Another ticket

My memoir about growing up with my step-brother -- a story I've been trying to finish writing since age 17 -- will be done soon. I finally learned the final part of the puzzle over my weekend, and it's a shocker.
I've posted a couple parts of the memoir here recently -- stories about stealing gas out of people's cars and gas cans out of garages, stealing money from people's houses, and treating women badly. The first girl I ever loved is wrapped up in this story -- I wrote about her here a few years back, in a post titled "First Girl I Loved."
Anyway, once I figure out how to handle this new information -- I'm still reeling -- I'll be adding it and my feelings about it to the rest of the memoir, re-reading the whole thing, trying to maybe tone-down some of the teenage angst in the story, and sending it off to Amazon/Kindle, where it will (hopefully) become my sixth e-book.
This will probably take a couple weeks or so. I'll keep you posted.
The book will be called BROTHERS.
Right now, I'm just boggled by the way people's lives turn out -- mine, his, everybody's. The choices we make, when we don't even know we're making choices that might change our lives.
More on this soon....

"Overnight Sensation"

There I was, 15-year-old me, knocking on 15-year-old Debbie's front door again for my 18-year-old brother Jay. Making sure it was "safe" so Jay and Debbie could get together.
I hated this, and it had gone wrong before. One night Debbie had invited Jay over to her house, and instead her father had answered the door when I knocked.
"Who the hell are YOU?" he grumbled.
"Is Debbie here?" I asked shakily.
"Get off my porch you fuckin' long-haired little SHIT!" he roared.
"I'm sorry," I said, always polite. "I must have the wrong house." And I freakin' disappeared.
But this night it was safe. We'd scoped the house out for 15 minutes just to make sure there were no parents lurking. Debbie answered the door. "It's OK, come on in," she said, and I turned and waved at Jay to come inside.
Debbie was babysitting some toddler who'd already been put to bed. Debbie was trying to relax -- the smell of pot was in the air.
I didn't like Debbie, but that was OK because she didn't like me either. She just wanted to see Jay, and I understood that. I was the third wheel here for other reasons.
Lots of girls liked Jay, and even an antisocial virginal dummy like me could figure out why. With his long wavy black hair reaching down below his shoulders, his big virile nose, the pack of Marlboros rolled up in his black short-sleeve T-shirt, leaning back against his black '62 Impala SS with the big wide tires on the back ... LOTS of girls fell in love as soon as they saw him. His appearance just screamed BAD BOY. I got that.
Debbie had been one of them. Debbie had long wiry brown hair and was a little big on top. She'd been in some sort of accident that messed up her neck, and she'd had to wear some kind of complicated neck brace for awhile -- and she was grateful that "the cage" didn't keep Jay from talking with her. Though I'm not sure how long they talked. I was the guy who got tossed out of the car whenever they wanted to "talk."
The cage was gone now. But the only time I saw Debbie was when she wanted to pass on the message that she wanted to see Jay -- that her folks would be gone or that she was babysitting somewhere else and she hoped he'd come over. I hated being the go-between for them. And it got to the point where if I ran into her in the crowded hallways at school, I wouldn't meet her eyes, I'd just keep walking. And I'd hear her yell "STUCK UP!" from somewhere behind me.
The only time Jay would see Debbie was when we had no gas money for the Impala and there was nowhere else to go.
That's why I was there. While Jay and Debbie were kissing or Whatever back in the bedroom, I'd be ransacking the rest of the house. Under orders from my brother.
I received these orders early. The first time he and Debbie got together while she was babysitting and started breathing heavily and grabbing at each other, then disappeared to the bedroom, I LEFT. Twenty minutes later, Jay appeared at the front porch at our house, where I was waiting, not wanting to go back inside and face our parents without him.
"Man, don't DO that anymore," he said. "Don't leave me ALONE with her like that."
I started laughing. "Why not?" I asked. "You didn't seem to be in any trouble."
"But man, I WAS," he said. "She wanted to FUCK! ... But I figure while I'm busy with her, you can dig around in stuff, maybe find us some money or something we could sell."
Jay was always desperate for money to fill the gas tank. So if I wanted to go cruising with him, I had to help find ways to put gas in the car. And I didn't have a job. I was still in 10th grade.
So since then, I'd been helping Jay steal gas cans, and looking through cabinets and drawers in the houses where Debbie baby-sat. I'd found a few dollars and some small change, nothing too big. And nobody ever complained about stuff being taken. At least that we heard about.
On this night, Jay and Debbie vanished almost immediately, so I started snooping. I found a few dollars rolled up in one drawer, and some pocket change inside an old incense burner. There wasn't much else, so I started looking at their album collection. The full catalog of Moody Blues albums, a few records by Spooky Tooth (knew nothing about them), some Jefferson Airplane, some Allman Brothers, the Beatles of course.
By this point, I felt kind of distracted, a little airy. I wondered if it was caused by the leftover pot fumes in the air. I wasn't happy to be there, and I was nervous about Debbie's folks coming home unexpectedly -- but suddenly I was relaxed and nothing seemed to matter too much. Strange -- pot had only given me a headache before.
The radio was playing, Casey Kasem's "American Top 40." The Raspberries' great "Overnight Sensation" was playing at Number 29 -- I was confident it'd sell millions. It was the best thing I'd heard in ages. How could it miss?
I drifted into the kitchen, started looking for snacks. Was it The Munchies? Started opening cabinets. Didn't find much. What, no snacks here? These people only eat Real Food?
Jay and Debbie reappeared at some point, quicker than I expected. Jay sat in the living room where I'd found the cash, and lit up a cigarette. I was still looking through cabinets.
Slowly, Debbie crept up behind me and put her arms around my waist. I REALLY hadn't expected THIS.
"Hello," I said falteringly.
"HI," she said warmly. "How are YOU doing out here?"
"Uh ... I'm kind of woozy. Really relaxed, you know? Not quite here."
Debbie laughed. "Could be the pot. You ever been high before? Could be a contact high."
"He usually doesn't toke," Jay told her.
The music was still playing, something else now. I couldn't focus on it. Debbie was swaying against me now, in time with the music. I liked it, even though it was Debbie. I turned to face her. Her arms were still around me.
"That's nice," I said.
"...You know what, you're a LOT NICER when you're stoned," she said. "...Do you want to come to the bedroom with me?"
"What?" I asked. I could NOT be hearing this.
"Do you want to come to the bedroom with me?" she repeated. "I think you might be a lot of fun."
"You SHOULD, man," Jay said helpfully. "It's pretty good." That must have made Debbie happy.
I did think about it for a second. But I'd never been anywhere NEAR bed. I had no idea what to do, what to expect. And I was pretty sure Debbie DID.
"...Uh... I don't really think I could HANDLE that right now...," I murmured, sort of drifting away from all this.
"That's too bad," she said. "Because I think you're really nice right now...."
I was still drifting. But I knew how I felt about Debbie. I still didn't like her.
"...But you're still a slut," I murmured.
"What?" she said, as if from a thousand miles away. She turned to Jay. "Do you think he meant that?"
"Probably not," Jay said. "You said yourself he's stoned. Look at him. He doesn't even know where he's at right now."
Debbie kept her arms around my waist until Jay finished his smoke, then pulled her away for a return trip to the bedroom.
I went and sat in the living room, the radio still playing, I couldn't tell what. I thought about what she'd offered, and I knew I wasn't ready for it. I hadn't even kissed a girl yet. I had NO IDEA what would happen if I went to the bedroom with Debbie, and it scared me. Besides, what if Something Happened and Debbie got pregnant? I knew she'd never blame Jay, and I didn't want to be the fall-guy for any accidents.
I don't think the idea of following my brother yet again ever occurred to me. It was buried by the idea that a girl -- no matter how stoned -- had said I was nice and expressed an interest in going to bed with me. That was an absolute first.
But I was certain that if I was ever going to go to bed with a girl, I wanted it to be someone I was in love with, someone I cared about -- not someone I could barely stand to see
After about half an hour, Jay reappeared and we left. On the walk home, Jay asked me "Were you really that stoned?" I didn't know. But it wore off after we left Debbie's house. And Debbie never got close to me again. And I didn't mind.
It was more than two years later before any other girl got that close.

Grab bag

Here's some quick reviews of what I've been reading over the last week or so....

Peter Greenberg: DON'T GO THERE! (2009) -- Greenberg is the Travel Editor for NBC's TODAY SHOW. His book was filed in the Humor section of my favorite local used book store, so I thought it might be funny. It wasn't. Basically, Greenberg spends 250 pages warning you about lots of places NOT to visit in your travels, all of which illustrate Karl Malden's First Rule Of Travel: Don't Leave Home. I can see where Greenberg might be funny on TV, but after the first couple chapters warning you away from Chernobyl, Bhopal and Love Canal, it all gets kind of dull.
I was also shocked that none of the places I've lived made any of Greenberg's "Must Avoid" lists. Ankara, Turkey didn't make it into the Top 10 for Worst Air. Worland, Wyoming didn't come anywhere near Most Boring. And Washington didn't break into the Top 10 Suicide States -- though Wyoming did....

Richard Burton: DIARIES (2012) -- A former big-time actor, Rich had all the same problems as the rest of us lower-earners: Hating his job, being bored, not wanting to be around most people, and whether he should buy ANOTHER million-dollar diamond ring for his wife. His diaries are surprisingly readable, very good waking-up reading. I was reminded in places of another actor's diaries published a decade or two back, Charlton Heston's AN ACTOR'S LIFE. But Burton goes into more depth -- when he's in the mood, and not drinking heavily. And it's interesting how much stuff he pours out onto the page when he's happy with his wife Liz. When she's not around, he pretty much clams up. Parts of the book are laugh-out-loud funny, but there's 650 pages of it.

Alice Sebold: LUCKY (1999) -- It takes me awhile to Get things, sometimes: The Cars, Madonna, Prince. Sebold was quite a publishing sensation a decade or so back when she published the Number 1 bestselling novel THE LOVELY BONES. This memoir came first: It tells how Sebold was beaten and raped while a student at Syracuse University. It is brutal, shocking, and absolutely riveting to read. You THINK the toughest, hardest-to-read part of the story is right up front. And it IS tough. But more shocking stuff follows. There are signs that Sebold maybe didn't know where to END her memoir, but it was worth the trip. She was lucky that she was a strong and quirky person, and she's doubly lucky that her family was a bunch of fruit loops who stood behind her and helped her hold her life together.

Pat O'Day and Jim Ojala: IT WAS ALL JUST ROCK AND ROLL (second edition, 2003) -- O'Day was a disc jockey and station manager for Seattle's KJR AM in the '60s, back in the days when that station was one of the premiere AM stations in the country. His descriptions of what it was like to work in radio back in those days are unique, solid and enjoyable, and when he talks theory about what he -- as a manager -- thought made for an enjoyable AM station and talented AM DJ's, he's on solid ground. I still think there's a great book waiting to be written about working in AM radio in the '50s and '60s, and O'Day has a good start on it here.
But this isn't the book. Much of O'Day's rock-'n'-roll history-writing is from the first-the-earth-cooled-then-the-dinosaurs-came school, and his stories about hanging out with rock stars (Jimi Hendrix, The Beach Boys, Three Dog Night, more) aren't funny or revealing (even the story about Hendrix returning to his alma mater, Seattle's Garfield High School), they're just kind of sad.
O'Day writes ONE PAGE about his alcohol problem -- the cure for which he's been doing radio and TV commercials about in the Seattle area for a decade. There was maybe the basis for another book there -- but O'Day says he was a happy drunk, and that all his friends and co-workers agreed with him....
There are other problems. Glen Campbell and Ahmet Ertegun are among the well-known names who get their names misspelled more than once. Pat sometimes writes women (plural) when he means woman (singular) -- this also happens more than once.
This is the updated second edition of Pat's book. It looks great, and there are some nice black-and-white photos of Hendrix, Elvis, The Rolling Stones, Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Mamas and Papas, The Lovin' Spoonful, and other stars who played in Seattle. But did anyone proofread the book?

Write on....

That book about Strange Music that I've wanted to write since age 22 might actually get done within my lifetime. I've made more progress on it in the last two weeks than I have in five years. I'm somewhere past 27,000 words written, now. Maybe a third to halfway finished.
If all goes as planned, I expect LISTEN TO THIS! will review progressive-rock albums I loved (or hated) back in the day, some very off-the-wall noise I've reviewed here (Cromagnon's CAVE ROCK, Borbetomagus, etc.), and that batch of prog I went through a few years back only to be disappointed when I discovered that a lot of it ... kind of sucked.
Even though I've got some big blank spots, I've heard a lot over the years and I haven't given up yet, so I ought to put all that listening-time and money-spent to good use.
My biggest problem was I couldn't seem to organize what I knew into a format that I could work with, that would allow me to write what I wanted, so the book would sound like me and not just like any other record-review book out there.
A couple weeks ago, I figured out a format that would work, and I've been working with it ever since. For me, a lot of these albums are tied up with memories, old friendships, and good and bad times, so you can trust a lot of that will get into the book.
So far, I have over 300 albums either reviewed, mentioned or at least listed -- everything from DARK SIDE OF THE MOON to ZERO TOLERANCE FOR SILENCE (don't know that one? Good luck....). Hopefully I'll be able to add more as I continue writing. Plus I've got stuff at home that I still haven't given a fair listening to yet....
I'll keep you posted as this project continues. Mentioning it here is part of my plan to force myself to keep working on it. I've seriously wanted to do this at least since I started reviewing off-the-wall music for newspapers, so....

If I slack off on the Strange Music book, I have other projects to keep me writing.
I've been working since September on a second GAS NAZI book. I'm about 25,000 words in. Things have changed a bit at my job in the past couple of years, and hilarious and outrageous new atrocities happen there every week, so as soon as I have enough to fill up another Kindle e-book, I'll let you know.
While I was on vacation from the blog, I was still writing. Last spring I wrote a LONG sort-of "family history" for an old friend back home in Idaho, and from that I hope to do a growing-up memoir called WHEN YOU WAKE UP that traces my growing up from age 11 on -- back to the days when I discovered music and books and that I could maybe write a little. Everything seemed much more magical then. And I can remember 45 years ago better than I can remember last week. So. I'm about 20,000 words into that one.
I hope these books aren't just an attempt to write I-I-I -- I like to think there's more to them. If there wasn't, I wouldn't write them. These e-books aren't making me rich (yet), but at least I feel like I'm accomplishing something, not wasting my life and my talent. If I'm full of shit, nobody's told me so yet. (Here's your chance, Crabby....)
I'll keep you posted on all this stuff, and definitely let you know when the books are done and available for sale. I'd still love to "retire" and write for a living....

COMING SOON: I've bagged another batch of books, including a Bowie biography and a memoir by Ray Davies of the Kinks. I'll report on these soonest....

#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....

#718: Something different

Everybody knows self-published books are usually garbage. God knows you've seen me go on and on about several of them in this blog. Usually a self-published book (meaning one not issued by some established publisher) indicates that the writer had a great IDEA for a book ... but just couldn't bring it off.
Self-published books are usually Just Barely in English, were never proofread, and are usually a mass of typographical errors, mixed-up punctuation, and sentences that you can barely make sense out of.
A few of these "masterpieces" have been chopped-up in this blog over the years -- look up such stunning works as Jerry Lucky's PROGRESSIVE ROCK FILES, Joe Benson's UNCLE JOE'S GUIDE TO PROGRESSIVE ROCK, or that Moody Blues COMPANION I reviewed earlier this year.
But there are always exceptions....
Linda Lou's memoir BASTARD HUSBAND: A LOVE STORY is a big exception. It's vivid and funny -- and a bit scary, in places.
I admit I read BH because I'm in the middle of writing a memoir myself, and I wanted to see how someone else did it -- and if a "life story" memoir by someone I'd never met could hold my interest through 250 pages.
That definitely wasn't a problem here.
If you've read Linda's blog, Linda Lou, Live from Las Vegas!, you know she's always direct and funny, and when she writes, she knows exactly what she's doing.
What she's doing here is writing about how her marriage fell apart. There are worse places to end your marriage than Vegas, but Linda shows clearly that Vegas ain't such a party town when you're alone and lonely.
Here's what happens: While traveling for work, Linda meets a guy who seems to be her soulmate. They hit it off, they spend all their time together, they seem to be Cosmically Meant To Be Together. They get married, and as part of following his career as a college professor, they move around The West.
That's when Linda learns that her soulmate husband is an angry, scary drunk. There is an ugly, scary scene in their home in Laramie, Wyoming, that shows how frightening he can be. When they move to Vegas, it becomes clear he has a gambling problem, too.
There's an emotional showdown -- in a swimming pool, of all places. And it becomes clear that Linda can't "rescue" her husband. She can't save him from himself. All she can do is get out of his way.
So she does. He goes on with his life. And while she's looking for work, Linda makes friends, learns about the Vegas nightlife, meets a series of unforgettable characters while serving as a hospice volunteer, and starts doing stand-up comedy at age 46.
There are other good things. Almost every section of this book has some laughs, no matter how serious things sometimes get. Some lines will have you laughing out loud. There is a scene late in the book with Linda's family around the dinner table at Christmas that has GOT to get into some movie someday.
The ending may dribble away just a little bit, but Real Life is like that, and Linda gets something positive out of it. As a survivor's story, it's a winner, and it will make you laugh.
And this book avoids one of my big problems with self-published books: There are VERY few typos. Maybe only two or three in the very last section, which means someone actually proofread it before it was published. That's a definite bonus. You won't be jolted out of the reading experience.
Linda Lou makes writing a memoir look easy. I trust that it wasn't. Especially the ugly parts.
And believe me, these days when I can't get through most novels, anybody who can write about her life and make me hang on every word is worth checking out.
You should check out her blog, too....