#732: Third Annual Pipe Dream

That's right -- it's time for the 4th Annual TAD Awards, the yearly roundup of the best and worst stuff I heard and read over the previous year.
I started out 2013 listening to a LOT of Really Bad progressive rock -- and I'll be listening to more soon -- and I ended the year writing books and barely listening to or reading anything at all. But there's still more than enough to look back on for a best and worst list....
BEST NEW-TO-ME SONGS OF THE YEAR -- Kirsty MacColl's bitter, driving "Free World," and Van Morrison's ecstatic "Sweet Thing." "Free World" has great slashing guitar, driving choruses and verses, and Kirsty's great disillusioned, cynical vocal. Her lyrics are brilliantly sarcastic and cutting -- it's over with way too fast. Should have been a big hit.
"Sweet Thing" is the only song from Van's acclaimed ASTRAL WEEKS that I've ever been able to get into -- on it he sounds positively transported by love, and the playing behind him is pretty amazing, too. It's not a rocker, but the happiness in Van's voice is a pleasure to hear. And the lyrics are some of his most direct and revealing ever. You can see why he'd spend a career chasing this sound.
WORST NEW-TO-ME SONG OF THE YEAR -- Barclay James Harvest's "Dark Now My Sky" (1970). This is the kind of thing the Alan Parsons Project might have done half a decade later -- only Parsons and Co. would have done it BETTER. There's a long melodramatic recitation at the start, loud and meaningless guitar solos in the middle, massively overdone orchestrations, melodrama to the max -- it's a mini-opera, and it lasts for-freaking-EVER. Don't bother tracking this down -- it's 12 minutes you'll never get back. RUNNER-UP: BJH's almost equally-melodramatic and overdone "She Said," against heavy competition from half a dozen other songs on their "best-of."
BEST BEST-OF -- Junior Walker and the All-Stars' ESSENTIAL COLLECTION. Mostly pretty great party music. You can actually enjoy about a dozen of the 16 songs over and over -- it never really wears out. And the best tracks are where Junior SINGS. His sax playing is pretty great, too. RUNNER-UP: Booker T and the MG's VERY BEST OF. Some very good stuff here, but not quite enough catchy, upbeat R&B instrumentals....
WORST BEST-OF -- Barclay James Harvest's THE HARVEST YEARS. There are maybe half a dozen good songs here, out of 31. The rest is overly-melodramatic, uninspired, too-heavily-orchestrated -- what the heck were they trying to do? Did THEY even know? Best are the uncharacteristically simple rocker "Taking Some Time On," and the simple catchy love song "Ursula (The Swansea Song)." Both those could have been hits. Some of the early songs have an innocent charm. The rest are too heavy, too needlessly arty -- and there are stupid "heavy" rockers and heavy-handed blooze numbers that you'll never get through. There's even an orchestrated "Western drama." Save your money, buy BJH's GONE TO EARTH instead.
RUNNERS-UP FOR WORST BEST-OF -- The Strawbs' HALCYON DAYS and Be-Bop Deluxe's RAIDING THE DIVINE ARCHIVES. I like both these bands, and there's some good stuff on these discs. But these collections don't show off these acts at their best -- the Strawbs' package doesn't even have their best work with Rick Wakeman, it's almost like they were embarrassed that he was ever a member of the band. The Be-Bop could've used more tracks from SUNBURST FINISH, though "Maid in Heaven" is a real find that should have been a hit.
BEST ALBUM OF THE YEAR -- I don't remember getting all the way through any non-best-of's, though Ghod knows I TRIED....
BEST MUSIC-RELATED NON-FICTION -- LET IT BLURT by Jim DeRogatis. The life and times of legendary '70s/'80s rock critic Lester Bangs. Great details and wonderful nostalgic mood -- I only wished there was MORE.
WORST MUSIC-RELATED NON-FICTION -- Edward Wincentsen's MOODY BLUES COMPANION. This self-published booklet is not what you might think it is. Too many typos, misspellings and major errors in fact to keep track of, the history of the band can be ... a little puzzling, and the last half of the book is all fans' stories about meeting the band. Doesn't even include a complete, detailed discography -- which would have been easy to add. Save your cash 'til the real bio comes out -- if it ever does.
BEST MEMOIR OF THE YEAR other than mine -- Linda Lou's BASTARD HUSBAND: A LOVE STORY. Though the book is about how Linda's marriage to her soulmate fell apart, there's a big laugh on practically every page, and a Christmas scene around the family dinner table that has GOT to get into some Christmas movie someday. You'll laugh a lot. Well worth your time.
BEST NOVEL SORT-OF -- Well, I guess it was Brian Aldiss's BRIGHTFOUNT DIARIES, since that's the only one I remember getting all the way through. But I wasn't very excited about it. Still, it DID show me how "easy" it would be to write a memoir....
BEST BOOK I DIDN'T QUITE FINISH -- Hunter S. Thompson's THE PROUD HIGHWAY. I've been nursing this collection of letters for MONTHS. I've made it up to 1965, when Thompson started writing HELL'S ANGELS, and I've still got a couple hundred pages to go. If I ever get finished, I'm sure it'll be just as solid (and overwhelming) as his other letters collection, FEAR AND LOATHING IN AMERICA.
BEST RADIO SHOW -- Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot's syndicated music-news-and-interviews show SOUND OPINIONS. It'll never replace LITTLE STEVEN'S UNDERGROUND GARAGE, but the guys at SO have done some great programs over the past year -- especially in-the-studio concerts with Savages, Aimee Mann, and others, interviews with producers Tony Visconti and Joe Boyd, and in-depth looks at the work of Nick Drake and Lou Reed. Their best and worst of the year and their annual Thanksgiving Turkey Shoot were all a hoot. They still feature a lot of critic's babies and new/Rap stuff I don't have much use for, but these guys have become an every-Sunday-night addiction for me. Hope you can catch them, wherever you are....
BIGGEST NEWS OF THE YEAR -- Hey, I wrote TWO BOOKS! You can get them at Amazon.com's Kindle Store RIGHT NOW! For $2.99! And there's another book already in the works....

I know this is what You Out There want to hear -- my next book is going to be a guide to Strange Music, to be called LISTEN TO THIS! I'm already 10 or so pages into it, mainly what I've got so far is a list of the artists I want to include, but I've already got a few entries/critiques written. Should be fun. And from The Moody Blues to Cromagnon, anything "Strange" or Different that I can remember hearing over the last 40+ years is going to be in it.
Should be done in about ... oh, six weeks or so, right? I'll keep you posted....
Happy New Ear!

#731: After words

Holy crap -- my 200-page newspaper memoir/e-book THE CONFESSOR is now available at Amazon.com's Kindle Store for $2.99. I just e-mailed the package to Amazon at 4:30 this morning and it's already Out There doing its good for humanity. These Kindle folks do NOT mess around.
A few words of explanation: This book covers some of my adventures during the 20 years I worked for newspapers in the Air Force and out here in The Real World. It includes some of my favorite funny newspaper stories, and some tragic stories that I haven't been able to get out of my head in the decade since I "retired."
There are also some behind-the-scenes stories of stress and overwork and outrage and incompetence and abuse. Turns out writing for newspapers in The Real World was even harder -- and stranger -- than putting up with the Air Force. You'll see what I mean.
I think you'll have a good time -- but I also think this book is a little less light and fun than GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC! was. There's some really good funny stories in it -- there are stories in there that I've been telling people for YEARS. But I also learned some tough Life Lessons during my 20-year career, and they're also included.
And you can assume that there isn't a conventional Happy Ending, or else I'd still be writing for newspapers. But I survived it, and I'm still here writing about it. I gotta get SOMETHING out of the 20 years I wasted....
Not sure why all this stuff came pouring out so fast -- it only took me six weeks to write the book. Maybe because I had 20 years of experiences to draw from, so I had no trouble remembering things I wanted to write about.
So, give it a shot! You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll kiss three bucks goodbye....
Holy crap, I've written two 200-page books since August! Why couldn't I do this while I was in my 20's?
Not sure what I'll do next, probably take a break -- but I've been thinking over finally pulling together TAD'S GUIDE TO STRANGE MUSIC. I've been piling-up information for it for YEARS. And I've sort of got a built-in audience waiting for it, right...?
Let's face it: Everything I write is pretty much one big long book that I hope people might dip into and maybe enjoy little bits and pieces of. What's a blog, if not a big long book in chapters?
BTW, I will NOT be starting another new blog to mark the publication of this book....
Also: One thing being a reporter taught me is that EVERYONE has an interesting life story. There's a reason you're here today, and there are reasons why you've ended up this way. You ought to get writing on YOUR story while you've still got some time left. Your family, your children, your friends will appreciate it....

BTW, through Christmas Day you can still download GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC! for FREE at Amazon.com's Kindle Store....

AHEAD: Coming Real Soon will be the end-of-the-year 4th Annual TAD Awards, my annual roundup of the best and worst stuff I heard and read over this past year -- I'm probably going to call the post "3rd Annual Pipe Dream" just to see if anybody's paying attention....
Also Coming Soon: Overused Rock&Roll words, Songs it took me years to like, a salute to Caravan (drummer Richard Coughlan, RIP), and more.
Over at the Guaranteed Great Music! blog, a review of Todd Rundgren and Utopia's rather good 1980 ADVENTURES IN UTOPIA album is now posted -- the least I could do, since I stupidly forgot about it and left the album out of my RECORD STORE DAZE playlist/discography.
Sheesh, I'm surprised I can remember ANYTHING anymore. That must be why I'm scrambling to write all this stuff down now -- before I forget everything....
Happy Holidays, all....

#730: Christmas presents

Good Ghod -- my newspaper-career memoir, THE CONFESSOR, is almost done at 63,000 words/about 200 pages, just a little longer than my last book. I've written 25,000 words in the last week. I don't know why all this stuff is coming out so fast but I'm not going to question it.
All I have to do now is proofread the thing, which I started doing tonight. I think the first section -- about my experiences at journalism school -- is vivid and funny. I'm hoping I can keep it up.
Might take a few days to proofread, add a little, drop a little, dot the T's and cross the I's, etc. But at this rate, the book might be out for y'all to look over at Amazon.com's Kindle Store by Christmas. I'm hoping so.

Also: From Dec. 21 through Christmas Day, my first e-book, GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC!, will be available FREE at Amazon's Kindle Store. You can already download the first 20 pages for FREE there right now and see what you think.
Right now, I'd be happy if a few more people read the book and let me know what they thought.
Speaking of which, my hat's off to Tim Breshears, who posted his review of GGM at Amazon.com. Four stars! I'm grateful -- I owe you a dinner, Tim.
Help your friendly local aging hack writer plan for his imminent Retirement -- buy a copy of GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC! for Kindle for Christmas. And if THE CONFESSOR just happens to be there too by then, what the hey...?
I'm going to continue to give this stuff away for $2.99. Except for the freebies, of course.

Hey, BTW -- Rastro is BACK, doing his thoughtful music-reviewing thing at La Historia de la Musica Rock. He's posted a couple reviews in the past week, some of his picks for best albums of the year, and he says there's more coming. Check him out, rejoice and enjoy. We've missed you, buddy....

We all know the most overplayed Christmas songs -- we hear them to death every year at this time. But the folks at the syndicated music-news-and-reviews radio show SOUND OPINIONS played some great obscure Christmas songs during last Sunday night's show, hope you caught them.
Practically everything they played was great -- especially Cheap Trick's "Come On, Christmas," Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody," and The Ramones' "Christmas Night (I Don't Want to Fight)."
But their expert's pick for greatest Christmas song ever was The Kinks' 1977 classic "Father Christmas" -- which really is freakin' awesome -- you'll be singing along with the choruses by the end, and there's some great guitar from Dave Davies. It sounded just slightly familiar, like I may have heard it once years ago....
SOUND OPINIONS has been doing some great stuff the past few months. See if you can track them down in your area. Here, they air every Sunday night at 10 p.m. on KUOW, 90.7 FM, the University of Washington's radio station. Or you can check them out at soundopinions.org/.
Happy holidays....

#729: Scandalous!

What's news? Depends on where you look. Let's take a brief look at some of today's silliest headlines as the world continues to go crazier....
In the news, President Barack Obama refuses to attend Nelson Mandela's funeral in Mandela's home village in South Africa. During a White House press briefing, Obama said "I dunno ... I never really liked the guy that much anyway...."
In entertainment, Grammy winners Taylor Swift and Adele have agreed to team up on an album of brand-new broken-hearted love songs. The album's due to be completed and released early in the new year. "Might as well just slash your wrists NOW," rock critic says.
In sports, the Seattle Seahawks blow another big game as they lose shamefully to the New Jersey Giants, 63-0 -- a new record in futility for the Seahawks.
At the press conference after the game, cornerback Richard Sherman -- known for his straight-shooting comments to the media -- said about the team's shameful performance: "I dunno ... Maybe we really ARE as lame as everyone says...."
In other sports news, the Seattle Mariners signed yet another unknown ball-player to a multi-year $63-gazillion-dollar contract in another futile effort to bring the team out of perpetual cellar-dweller status. The team's general manager said "We'll sign ANYONE. Money is no object. My checkbook's open. Come on down to Safeco Field and try out...."
In celebrity gossip, Kanye West has offered to pay $5 million for his wedding to Kim Kardashian -- and Kim STILL isn't happy.
"It's not about the MONEY," Kim told the tabloids. "It's just that ... Kanye can be SUCH an asshole...."
In local traffic: According to a new study, the Seattle area continues to have the WORST traffic backups in the country, with some survey respondents reportedly being born, growing old and dying while waiting on I-405 to get from Renton to Bellevue....
In business news, Boeing officials admit that they are looking at moving production of the new 777-XXX "Dreamsleeper" airplane to South Carolina, where costs are lower, salaries are cheaper, and each plane can be built at a shockingly low overall cost to Boeing of just 29 CENTS.
"Sure, they can build it there cheap," said one Boeing machinist. "But let's see how long they can keep it UP...."
He apparently spoke for thousands of machinists, who have been asking the same question about Boeing's CEO....
More coming soon, unfortunately....

#728: A thin writing life....

I owe British science-fiction writer Brian Aldiss for showing me how I could pull a memoir together through reading his first book, THE BRIGHTFOUNT DIARIES (1955), which I read back in August. Right after I finished it, the light bulb went on over my head and I started on my record-store memoir GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC!
But I have to report that Aldiss's own writing-life memoir, BURY MY HEART AT W.H. SMITH'S (1990) is thin and disappointing. You can probably tell how compelling it was, because it took me three months to get through 190 pages. Of course I was doing other things, too....
There's some more detail here about Aldiss's younger days, how he ended up writing BRIGHTFOUNT, and what happened after. There's some detail about writing his early novels which made him a big name in '60s science fiction. His first Hugo Award from SF readers came as a totally unexpected surprise through the mail -- and was left at his door all wrapped-up like a lamp or a table-leg.
There's good stuff on how Aldiss wrote his "anti-novel" REPORT ON PROBABILITY A, which sat for nearly a decade before anyone would publish it -- and about his late-'60s "new wave" "acid-head war" novel BAREFOOT IN THE HEAD.
He touches on some more of his books along the way -- he's written a whole shelf full since the late '50s. It would probably help if I'd actually READ some of these -- there's a big section on his three-book HELLICONIA series.
But all I've read by Aldiss is BRIGHTFOUNT, his excellent SF overview TRILLION YEAR SPREE (and its predecessor BILLION YEAR SPREE), and a short story or two.
Throughout, Aldiss is witty, chatty, pleasant -- but BURY MY HEART reads very much like notes he jotted down while between writing projects, and he says so while he's writing it. There's not a whole lot of depth here. Aldiss admits he doesn't know precisely what it is that keeps him writing. But more of the depth he showed in TRILLION YEAR SPREE would have done this book some good.
It's light and fun and witty -- OK reading while you're munching on lunch, maybe. Something to pass the time. But it's pretty surfacey....

...Meanwhile, if you have a Kindle, you can now download the first 20 pages of my record-store memoir GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC! for FREE at Amazon.com's Kindle Store. Hopefully, this will entice some of You Out There to give the rest of the book a try. I think it's worth the $2.99 for the whole package. If you've enjoyed any of the music reviews or nostalgia pieces I've posted here, I think you'll have a pretty good time.
And work on the NEXT book is continuing....
More soon...!

#727: Book 2 update

Counting the notes I've bashed into the laptop so I don't I forget stuff, I'm 37,500 words/about 120 pages into Book 2, the newspaper-reporting memoir I'm calling THE CONFESSOR. The writing hasn't been hard. I've been feeling guilty that I haven't been able to work on the book every day -- there's all these jobs and relationships that get in the way, don't ya know.
Have made it all the way through recounting my 10-year Air Force public-affairs career and am now about to tackle life on newspapers out here in the Real World, where the fun really begins.
I'm estimating this book will be longer than my record-store memoir, GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC! I'm not so worried about getting EVERYTHING down this time, though I am of course doing my best. There are enough outrageous high points that I trust a minute-by-minute recap of my 20 years as a reporter won't be necessary....
A few blog posts from here will be recycled and thrown into this book as well -- so far, bits and pieces from "Facing Dr. Pagan," "The Smallest Air Force Base in the World," "The Boogie Monster and Other Adventures," "Three years in Tay-jazz!," "Two years in Turkey," "The Apneac," and some other bits have been used -- usually at a shorter length than the version that appeared here.
Full Disclosure rules force me to warn You Out There that "The poster-child for stressing-out," "The worst Prom date EVER," and "My worst moment" will also be recycled and tossed in. Can't help it if I've written about a lot of this stuff before, and I doubt if I can improve much on the versions that have appeared here. Though I'll try, of course. And I still think it will be worth your time when it's all done....

Speaking of GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC!, the sales figures haven't improved since the last time I posted here, though there are some holiday sales specials coming up, and I'm trying to get a sample section of the book posted at Amazon.com's Kindle Store so you can read the opening 10 pages or so -- stuff you've never read anywhere else before. Hopefully that will entice some of you into giving the book a shot. Hope so, anyway. I think it's pretty good, and if you've enjoyed my nostalgia pieces here you'll probably like it....
A stunning 4 people have bought the book so far, and I have NO IDEA who the fourth person is, so that's something.... Anybody out there who's read the book and doesn't mind the work -- feel free to post what you thought of GGM on the book's page at Amazon's Kindle Store. Might help me sell a few books. And I'll remember you in my will....

I've been neglecting the Guaranteed Great Music! blog, and I regret that. I haven't always been close to the Internet lately and it was a LONG holiday week at work. But I will do my best to get back to it soonly, with a review of Split Enz's goofy 1981 album WAIATA....
Also will have a new post up soon at THE GAS NAZI! -- it will be called "Trust me...?," referring to a lecture I got from a customer a couple of weeks ago. Should be fun. And just in time for the holidays....

Meanwhile, Good Ghod it's COLD here -- 30s during the day, and down in the teens and 20's at night -- pretty freaking cold for western Washington. So I'm keeping warm by typing my fingers off and dreaming of having enough income from writing to retire with. Dream on....

Have been making notes for the 4th Annual TAD Awards, my annual round-up of the best and worst stuff I read or heard over the past year. It might be a little thin, due to my recent extracurricular activities, but there'll be some shockers in there anyway. That'll be coming before the end of the month....
By the way, I started blogging five years ago this week....

Have been listening to some new music while at work, though not much. Lots of Van Morrison, from his STILL ON TOP best-of. Have really started enjoying Van's "Wavelength," "Saint Dominic's Preview," "In the Garden," "Real Real Gone," "Gloria," and "Stranded" -- along with the other great stuff that's on there, like "Jackie Wilson Said," "Wild Night," "Into the Mystic," "Domino," "Cleaning Windows," "Wonderful Remark," etc.
Even the songs that aren't really that great as songs have wonderful little moments in the singing and playing that are worth waiting for -- like the playing and vocals on "In the Garden," or the synthesizer and backing vocals on "Wavelength." It's also sort of interesting how out-of-it Van sounds on "Real Real Gone," which is a very basic, simple song....
My only real complaint about this LONG (3-CD) collection is that "Sweet Thing" isn't on here -- it's the only song from Van's acclaimed ASTRAL WEEKS that I've ever been able to get into. On it he sounds positively ecstatic, absolutely transported by love. That's a vision anybody could spend a career chasing.
Also had a great time hearing syndicated music-news-and-reviews radio show SOUND OPINIONS' choices for the best rock songs about the music business -- the show aired last Sunday night. Almost everything they played was pretty great. Hadn't heard Patti Smith's version of "So You Want to be a Rock and Roll Star" in years. And I have GOT to track me down some Graham Parker -- his grudge tune "Mercury Poisoning" is GREAT!
Course my favorite rock song about the music biz is Badfinger's masterful, dramatic "In the Meantime/Some Other Time" off of their WISH YOU WERE HERE album. Go track it down, it's well worth it....

By the way, that post I did for Halloween about dressing up in women's clothing and hanging around in bars has attracted more views (73) then anything else I've done in quite awhile. Glad you liked it. Might have to toss that into the new book too, if I've got any room left....
More soon....