Over the past year, Imagine has dozens of live events. Many of these performances were captured on video but they have not been collected in one place. Here are a few of the best! I'll be adding more as they come in.
 As we approach the end of another year, it’s the perfect time to look back over the past 12 months. A year ago, Imagine has just opened its doors. It was a great holiday season full of promise for a new beginning. We were also about to host our first show, the inaugural edition of Dali’s Moustache. I always had in mind that Imagine would be something like a miniature version of City Light’s Books in San Francisco. This legendary bookstore is owned by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, one of the world’s finest poets. It is much more than a bookstore. City Lights is also a fine press and has published many important and controversial titles over the decades. In addition to this, the store also features many readings and live performances each year. While Imagine cannot boast a world-famous poet and our publishing venture is just getting under way, I am proud to say we have now hosted more than two dozen shows, in our first year alone! And there’s so much more to come. This spring, we will offer our next title from Toad Press, A Studebaker to Bristol by the poet Larry E. Engle. We have four shows already slated for the month of January. There might even be a new spoken word release on our Red Wheelbarrow record label. The future looks bright, and once again our holidays are filled with a sense of gratitude to all those who have made this dream come alive. As the new year approaches, we are committed to brining even more poetry and music to our stage, to supporting the arts as no bookstore in San Antonio has ever done. So Merry Christmas to all and best wishes for a new year from the Hurd Family and all of us at Imagine Books and Records, the City Lights of San Antonio (well, sort of).  Fernando Flores is a terrific poet and a good friend of Imagine. At the last Dali's Moustache, Fernando read a great poem especially written to celebrate our monthly poetry/music performance series. I'm really honored to present that poem here. Dali’s Moustache (Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech) Genealogy aside The name itself Is quite the ride & if that is not enough Can anyone remember What soft melting pocket watches Have to do with The Persistence of Memory In a most prominent painting On display at the MoMA NYC & can you imagine anthropomorphic bread Instead silly elephants Plod ridiculously stilted on mosquito like legs Through a Martian desert Any step might be their last & that bust-like portrait of Picasso With a monolithic cube balanced on his head As his brain stem lolly gags out his mouth Ending in a spoon with a tiny mandolin on the Tip while his tongue dips down What fun surrealism Must have been Painting what popped into Your questionably unsuspecting head The dubious unconscious Hovering highly conscious Of where the ego was headed —ergo—conscientious of its Inonsequential needs The liberation of the artistic Dream—a mish mash scheme-- As unconscionably cool as Dali’s mustaccio © 2012 Fernando Esteban Flores 
There are those remarkable books that open up the world of reading for us. Here are a just a few. Which book did this for you? 
I doubt many of you will remember this, but this was my first venture into the world of small business. Earwax Records was located in the Eisenhauer Road Flea Market. We were only open on weekends because I was still teaching at the time. My partner in this venture was Rusty Hoke. We each invested about $500 in acquiring our stock and the record cabinets and opened up the world’s smallest record shop. I think we had about 1000 records at our peak. We were only open for 6 months before I lost my partner! I had a great time, though we never made much money out of it. My fondest memory is when Rusty and I bought more than 3000 records from a thrift store in Natalia, Texas. We loaded them all into my van and drove home where I had my wife, Irma, round up all the neighborhood kids to help unpack it all into the garage. One other unforgettable moment involved a house close to where my parents lived that was about to be torn down. My mother called to tell me she’d heard there were some records that had been left behind by the previous owners. When I got to the house, the workers told me to check one of the closets. I still cannot believe I actually went into that darkened hole and began to pull out armfuls of records, brushing insects and spider webs away from face and arms. But I got them all out. Of course, most of them had to be thrown away because they were too far gone (warped, water damaged, eaten by the aforementioned insects). The real prize however was an original pressing of Magical Mystery Tour! I still think back on Earwax Records fondly. Rusty and I had a great time together and we met some great record people along the way. Hey, we opened next door to a pirate shop! It doesn’t get much better than that. Today, the Earwax sign my wife made for our humble shop hangs in the office at Imagine. 
I first came across the music of Esquivel when I was managing Apple Records and his CD Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music came in one day. This was at the height of the Lounge craze. After languishing on thrift store shelves for decades, records by Martin Denny, Arthur Lyman, and Les Baxter had become cool again. Stereophonic in the extreme, these recordings featured outrageous panning, Latin rhythms, exotic bird calls, and zany orchestrations. Esquivel was among the best, even employing on one occasion two separate orchestras in two separate studios recorded simultaneously. Juan Garcia Esquivel was born in Mexico and educated at the UNAM where he took a degree in electrical engineering. Fortunately for us, his engineering career never took off and he turned to music. So successful was he as a recording artist/arranger/composer that it is rumored women would remove their underwear and throw it onto the stage when he performed! His most famous vocal arrangements were often as simple as “zu zu zu” and he was known for injecting vocal punches like “Pow!” into his songs. I am not always in the mood for Esquivel, but when I am it is so easy to get caught up in the sway and swag of an Esquivel arrangement. I love the horns, the choral work (usually by Van Horne singers!) and the Latin beats joined with lush, sometimes wacky orchestral work. This is the music Don Draper would have played if he’d been a little less of a tight-ass. Though his music is hard to find on vinyl in used record stores, you can still run across a stray album here and there. The covers are works of art in themselves. Some of my faves are pictured below. If you want a quick introduction, check out Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music on CD. There’s a great, informative booklet included, and some of Esquivel’s best work is featured: Mucha Muchacha, Anna (El Negro Zum Bon), Latin-Esque and many others.        If you can't judge a book by it's cover, what about the title? Have you ever bought a book because the title grabbed you by the collar and refused to let go? Here are some of my favorites. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers In Dreams Begin Responsibilities by Delmore Schwartz One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien Anos de Soledad) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid by Malcolm Lowry The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain Know of any other great titles? 
Fredric Brown was one of those rare writers. He was at home in both Science Fiction and Mystery. His short story, “Arena,” was the basis for the Star Trek episode of the same name. Many of his stories are less than 500 words. His story “Knock” contains as its premise one of the shortest stories ever written (also penned by Brown): The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door... Brown goes on to build a complete story around these two sentences, but it’s the sentences themselves everyone remembers. I first came across Brown’s stories in a volume called Before She Kills. I devoured every story in this slim volume and went looking for more. I got lucky because the next book I found was The Lenient Beast. This novel features a homicidal maniac who kills only those he perceives to be in extreme pain, either physical or emotional. In his mind, these are mercy killings, and he believes himself the instrument of God in ending the lives of tormented people. What fascinated me about this book is that chapters are written from the alternating perspectives of different characters. Still more fascinating is Brown’s depiction of an Hispanic detective who does not fit 1956 stereotypes. His novel, Here Comes a Candle is part narrative, part radio scriLike Jim Thompson and Cornell Woolrich, Brown defied expectations. I often wonder what the general reader who purchased a book by any of these authors off a rack at a bus station must have thought. Brown was a stickler for plot and was known to hop on a long bus ride to work out the details whenever he got stuck. Many of his works feature surprise endings and unusual twists. I have never found his plots to be artificial, but what I love most are the characterizations. Brown’s career began in the 1930s and he wrote across genres for decades before his death in 1972. His books are difficult to find used, but I have had good luck checking the clearance sections of major chains; they just don’t know who he is. Below are some of the really great covers to his most famous books.           I first discovered Weldon Kees when I was in my twenties when I read a number of his poems in the anthology, Naked Poetry. As poor as I was in those days, I dug deep and had the Twig Bookshop order me a copy of his Collected Poems published by the University of Nebraska. It’s amazing that I bought this book in the 1980s, and Kees had disappeared nearly thirty years before (more on that later), and it was still in only its second printing. Years later, I discovered Kees has been dropped from the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, the standard college text used all across the country. Kees was not being read, it seemed, and he certainly was not being taught. Kees was one of those Mid-Century writers, like Berryman and Jarrell, Elizabeth Bishop and Anne Sexton. He stood apart from these other writers because his work was not overtly confessional. Filled with pathos and humor, Kees’ poems deflect more than they reveal, unless closely read. His greatest achievement is the Robinson poems about an alter-ego who seems to be so marginalized that even his physical presence is in question: The pages in the books are blank, The books that Robinson has read. That is his favorite chair, Or where the chair would be if Robinson were here. All day the phone rings. It could be Robinson Calling. It never rings when he is here. Outside, white buildings yellow in the sun. Outside, the birds circle continuously Where trees are actual and take no holiday. Kees was not just a poet, he was also an accomplished painter and jazz pianist, and he wrote short stories as well as poems. By the mid 1950s, he seemed poised to become a major figure on the American literary scene, and then something happened. Kees disappeared. No one is really sure what really happened, but his car was found parked at the Golden Gate Bridge. He’d spoken to friends about suicide. He talked about running away to Mexico. Whatever actually transpired, Kees was gone and never heard from again. There has been something of a reawakening to Kees over the last ten years, and while it is still hard to find his work on used bookstore shelves, new editions can be readily obtained. I’m amazed no one has ever made a film about his life, especially given the mysterious ending. He’s still one of my favorite poets. Here is a passage from another favorite, “Obituary”: Boris is dead. The fatalist parrot No longer screams warnings to Avenue A. He died last week on a rainy day. He is sadly missed. His spirit was rare. The cage is empty. The unhooked chain, His pitiful droppings, the sunflower seeds, The brass sign, “Boris,” are all that remain. His irritable body is under the weeds.  A few years ago, I picked up a copy of a Night and Fear, a Centenary Collection of Stories by Cornell Woolrich. I had never heard of this writer before, which surprised me because I learned that many of his novels and stories were adapted to film, most notably Hitchcock’s Rear Window. As I read the stories, I discovered that Woolrich had a unique flair for placing his characters in desperate situations and revealing their innermost weaknesses and, sometimes, hidden strengths. You never know what is going to happen to these characters because in the Woolrich universe no one is ever safe and being a stand-up guy doesn’t mean you won’t get ground under the heel of fate. Woolrich, who also wrote under the pennames William Irish and George Hopley, authored six books from 1940 to 1948 that used the word “black” in the title. It is partly for this reason he is often referred to as the father of Noir. One of my favorite stories is titled "An Apple A Day". In the story, a jewel heist is bungled when a rare gem is concealed inside an apple that goes astray. Over the course of the story, this apple passes through the hands of more and more desperate people, none of whom know that the answer to their problem lies concealed within the piece of fruit. Finally, it winds up in the hand of a homeless person who plans to eat it in the morning but freezes to death overnight, letting fall from his hand the apple that would have saved him. This is classic Woolrich. Sure, it’s a bit contrived, but who cares? All Woolrich is interested in is the humanity of his characters and while the story has elements of humor (the apple is eventually eaten by a horse and followed by detectives waiting for it to be excreted) it is remarkable for the portrait of characters caught in the vise-grip of desperation. Sadly, Woolrich’s work remains largely overlooked these days and you can expect to pay dearly for an early printing of one of his titles. Here are just a few of these hard-to-find gems:            | AuthorThe Imagine Blog is written by Don, Bishop, and Ezra. ArchivesApril 2013 CategoriesAll |
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