I spent last weekend comfortably ensconced at the family country house in Burnaby while the clan patriarch visited his estates on the Island. I feasted on a variety of foodstuffs, including the inevitable frozen scones and no-name brand oatmeal cookies. The biggest difference between that place and my own, though, other than its tidiness, is the presence of cablevision.

It wasn’t easy, but at one point I actually found something worth watching. It was a film called “Hail Hail Rock ‘n’ Roll,” made in 1986, a tribute to Chuck Berry on his 60th birthday. The birthday bash was held in a theatre in St. Louis, Berry’s home town, and involved an all-star band put together by Berry’s most prominent disciple, Rolling Stone Keith Richards.

Naturally there were interviews with various rock notables, including Little Richard, Bo Diddly, Eric Clapton and Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen had a particularly amusing story of being asked to back up Berry in 1974 or so. Berry walked into the auditiorium about ten minutes before he was supposed to go on. Springsteen’s band members asked Berry what songs they were expected to play, to which Berry replied “we’re gonna play some Chuck Berry songs.”

Simple songs perhaps, but Springsteen noted that a lot of them were in wierd keys. Not the usual open string E, A, D anchors of guitar rock, but oddball sharps and flats and so on. Obviously, this made the whole business of keeping up with the duckwalking dervish (or should that be ‘detonous duckwalking dervish’?) a bit of a challenge.

The most interesting comments in the whole thing, though, came from Keith Richards. There are few things I like more than listening to Keef rambling off his slurred musings on all things rocking. I’ve discovered that if you can actually make out what the fuck he’s saying it’s often quite interesting.

According to Richards, Berry’s songs are only in wierd keys if you look at them from a guitarist’s perspective. If you look at them from a piano player’s point of view, they make complete sense. The songs, says Richards, are in ‘piano keys,’ and not ‘guitar keys,’ because a piano player wrote much of the music.

The piano player he was talking about is a guy named Johnnie Johnson. Johnson actually started Chuck Berry off, bringing him into his group around 1951. Johnson, however, was bashful and introverted, and Berry’s over-the-top antics gradually made him the frontman. The guitarist was as ambitious as he was extroverted, and began crafting lyrics and jamming up riffs with Johnson. In 1955, Berry went to Chess records in Chicago, and was rewarded with a record contract. These were they days when the 45 was the central medium of music, and Berry fired off a string of hit singles over the next half-decade.

Johnson, meanwhile, stuck with Berry as a backing musician, but received no credit for any of these songs. (Berry’s first hit, ‘Maybelline,’ actually lists disk jockey Alan Freed as a co-writer, a condition imposed by the payola-soaked radio celebrity in return for playing the tune). Johnson eventually left Berry’s side, though he kept playing in and around the St. Louis area. But whereas Berry managed to rake in a pretty good living (Springsteen believed he was getting as much as $10 000 a set as far back as the mid-’70s), Johnson lived a much more mundane life.

By the time Richards (the hero of this story in some ways) pulled Johnson back into the scene in 1986, the piano player was making a living driving a bus for elderly people. In the making of “Hail Hail Rock ‘n’ Roll,” he seemed as self-effacing as you could get, a kind of big shinking violet. But he was clearly the steadiest member of the band. There is one scene where Richards and Berry are hectoring each other during practice over how a particular tune should be done. They launch into the song and both sound ragged as hell, all preen and no polish. All the muscle came from Johnson. Apparently driving the elderly around on a bus is a better recipe for rock ‘n’ roll longetivity than drugs and debauchery.

A few others noticed this as well, and after the St. Louis reunion Johnson went on to enjoy some limelight of his own. He’s recorded a handful of albums, and has played with the likes of Richards, Clapton and Paul Shaefer. He has also been inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, and, most recently, has gotten round to suing Chuck Berry for royalties owed on all those old classics.

This is where the story got a little sour for me. Not that I mind Johnson trying to force Berry to give him a bit of the credit. It just seems that a nice story, heading for a bit of a fairytale ending, comes crashing gloomily back to Earth. In any case, they were a good pair. One guy supplied the groove and the progressions, the other layered it with signature riffs and licks (still widely copied) and almost era-defining lyrics. Johnson’s steady, rockin’ delivery may have been a great foundation, but without Berry’s on-stage antics and, more crucially, his off-stage hustling, there would be nothing for either of them to fight about today.

There’s a bit more to this; a bit of a sub-plot.

I was intrigued to find that one of the songs Johnson claims to have laid down the music for is ‘Sweet Little Sixteen.’ I noted this because I came across another reference to this tune recently. Chuck Berry received all the credit for composing the Beach Boys’ 1963 classic ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.,’ essentially because the song was considered to be a rip-off of ‘Sweet Little Sixteen.’ The progression is the same, and the stop-start verse that expodes into a rocking chorus was used to full effect by Beach Boy writer Brian Wilson (in a further goofy twist, Wilson took no credit for writing his own lyrics on that song). Of course, if Johnson gets the credit he's seeking, he will by extension presumably be able to lay some claim to the music for ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’

When I was 12 or so some kid brought a record to school that had ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’ on it. He was an erstwhile friend of mine, and he was curiously into old vintage rock, Elvis and such. I had nothing against any of it, but none of it (or any other music, for that matter) really got me wanting to play music until I heard that song. I immediately went out and bought the ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’ album. The Beach Boys had not yet fully defined themselves at the time of its making, and much of the record was instrumental, in the veign of the Surfari’s or Dick Dale. One of the instrumentals was a tune called ‘Stoked.’ I always liked that title. Whenever I think of it I’m reminded of being 12 years old, and just getting into something new and exciting.

And I like the idea that some quiet, solid guy is behind ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’ I owe you one Johnny, and I like the fact that it’s you that I owe.

One of the first movies I remember really being captivated by was the James Bond film ‘Thunderball.’ I saw it on television when I was about 11, and though I knew little about James Bond at the time, I thought the flick was about the coolest thing I had ever seen

Thunderball was made in 1965, a year after Bond creator Ian Fleming died. It was the fourth in the Bond film series, coming after Dr. No (1962), From Russia With Love (‘63), and Goldfinger (‘64). By the time it was made, Sean Connery had become a big-name actor who was getting a little bored with the franchise. The film was loaded with the Bond movie hallmarks, and assembled with the largest budget of any picture in the series to date. It broke box office records on its release, although many critics dismissed it as rather meandering, and lacking a resonant-enough villian.

Actually, I disagree. Although it doesn’t have the characters of a movie like Goldfinger (Oddjob, Pussy Galore, Goldfinger himself), it has a neat plausability about it; a warplane with nuclear weapons is highjacked by bad guys. As for the villians, there is no superstar megalomaniac, but rather a series of Mohammed Atta-like role players. It is as a whole, rather than as individuals, that they add up to something menacing. In this respect the film nicely defies the usual Bond formula.

Anyway, I’m getting off the point (and there is one, I assure you). I started monitoring the TV listings for old Bond films after seeing Thunderball, and soon enough started reading Fleming’s novels. Written in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, they are steeped in a Cold War ambience that many of the films play down or eschew altogether. In many cases the plots of Fleming’s stories bear only passing resemblance to those of the movies produced in their name. For instance, the outer-space nonsense of the movie Moonraker, surely the shittiest film ever made, is a far cry from the book, which is set entirely in England and revolves around a British arms-maker who is a Soviet agent.

In a sense, Fleming’s books are a bit of a rogue cousin to the Cold War spy stories spun by the likes of John Le Carre and Graham Greene. But where Le Carre and Greene gave us exquisitely-crafted plots and genuine characters, Fleming gave us...

Well....sex, violence, chicks with cool names, Italian handguns, more brand-name alchohol than a Pamela Anderson/Kid Rock hotel suite, more faraway locales than the entire Lonely Planet series, all powered by fast-moving narratives and underpinned by Fleming’s flair for detail.

One of most enjoyable of all the James Bond books is called ‘Colonel Sun.’ Described by one reviewer as “especially violent,” ‘Colonel Sun’ takes place mostly in Greece, and has a plot that involves, among other things, Red Chinese spies and bisexual Albanian girls. It has a vivid but but grim feel to it, more so than many of Fleming’s books. The thing is, it isn’t written by Ian Fleming. It’s written by a guy named Robert Markham.

I first came across ‘Colonel Sun’ as a boy, shortly after becoming a Bond guru. The kid next door had a copy.

“How typical,” I thought to myself when I spotted it among his collection of half-finished model planes and non-scholarly books on dinosaurs, “He doesn’t even have a real Bond book. He has some imitation Bond book.”

It was only recently that I discovered that Robert Markham, like some sly Bond villain, is not really Robert Markham. Robert Markham is Kingsley Amis.

Yeah, Sir Kingsley Amis, the Booker Prize-winning icon of post-war British literature. Amis rose to fame in 1954 with the publication of his first novel, ‘Lucky Jim,’ which is regarded as one of the great comic masterpieces in English writing. By the 1960’s he was a well-established cornerstone of the British literary establishment.

What happened was this. Amis liked Ian Fleming’s books. He liked them because they were entertaining. Amis hated books that weren’t entertaining, regardless of their supposed literary merit. When Ian Fleming died in 1964, Amis began discussing with Fleming’s publisher the possibility of continuing the Bond series under a pseudonym. He did not want to become a permanent substitute for Ian Fleming, but simply wanted a crack at writing a Bond novel in the Fleming style. Mindful that his own now-famous name might skew the reception of the novel, he adopted the pen name of ‘Robert Markham.’ His Bond novel, ‘Colonel Sun,’ was published in 1967.

There are some things to be learned from Kingsley Amis. Chief among them, I think, is his realization that he had things to learn from others, including those considered by many to be beneath him in stature and ability. Ian Fleming, for instance.

All of the crazy Bond characters--Pussy Galore, Dr. No, the megalomaniacal Blofeld, the Japanese agent-vixen Kissy Suzuki--may have been fantastical, but they were also great fun. All of the referances to Chesterfield cigarettes, and Stolichnaya Vodka, and Beretta pistols may have represented a “fetish for brand-names,” but they were also pretty cool, and were a huge bridge to the reader; ie. "Bond drinks Stoli. Maybe you’ve tried it too." Fleming may not have been Shakespeare, but at least he knew how to have a good time, and he knew how to connect with his audience.

In short, Ian Fleming knew how to do some things that Amis felt were worthwhile; it was a challenge for Amis to see if he could pull the same tricks out of his own sleeve. Amis had wit, craft and intellect. But he never took for granted that all of that made him a good read.

Maybe it’s a hallmark of real artists that they are always ready to learn, and don’t mind who they learn from. Freed up from the ball-and-chain of absorbing only what is ‘critically’ acceptable, an artist can actually study all manner of work that may be useful or relevant to his own stuff.

As a rocker, one of my favorite examples is Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, and his admission of a strong Black Sabbath influence in his music. Like Ian Fleming, Black Sabbath were always highly-regarded among fans of their genre, but to much of the rock critic establishment they were not to be taken too seriously beyond that. Cobain, though, recognized that the groove-soaked heaviness of Sabbath, if combined some melody and delivered with his own punkish abandon, could render a formidable result. He was right. Good thing he didn’t, like many of his posturing punk contemporaries, write Sabbath off as a bunch of dinosaurs and decide that they had nothing to offer him.

But what I love most about the Cobain/Sabbath thing is the way rock critics--from the start great champions of Cobain--began upwardly-revising their views of Sabbath as Cobain’s regard for them became known. Typical, eh?

Similar, I suppose, to the way I upwardly-revised my own view of Robert Markham’s work once I found out he was actually Kingsley Amis.

About a week and a half ago, on a Saturday night, I had dinner at Super Roberson’s funky new pad.

I got home...I don’t know....midnight or so, and stayed up for a couple of hours. Feeling good and tired, I went to bed at twoish, but in typical fashion for me I couldn’t sleep. Finally I got fed up, and got out of bed at about 4:30 and decided to go for a walk.

I walked across West 6th Avenue at the Laurel Street overpass, and headed toward Kits beach along the False Creek seawall. I had the whole place to myself until I passed the Burrard Marina, where I encountered at quartet of young people, late teens or so, walking in the opposite direction. I kept going, and encountered a power walking woman, who said good morning to me. A little further, right in front of the Maritime Museum, I passed a young couple.

Now, they weren’t holding hands. They weren’t arm-in-arm. But they were smiling and talking quietly as if they had just discovered something in common. A little further I went down onto the beach itself, not THE Kits beach, but that little piece of sand just to the west of the Museum, kind of around the corner from Kits beach. There was a little driftwood shack, like the one that old Scottish guy had in the movie Local Hero. And there were the remnants of a fire burning beside the shack.

Hmmmm. I surmised that the couple, and perhaps the youthful quartet a ways back, had been hanging out at the shack. After all, it was mid June...grad time.

The first thought that came into my head was the obvious one...

TEENAGE ORGY!!!

Controlling myself and reviewing the facts, however, I came to a different conclusion. There were six grads hanging out at the beach. Four got up and left, but two, maybe lingering over a conversation, got up a few minutes later to leave. I liked the last couple. They seemed nice.

Anyway, I kept going, and soon I get to Kits Beach. It is, of course, littered with debris from the previous Saturday’s volleyball playing, sun bathing, meat marketing, and so on. But I think that maybe I’ll have it to myself while the sun’s coming up.

Or not.

There’s one fucking guy down there, going along the beach with a fucking metal detector.

For Christ’s sake.

I turn around, and head back along the beach toward False Creek, walking close to the water. He’s up higher, near the logs, moving in the same direction. What is he looking for?

Has this fucker gotten himself up at 4:30am on a Sunday to look for a few loonies? I doubt it. What he’s looking for is something better....the lost wedding ring, watch, necklace...something that he can cash in for some real dollars.

I’ll tell you something. I’m prone to loosing things. Through my own negligence I have lost the perfect mate, an excellent pair of sunglasses I got in Los Angeles, a Peavey microphone I got off the superb guy who used to run Burnaby Music, a watch my grandfather gave me, and a very nice celtic cross I brought back from Wales for a girlfriend many years ago.

Well...I guess it was not me who lost the cross, it was her. But if felt like my loss.

I bought it at a little town called Conwy, along the north coast of Wales. The town is enclosed by a wall, built in the 12th century by the English king Edward II, during his campaign against the Welsh. I have my moments of exquisite taste, and this cross--it was on a necklace--was perfect. It was tasteful yet eye-catching, a real find.

My girlfriend was very pleased with it. Shortly after my triumphant return from the old country (as my parents called it) we went to a play. A musical in fact. A friend of hers wanted to see ‘Hair.’ She dressed beautifully for the occasion, and wore the cross around her neck.

Now, I’m going to digress a bit here and tell you that ‘Hair’ is undoubtedly the shittiest fucking piece of theatre you will see anywhere, anytime. It is a crushing, obliterating indictment of the Baby Boom generation.

“We gave the world the Beatles, and all that other great music,” they tell us. Fine. But this fucking musical, by itself, turns their surplus into a deficit faster than you can say ‘Trudeau fiscal policy.’

There’s one decent song; it’s called ‘Age of Aquarius,’ during which the cast take their clothes off. Well that’s great, but if I all I want is to hear an adequate tune accompanied by nudity I may as well go to the Number 5 Orange; I don’t need to sit through two hours of shit.

Anyway, that’s when she lost the neclace. Some time that evening. We got back to her place and she grasped around her neck, and a look of horror came over her face, just like in a movie. It’s painful to recall. We phoned the cab company, they didn’t have it. I went back down to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre at....I guess it might have been around 4:30am. Of course it was hopeless, but I had to look for it. I found nothing but a pair of wine glasses, left outside by some theatre-goers and not collected by the staff. I have them to this day.

The necklace, though, was gone for good.

It was a bad omen, I think. I brought back some other stuff...a broach made of porcelain from Scotland was one thing...but it all sucked compared to the pewter cross.

I thought of that when I thought of the guy with the metal detector. I don’t want this prick finding things. I want the young couple to find some treasure. I wan’t the guy to find some cross in a sand and put it around the girl’s neck. That way, someone’s loss is someone else’s gain; not someone else’s material gain, but someone else’s emotional gain.

As I walked home the sun was coming up. The thing is, it didn’t rise way over in the east, it rose over the North Shore mountains. Is this usual? It seemed odd, but cool. At least that was something. When I got home the day was bright and getting warm. I went back to bed and finally fell asleep.