The Real Gone, Horn Gone Blues Skoot Larson _________________________ When alto saxophone legend and San Pedro native Art Pepper was arrested for narcotics possession and sent to San Quentin in 1960, his signature Martin alto saxophone disappeared. Had he pawned it? Was it buried somewhere in the Los Angeles Police Departments vast evidence room? A seller on present day Internet auction site, Net Bid, claims to have Arts horn, and has put it up for grabs, which draws the attention of one Lucien Bezich, a saxophonist in the band of local jazz man turned reluctant detective Lars Lyndstrom. Loose, as hes called, is a musical genius, but rather slow, and easily excitable in his day-to-day life outside jazz. Loose wants Art Peppers axe badly enough to borrow $3,000 from his mother to place a bid on the horn. For his money, however, all Loose gets is a corpse thats been strangled with the cord that goes around the saxophone players neck to steady the instrument, along with his own arrest for the sax-strap murder. When the Net Bid seller disappears as well, The police discover that this same suspect is also being sought for questioning in the theft of over a million dollars worth of container cargo from the Port of Los Angeles. Can Lars untangle this web to save his friend and fellow musician? If so, it will require another satori from Lars to solve this Zen-jazz mystery.

Exotic dancers begin disappearing around the South Bay area in record numbers just after a well-fed, 6-foot alligator is spotted in the San Pedro's Machado Lake. Alto saxophonist Loose Bezich, whose topless terpsichorean girlfriend is terrified, doesn't believe in such concurrences. Loose calls on bandleader and fellow-jazzman Lars Lindstrom to help him check out the scene. Lars, musician turned detective, faces is biggest challenge to date as California's "Reggie-gator" serial killer becomes obsessed with the trumpet man's beautiful Norwegian lady. A story set in the cities of San Pedro, Denver and Boulder, and the French Riviera.

Tom Waits's distinctive, bourbon-soaked growl, his unique persona, and his incorporation of musical styles from blues to experimental to vaudeville have secured for him a top-shelf cult following and an extraordinary critical respect. The idea of the Wanderer - someone who seeks an escape from all of life's problems, and dreams himself into oblivion - serves as the fundamental personality type around which all Waits's music revolves. Ten years of producing and touring with Waits's macabre folktale adaptation across Canada and the U.S. has given author Corinne Kessel direct access to his work, creative process, and his associates. In this comprehensive analysis, Kessel examines all of the many characters that have appeared throughout the course of Waits' musical career, from Closing Time (1973) to Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards. His raw form of expression and his evocative lyrics work together to form an emotional chronicle of society's misfits, outcasts, and lowlifes. He is not the sort of composer to chase after shiny red fire trucks to awesome blazing fires, but instead looks after the intangible dreams found dissipating in the last wisp of smoke from a cigarette, held in the weathered hands of a broken soul. Here, author Corinne Kessel pursues Waits into this distinctly murky and unsettled atmosphere to address in particular Waits's enduring questions of reality, landscape, and identity.

Peter Josyph's the way of the trumpet is the first novel written in haiku form. Read equally well aloud or alone, the way of the trumpet creates its own rhythm while bringing us into the lives of Josyph's highly original, often hilarious and frequently profound characters. This is a departure from literary convention with a highly literate style. The way of the trumpet shows us the novel in truly rare form.

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