Self-publishing is a great way to get your book into the world. But when you self-publish, you take on all the responsibilities that a traditional publisher usually would, including marketing the book, soliciting reviews, sending out review copies, and generating …{read more}
Review – Jimi Hendrix FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About the Voodoo Child
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Jimi Hendrix FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About the Voodoo Child / Gary J. Jucha
Backbeat Books / 978-1617130953 / 363 pages
I’ve been a listener of Jimi Hendrix’s music for several decades. However, anything beyond the bare basics …{read more}
Review – Searching for Sugar Man
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Searching For Sugarman (2012)
4 stars
A documentary about the mysterious Rodriguez, the singer/songwriter who released the album Cold Fact in 1970. Directed by Swedish-British filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul, this is a well told underdog story that left me in happy …{read more}
The one thing an author should never, ever do.
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I’m a reviewer. I hang out on message boards frequented by other reviewers. One popular topic on these message boards is that of authors who comment on reviews of their books. Almost all reviewers agree that authors shouldn’t ever do …{read more}
Review – Love Me Do: Behind the Scenes at the Recording of the Beatles’ First Single
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Bill Harry’s chronicle of the Beatles road to their first single release may not get any awards for journalistic style, but it is still a fascinating rundown of the lucky breaks, perseverence, and machinations it can take to get even …{read more}
Review – The Treasures of Bruce Lee
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I confess, I’m kind of new to Bruce Lee. That’s not to say I haven’t heard of him, it’s just that I don’t know a whole lot about him. I’ve seen a couple of his movies, which I liked. And, …{read more}
An Essay on the Arcana Series
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I sat down to write this as a commentary on the series of books edited by John Zorn, all of which are entitled Arcana. The series comes in six parts, including hundreds of essays written by musicians, artists, on …{read more}
New Poetry – Gilded Images: Verse by Keith & Elizabeth Stanley-Mallett
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For many years, husband-and-wife poets Keith and Elizabeth Stanley-Mallett have shared their observations on nature, life, politics, and the foibles of man in traditional, rhyming verse. Their newly-released collection, Gilded Images, is their fourth shared publication (between them they’ve …{read more}
Review – The Beauty of being Hated by Jack Leaf Willetts
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Many of the poems in Jack Willetts’ debut poetry collection, The Beauty of being Hated, explore the way we label and think about feelings. Here are the pain and hope that spring, intertwined, from the aftermath of failed relationships …{read more}
Review – The Abbey Road Sessions by Kylie Minogue
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I was in college back in 1987 when Kylie Minogue had her first hit with “Locomotion,” which I remember dancing to on nights out. But after that, though I occasionally heard songs on the radio, I confess her music mostly …{read more}
Review – Chris Mann’s Debut Album, Roads
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For his debut album, Roads, The Voice alumnus Chris Mann weaves together an unexpected mix of classical, country, and pop songs together into an intimate, warm musical tapestry.
You’d never know that this is Mann’s first time out. His confident, …{read more}
Poetry Review: Waterloo, by J.T. Welsch
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Waterloo
J.T. Welsch
Like This Press
Saddle-Stitch, 36 pages
The twenty-four numbered but untitled poems, and almost as many monochrome images, of J.T. Welsch’s Waterloo begin with a wake. The first poem quickly makes clear that though a death may …{read more}
The Eve of Fluxus: A Fluxmemoir
by Billie Maciunas
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Arbiter Press, Orlando, Florida
ISBN 978-0-615-35216-9
Fluxus is a name taken from a Latin word meaning “to flow”— often described as “intermedia,” a term coined by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins in 1966. Fluxus as an artistic group was named and …{read more}
Review – Ringo 2012
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Ringo Starr has been on a roll the past several years with the well-reviewed 2010 release “Y Not,” a successful tour, and now a lively new album called “RINGO 2012″. This marks Ringo’s 17th solo outing as well as his …{read more}
The Sea is My Brother by Jack Kerouac
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The Sea is My Brother was Jack Kerouac’s first attempt at a novel. Technically it fits the criteria of a Novella, the original manuscript weighing in at 158 pages. Published for the first time in its entirety by Penguin Classics …{read more}
Review – Robbie Robertson’s How to Become Clairvoyant
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When I finally got my hands on How To Become Clairvoyant, I could hardly wait to take it home and play it. I had to hear what Robbie Robertson had created, and was convinced that anything Robbie Robertson did …{read more}
Baby Driver, by Jan Kerouac
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While I was being gifted a tiny grocery store carrot cake for my fifteenth birthday in a park in Connecticut, still on the road myself, Jan Kerouac passed away. It was June 5, 1996. I had no idea who Jan …{read more}
Bob Dylan and the Beatles, by Al Aronowitz
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Al Aronowitz is often referred to as “the godfather of rock journalism.” But his roots are in the tradition of the writers who trailed behind the Old West’s outlaws and revolutionaries, embellishing the truth to delight an eager readership.
However, …{read more}
Review – Moondog: The Viking of 6th Avenue, by Robert Scotto
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Process Media
ISBN # 978-0-9760822-8-6
Born in Marysville, Kansas in 1916, the son of an Episcopal minister, Louis Hardin Jr. lived a relatively simple life in America’s heartland until the age of 16 when he was permanently blinded when he …{read more}
Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut (Misadventures in the Counter-Culture) by Paul Krassner
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New World Digital Publishing (2010)
# ISBN-13: 978-0982531433
Having racked my brains in search of the perfect opening, I’ll just wing it by saying that “reading Paul Krasner’s Expanded Edition of his 1993 ‘Confessions of a Raving Unconfined Nut’ (Misadventures …{read more}
Jamming with Relix: The Book
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I first experienced what would eventually be called “Jam Band” music when I attended one of Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests in 1965. In order to get into the place you had to first walk literally through the Acid Test band …{read more}
Review – Time Adjusters & Other Stories
by Bill Ectric
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The modern fables that make up Bill Ectric’s new collection of stories, Time Adjusters, are difficult to classify, in the best way possible. They seem a comic-book mishmash of science fiction and magical realism, one turn of the screw …{read more}
A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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I first found Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind while an undergraduate, finding the wry attacks on the established order refreshing and invigorating. Ferlinghetti protests and rages against the madness of the nuclear age, against the misuse of …{read more}
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
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“I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and …{read more}
The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
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I encountered The Dharma Bums for the first time in college, on a classmate’s shelf. She gushed about the book, but I was more interested in her roommate and didn’t pay enough attention.
Many years later, I finally read it …{read more}
Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
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Big Sur is often ignored by critics and Kerouac fans alike. We all want the freedom of On the Road, the craziness of The Dharma Bums — the celebration of the Beat lifestyle. We want young Jack living his …{read more}
Tristessa by Jack Kerouac
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Jack Kerouac is primarily lauded for his keen understanding of male friendship. The female characters of On the Road or The Dharma Bums never really achieve the reader’s interest the way the males do. But Kerouac is also a writer …{read more}
Visions of Cody by Jack Kerouac
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Like a weird, mutated ogre muttering to himself by the roadside, Jack Kerouac’s Visions of Cody stands apart. As the author states in his short introduction, “I wanted a vertical metaphysical study of Cody’s character and its relationship to the …{read more}
Vanity of Duluoz by Jack Kerouac
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When Vanity of Duluoz: An Adventurous Education, 1935-46 was written in 1967, an overweight and severely alcoholic Jack Kerouac had only two years to live. Chronicling the years just before his adventures with Neal Cassady, his last complete volume takes …{read more}
Dr. Sax by Jack Kerouac
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Dr. Sax is one of Jack Kerouac’s most troubling books for readers, peering behind the curtain of his childhood rather than exploring those later years of Beats and bodhisattvas. Nevertheless, it remains a startling achievement, unique not only among Kerouac’s …{read more}
Bill Ectric – Tamper
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Tamper, the new book by Bill Ectric, frames itself as a boy named Whit’s effort to comprehend his past. Did he have a prophetic dream about a bag of bones on the side of the road? Did his friend …{read more}
(Revisiting) Mondo Hollywood
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At midnight on June 10, 2006, in a special event for the Moondance Film Festival, The Chaplin Theater (5300 Melrose Ave) in Los Angeles will be presenting the digitally-enhanced Director’s cut of Mondo Hollywood. Written, produced, directed and edited …{read more}
Review – Who was Sinclair Beiles?
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Who was Sinclair Beiles? / Gary Cummiskey & Eva Kowalska, editors / Dye Hard Press / 2009 / 978-0-620-42792-0
Before I opened Dye Hard Press‘ new volume, its title, Who was Sinclair Beiles? was a question I certainly didn’t know …{read more}
Poetry Review – Unhurried Vision by Michael Rothenberg
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Unhurried Vision
La Alameda Press, Alburquerque, NM, 2004
Unhurried Vision, and in this manner so it reads, from one new year to the next scribing a journal of living (1999) poetically in the moment, a creative endeavor of complex …{read more}
