That said, here are a few ideas I have. First, you might want
to look in
the rara avis archives a few months ago for the posts on
"hardboiled
music," which dealt with it both in sound (mostly jazz, like
Miles,
Coltrane and Charlie Haden Quartet West and soundtracks like
Chinatown
and others) and lyric (Warren Zevon, Tom Waits, Nick Cave,
Robyn
Hitchcock, Johnny Cash, gangsta rap and others). Also, there
has been
recent discussion of Frank, Dean and the rest of the Rat
Pack, who lived
a hardboiled life, whether or not their music fits the
genre.
As far as art, you'll also have to decide whether hardboiled
is defined
by the art or the artist. For instance, Jackson Pollock and
many of his
peers certainly lived hardboiled, but I don't know if
abstract
expressionism counts as hardboiled painting - maybe. Of
course, some
fit both ways. many of them photographers, especially Robert
Frank,
Diane Arbus and the great Weegee.
Mark
ps -- Sort of speaking of rap, there is an early-70s pre-rap
LP
(available on CD) called Hustlers' Convention which will
appeal to
anyone who enjoyed Iceberg Slim. It is a story told in rhyme
of a
gathering of hustlers to determine who was the best; much of
the backing
music is supplied by Kool and the Gang. All in all, I enjoy
it, and
listen to it, much more than Slim's own LP.
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