Richmond's Dark Side: Music and Books

With creepy season in full swing, there's no shortage of ways to indulge an All Hallows' Eve urge.

Tonight's was Chop Suey's Halloween celebration, "The Dark Side of Richmond" at (where else?) the site of the former Richmond Gallows, none other than G5.

The evening began with one of my favorite Halloween traditions, local band Glows in the Dark, performing music inspired by and taken from John Carpenter movies.

Yes, The Fog, The Thing and of course Halloween came to life with a lot of improvisation in between at the hands of these free jazz masters.

And as you may recall (I didn't and had to be told), Carpenter's movie music was written mainly for keyboards, necessitating a lot of work to bring it around to guitar, upright bass, sax, trombone and drums, but once gain GitD pulled it off in the eeriest possible way.

I first saw them do this music a couple of years ago at Commercial Taphouse and tonight's audience was even more into it.

Word must have gotten around about what an audio treat it was.

A seasonably-suitable reading followed, featuring two of the writers from Richmond Noir, the short story collection where each features a different Richmond neighborhood.

Nothing says Halloween season quite like death, so Tom de Haven read the "money scene" from his story based in Manchester (three-way sex and shots fired on southside) and Dennis Danvers read his tale of Texas Beach (a dead dog and a dead illegal immigrant).

Beth Brown, author of Wicked Richmond, a book about RVA's dark underbelly, read the chapter on old Richmond's boy gangs, apparently quite a force from the time of the Civil War and for some 50 years afterwards.

Rocks, slingshots and eventually pistols were the weapons of choice for boys (some as young as four!) to stake out their territory in this town.

Thumbing through Brown's book, it looks to be a catalog of the debauchery that defined our fair city's history; clearly it wasn't all moonlight and magnolias.

Billed as the spookiest reading of the season (and I know of no other Halloween readings, so it undoubtedly was), the audience of music and book lovers geeked out afterwards talking about the intricacies of the music and the macabre nature of the stories.

Before long, conversation moved on to clever costumes and upcoming parties.

And just for the record, I've never seen a John Carpenter movie.

There, I said it.

Still enjoyed the hell out of it.

Rainy Day Roundup

Whenever rva has more than one gray day in a row, everyone starts talking about what days like these are good for: watching movies, staying in bed, reading, cuddling, cooking have all been mentioned this week. Frankly, I like rainy days, always have. They don't much change my plans; I still do my four-mile walk, only with an umbrella and carry on with the business of life, albeit with extra layers for warmth.

Today I checked out the new Books, Bikes and Beyond Thrift store run by Ward and Shelley from Books on Wheels. I'd seen Ward last night at Fresh Ink and he'd reminded me to go by and see what they had to offer. I'm the anti-mall person who buys all her clothes (except undies) at thrift stores, so I was all about a new place and went over there to see what was what. Score! Snagged a beautiful Ann Taylor velvet camisole with wide lace trim on it for only two bucks; now I have something fetching and new (to me) to wear to the show tonight.

Walking the beagle the other night, we both spied a snow white bunny in the alley behind my house; I had to rein in the dog. It has to be someone's pet; we just don't have wild rabbits in J-Ward. I forgot all about it until we were walking the other side of the block today and there the poor thing was in someone's front yard, wet and shivering. I'm not quite sure who let this bunny out, so I guess I need to knock on a few doors and get the word out so he can be returned to the cozy confines of his home.

A friend introduced me to the singer Meghan Coffee today and if you're a fan of a certain kind of female voice, I'd suggest checking her out. She's in hibernation at the moment, so new music isn't immediately forthcoming, but there are a couple of CDs to tide a listener over until she's back to playing small rooms and, my favorite, house shows. I think she needs to come to Richmond and play my house.

What's not to like about a good rainy day?