacies of autopsies, hospitalization, public health, and epidemiology. Indeed, during the mid-70s Marr served as New York’s primary epidemiologist, and directed the city’s response to the Swine Flu outbreak of 1976.

A number of features make ‘The Black Death’ an effective novel. One is the use of a documentary-based prose style similar to that showcased by Michael Crichton in his medical thrillers. Another is its excellent re-creation of the state of New York in the late 70s, and its unique atmosphere of squalor, decay, and chaos:

Whatever had been bothering him in Chelsea was gone, or at least set aside, by the time he passed Sheridan Square in the Village. Two drag queens dozed on a bench in the dusty little park. From the smashed wine bottle, squeezed-out tubes of K-Y jelly, and the clumps of Kleenex, Hart concluded that the night there had been a busy one.

***

They walked to 118 East 104th Street, a decaying five-story walkup that was about 80 years old, built for the middle-income Irish and Italians moving up from the Lower East Side to escape the Jews……After some bloody skirmishes in the early sixties, the Irish and Italians left, mainly for the suburbs. The few who remained were locked into the area by poverty. “Boy, what a dump”. Maldonado looked at the explosion of garbage on the steps – banana peels, orange rinds, a rotting papaya, smashed bottles, an empty Pampers box, a broken doll. Several bulging plastic sacks ballooned with the foul gas of fermenting garbage.

***

The night was hot in the streets and even hotter in the small basement apartment.

“Your son is very sick,” Rodriguez told the old woman in Spanish. “He must go to the hospital.”

The woman pursed her mouth and shook her head. She looked at the man stretched out on the bare mattress on the floor. He wore only a pair of trousers. He was breathing very rapidly and his chest gleamed with sweat. His chin was smeared with dried blood.Two small children in diapers played on the dirty, cracked linoleum floor nearby. Three men and two women sat on a sagging sofa drinking beer and watching television.

The only weak note in the novel is the inclusion of the 70s thriller novel staple of the Megalomaniacal Military Officer; in this case, it's a General Daniel Cosgrove, who sees the situation in New York City through the dual lenses of paranoia, and opportunism. A sub-plot involving Cosgrove runs throughout most of the book, and contributes to its rather contrived ending.

Summing up, however, 'The Black Death' manages to be a very entertaining medical thriller and a great evocation of the era in which the Rolling Stones song 'Shattered' summed up the state of New York City:

Don't you know the crime rate is going up, up, up, up, up
To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!
You got rats on the west side
Bed bugs uptown
What a mess this town's in tatters I've been shattered
My brain's been battered, splattered all over Manhattan
Uh-huh, this town's full of money grabbers
Go ahead, bite the Big Apple, don't mind the maggots, huh

September is Outbreak Month

September is Outbreak Month........

.....at the PorPor Books Blog !

Every now and then, here at the PorPor Books Blog I like to take a break from reading sf and fantasy books and devote some attention to fiction in another genre.

For the month of September, I'm going to be focusing on four novels dealing with outbreaks of plague. And I'm not reviewing books that everyone knows, like The Andromeda Strain or The White Plague. Rather, I'll be looking at four lesser-known works that deserve attention, and I'll be posting reviews all throughout the month of September.

Vermillion issue 8

'Vermillion' issue 8
Written by Lucius Shepard, art by John Totleben
DC / Helix, May 1997

Lucius Shepard (1943 - 2014) was one of the 'first generation' cyberpunk authors. His first novel, Green Eyes, debuted in 1984 as one of the inaugural Ace Science Fiction Specials. In 1986 his novella R & R won a Nebula Award, and the novel derived from it, Life in Wartime, received much critical praise.

Shepard's prose then turned increasingly towards magic realism and fantasy topics, as showcased in the 1988 anthology The Jaguar Hunter.

In 1996 DC comics launched its 'Helix' line of sci-fi comics, and Shepard contributed the twelve-issue series Vermillion, which ran from October 1996 to September 1997.

'Vermillion' is set in the far future, when the eponymous city occupies the entire Universe. The lead character is a man named Jonathan Cave, who, even while stricken with deep anomie, bouts of self-loathing, and existential despair, acts to preserve the city and its culture from the machinations of a race of malevolent aliens, the Ilumi' nati, who disguise themselves as humans while roaming about the world.

I'll post an overview of the 'Vermillion' series in the near future. But issue 8 was a standalone title, meant as an interlude between the series' two major story arcs. It gives a good sense of Shepard's approach to writing for a comic book. In this issue Jonathan Cave, drunk and consumed with self-pity, takes a tour of the city, in the company of his mute girlfriend Sylvia.

While Shepard's writing does at times become pretentious and a bit overwrought, what saves issue eight is the exceptional artwork by John Totleben, who gained fame in the 80s as an artist on Swamp Thing. 

Totleben's rendering of the streets and landscapes of Vermillion, with a somber, autumnal color scheme contributed by Angus McKie (himself a noted artist) gives the creepy, phantasmagorical adventures of Jonathan Cave an atmospheric quality that is rarely seen in most comic books nowadays..........