"Pat Cadigan - The Final Remake Of Little Latin Larry" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cadigan Pat)

argue with them. After all, we all sing our own particular song in our
chains, don't we.
But you'll want to know about the last remake, won't you. That last
remake. Everybody always wants to know about that. I swear, I'll do a
thousand projects before I go gentle into my subterranean homesick blues
and the one thing I'll be remembered for is that damned remake.
Everyone'll still be mad at me for one of two reasons and by god, they'll
both be wrong.
So, one more time, for the record and with feeling: I did not rediscover
Little Latin Larry, and I didn't kill him.
Who did?
Well, I was afraid you'd ask me that.

First of all, let's get all the facts we know -- all right, all the facts
I know -- straight. You'll pardon me if I go over to the bar and fix
myself a few memory aids. This brown stuff here, this is an esoteric drink
called Old Peculier, which is the liquid equivalent of wrapping yourself
in a comfy blanket on an uncommonly bad day. Fair Annie -- you wouldn't
know her, she liked the low-profile life -- introduced me to it. But this
other stuff that looks a lot like, well, frankly, urine -- it's no-class
lager. Cheap beer was the term for it then and it was sought after for
both its cheapness and its beerness, if you see what I mean.
The Old Peculier is for drinking, just because I like it. But the lager is
for smelling, because I can remember Larry best when I smell cheap beer.
It was just about the only thing you ever smelled around Larry.
And let's get something else straight: the full name of the band was
Little Latin Larry and His Loopy Louies, His Luscious Latinaires, and His
Lascivious Latinettes.
Little Latin Larry was, of course, lead vocalist, conductor, arranger, and
erstwhile composer. Which is to say, for a while, he was trying out some
originals on the playlist. I've heard them. They weren't too bad, you
know; they were just meant to be songs to dance to, or jump up and down
to, or puke to, if you went that way (not like the Bulimic Era stuff --
that was later, and didn't have much to do with having a good time). But
every time Larry tried to slip in an original, everyone would just kind of
stand there looking puzzled. There'd be some people dancing, some people
nodding along, a few of the hard-core puking, but most of them just stood
around with these lost expressions, and you could tell they were trying to
place the song and couldn't. So Larry forgot about being even a cheap-beer
ditty-monger and went back to covers. There were skintillions of bands
that played covers for anyone who hired them, but when Larry and the band
did a cover it was . . . I could say that when Little Latin Larry and Co.
covered a song it was, for the duration, completely their own, as if no
one else had ever sung it. And if I did put it that way, I would be both
right and wrong. Just as if I said, when they covered a song, it was a
complete tribute to the original artists. That would be right and wrong as
well.
It was both. It was neither. It was an experience. It was all shades of
one experience, a million experiences in one. In other words, you had to
be there. Yes. You had to be there at least once.