Nerd Exchange Podcast

I was interviewed on the Nerd Exchange Poscast this week. Host Tim Sedwick and talk about comics history and comics business and the nature of collecting. Thanks Tim!


http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/nerdexchange/id/2538344

New Book Review: What You Want Is in the Limo

I review the new Michael Walker book, What You Want Is in the Limo in yesterday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. You can read it HERE.

New 5 Star review for Bedivere: The King's Right Hand

Posted on Smashwords:

Review by: Ilaria on Oct. 09, 2013 :      
I miss 20 pages to the end but I wanted to write something about it immediately because I am really loving this novel and my review may not be perfect, because I am not English, but I am extremely glad I could read this story.

The novel is the first of a trilogy (I suppose) which I hope will continue soon. It is about Bediere who is narrator and protagonist. In the story an old Bedivere, post Camlann, decides to write down his memories of Arthur and Camelot.
One of the things Ioved a lot of this way of narration was how Bediere often compared reality to the legend, talking about what people say happened and what really happened. Sometimes the narrator doesn't remember everything, being Bedivere quite old, and trust the legends or what his friends told him (for example in a point, he says "Tristan said that... it seems strange to me and I didn't rememeber it, so I asked Tristan what he said. But we all know that Tristan is a liar" or something like this). The book narrates from Bedivere's childhood, alongside his best friend Arthur, Arthur's adoptive brother Kay and Ector to Arthur as king, in his first years of kingship.
I would absolutely recommend this book to everyone. Of course there were things I didn't like, for example how sometimes the characters talked in a bit unrealistic way just to give information to the reader, but generically speaking it's a good book.

And now
SPOILERS.

I appreciated immensely how Guinevere and Morgana were 'of the guys'. Let me explain.
in a lot (all of them?) books I've read, Arthur and male friends meet each other when Arthur becomes king and the Guinevere arrives (and Morgana arrives etc.). Here instead Arthur meets Tristan, Lancelot, Guinevere, Morgana, Gawain and Agravain before he finds out about being king. Guinevere is part of the group, she is still a child but she is part of the group even more than Morgana who has less adentures with them. Also, both of them are wonderfully described round characters.
The author also manages to narrate a story that I don't think I have never seen in modern arthurian retellings: the giant of Mont Saint Michel. Convinced by Guinevere's reasonings and compassion, the gang of guys decide to save a girl and his brother from a cruel king and in the story Bedivere loses his hand. Also the sword in the stone is retold in a very imaginative way.
I still have my doubts about Merlin, because in this novel he travels and lives with different identities with each one of the characters to create them, instruct and educate them for the future he wants and both Morgana (who is Arthur's lover) and Nimue (who appears by the end) are seers so know of that future. I am not a fan of 'I slept with my brother because it was destiny that Mordred killed him' buy we'll see!
Bedivere is a wonderful protagonist, with the right balance (at least for me!) of post-losing-hand angst and loyalty for Arthur and need to fight. I can't wait for the next books, to know what will happen to them and especially to Guinevere who in this novel is clearly infatuated with Bedivere (who is uncomfortable with the tought knowing she is a child).

As someone who likes to collect arthurian novel and who read a lot of arthuriana I can say that I am immensely glad to have had an encounter with this one!

New Book Review: Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

I review the new Stephen King book, Doctor Sleep in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. You can read it HERE.

New book review: Turn Around Bright Eyes by Rob Sheffield

I review the new Rob Sheffield book, Turn Around Bright Eyes in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. You can read it HERE.

I'm Gonna Rock Six Times, All Right! (Part 3: Adam Ant)

The first time I ever heard of or saw Adam Ant was on the televison program Solid Gold in 1981. I was hooked immediately. He performed the song Stand and Deliver, which is still one of my favorite Ant songs. The driving beat of the double drums, the overlapping lyrics and yodel-like howls; the sheer energy and fun of this song is hard to dismiss. But it was more than that.

I can't embed the video, but you can watch it here: http://youtu.be/s1uioCkdhzM

It was the clothes.

I'm pretty much on record in understanding that a lot of my musical tastes started with image. I've said here many times that what my list of favorite artists, Bowie, Alice Cooper, KISS, etc., all have in common is costumes and makeup. Adam fell into this category pretty easily. The tri-corner hat, the great cloak, the slash of warpaint... how could I not fall in love with this. KISS remined me of superheroes. Adam Ant reminded me of an old Disney series I had watched as a child called The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, which featured masked heroes in Revolutionary times. This was a comic book come to life.

In the early 80s I was scrambling around looking for new music. KISS had taken off their makeup and I was feeling a little burned out with 70s Rock. The new batch of Rock bands like Motley Crue and Def Leppard just weren't doing it for me (I've come around since then). I flirted with some Punk, what little of it I had access to in my small county. I listened to a lot of the New Wave stuff. MTV was, of course, a pretty big factor in pointing me in the direction of a lot of this stuff.

But Adam clicked with me more than most. After the Solid Gold appearance I went out and bought Kings of the Wild Frontier and while I like the album a lot I was disappointed that Stand and Deliver wasn't on it. I did find the single eventually, but the song didn't appear on an album until the next one, Prince Charming.

I became something of a completist with Adam. This was the first time I was exposed to the idea, more prevalent in Great Britain than here, of there being b-sides to singles that were not included on the albums. This launched a search for the singles as well as the albums, which is exactly the plan of the record labels. This has come back to bite me with several artists since then.

Adam was part of the early wave of British Punk Rock. He knew and hung out with the Sex Pistols and Siouxie and Billy Idol and lots of others who were on the scene at the time. He was originally managed by Malcolm McLaren, the same guy who once managed the New York Dolls and then went back to England to launch the Sex Pistols. The story goes that Adam couldn't take his shit and left to form his own band (McLaren teamed the original Ants with 13 year old Annabella Lwin to form Bow Wow Wow).

His first album, Dirk Wears White Sox, was not originally released in the States. It was the first import record I ever bought, on my 21^st birthday.

I kind of obsessed. I bought singles. I bought picture discs. My friend Fred was into him as much as I was and he bought all this stuff as well. We made tapes of the b-sides so we could listen to them all together (the record label eventually did the same thing and released a compilation called B-Side Babies... We were so ahead of that curve).

Twice I dressed in Adam Ant costumes. The first was for a Halloween dance where my costume wasn't really Adam-like, but the streak of makeup and the ribbons in my hair were pretty obvious.

This also served as my Dungeons and Dragons
Rogue character costume.

The second time was for a talent show. I was working as a counselor for the Upward Bound program at my college and spent a lot of time with the drama teacher. We were tasked with creating a talent show for the high school students in our program. There were improv skits and some music by a couple of genuinely talented people, and some comedy routines. I dragged out my love of the lip synch, just like with KISS and Cheap Trick (actually going back to a 7^th grade performance as Alice Cooper doing School's Out on the last day of school, now that I think of it. I talked a couple of other people into joining me and we “performed” Strip, Goody Two Shoes, and Stand and Deliver.

Don't you ever,
Don't you ever,
Stop Being Dandy,
Showing me you're handsome.

I saw Adam twice at the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh, both times from the balcony. The opening bands were The Romantics, and Patty Smythe and Scandal. I remember enjoying the shows, but being a little disappointed with Adam's voice. His energy level and performance were great, but his voice sounded weaker than on the records.

That wasn't true this past Friday at Stage AE. I was about three people back from the stage this time and he sounded incredible. He's older now, but his energy and performance and charisma are intact. The setlist dug pretty deeply into his catalog and featured lots of those b-sides I tried so hard to track down, as well as a good chunk of stuff from the Dirk album. Everybody was singing along to Goody Two Shoes. I was pretty much on my own singing along with Never Trust a Man (With Egg on his Face).

As my friend Bonnie (who snagged the setlist for me), pointed out, I was quite the fangirl that night.

Setlist: Pittsburgh 8/23/2013

This was probably the only concert I've been to in my life where the women outnumbered the men. I noticed this first when we were going into the venue. We were broken into two lines for the pat-down, men and women. My friend Bud and I went through the men's line quickly, because there wasn't really a line. Kate and Bonnie, who we had been standing with outside the venue didn't make it in to join us for another 10-15 minutes. I shouldn't really be surprised. Adam had a larger female fan base than a lot of artists at the time. Though he came out of the Punk world he quickly embraced his success and became a Pop idol. By the time of his album Strip it was pretty obvious he was courting a younger audience, including female fans. As a fan I remember being aware of this. The tour book that I purchased at the Strip show was full of cheesecake (beefcake?) photos of Adam. I never apologized for the stuff I loved, but I was hard-pressed explaining this fetish to my harder-rocking friends.

Cheesecake!

I think he and Prince were shopping
at the same store at the time.
Johnny Depp shops there now.

The crowd loved him. I think part of the reaction is just that we never expected to ever see Adam perform again. Once more, for the third time in a week, I was struck at how music united everyone there. Here was a musician and a bunch of songs that I had claimed as my own a long time ago. Other than a single friend, this wasn't a fandom I shared with a lot of people. These songs were part of my soundtrack. They are tied into very specific pieces of my life. I know I couldn't have been completely alone in this. Adam Ant or Cheap Trick would not have had careers if I was the only one who listened to them. Cherie Currie couldn't find an audience today if The Runaways hadn't made an impact.

When we find that thing that moves us we make it our own, unknowingly sharing it with uncountable others. The memories and associations we have with this music are personally specific, but the song remains the same.

I'm Gonna Rock Six Times, All Right! (Part 2: Cheap Trick)

During my senior year of high school I participated in a talent show. Based on the idea of the then popular Gong Show we had teachers as the judging panel who would strike a gong for any act they didn't like. I don't really think they actually gonged anyone. This was the second year for this event. The previous year four friends and I had made fairly elaborate KISS costumes and got up and lip-synched two or three songs to a crowd of our fellow students who played the part of crazed fans. This was to be the closest to being a Rock Star I would ever come.

For my senior Gong Show my friend Richard and I memorized the entirety of the Abbott and Costello Who's On First Routine. I'm pretty sure there were lots of people who got very tired of hearing us rehearse. We didn't win the contest, but we pulled the routine off without a hitch.

Photo by Lisa Amos Gerhart

The problem that night was that we didn't really have enough acts signed up to fill the allotted time. At show time those of us who were organizing the event were scrambling to figure something out. Richard and I did a spur of the moment lip-synch to the Blues Brothers version of Shout. With fedoras and sunglasses in place I pretended to know the words while Rich did the Dan Ackroyd gymnastic moves on stage.

We closed the show by lip-synching a couple of Cheap Trick songs.

I had only recently gotten into them thanks to my friend Howard (see my previous post). My only awareness of Cheap Trick prior to this was from a magazine article that had lumped them into the Punk movement. I was pretty resistant to this at the time, so when he played the Heaven Tonight album I can't say I was looking forward to hearing it. The album opens with the song Surrender and I was hooked immediately. That song is the anthem of my senior year.

I had only seen pictures of them at the time, so I'm sure our “performance” at the Gong Show didn't really do their live act justice. But Rich stood behind the mic as Robin Zander (he too was short and blonde) and tried to hide the fact he didn't know the words. I pulled my pants up to flood level, put on a sweater and a baseball cap and did the best Rick Neilson impersonation I could at the time. Like the previous year the crowd dutifully played their part as fans, though with slightly less enthusiasm. Cheap Trick weren't as well known as KISS.

We did three songs. The show must have been running really short for this to be tolerated, but the crowd did keep cheering for more. I'm pretty sure we only planned two but got the go ahead from the panel. We did Surrender, of course, followed by I Want You to Want Me which was starting to get some radio play thanks to the At Budokan album. The extra song that ended the evening was California Man, which for some reason was one of my favorite songs on the album at the time. Looking back this was kind strange considering it would be another twenty years before I actually set foot in California.

This all came crashing back into my memory last week when I heard them do California Man less than twenty-four hours after I returned from a trip to California.

This was the third time I saw Cheap Trick. Once a decade seems to be the pattern. I first saw them on the All Shook Up tour on February 16, 1981 at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena. UFO opened. This was when they were still able to fill arenas. I drove into the city with my friend Greg and we sat in the nosebleed section. If memory serves, bass player Tom Peterson was not with them on this tour. The second time was on July 27, 2000 at the I.C. Light Ampitheatre as part of the Pittsburgh WingFest. I think it cost $5 to get in and eat hot wings, and oh yeah, see Cheap Trick. Nash Cato of Urge Overkill opened.

Last Wednesday they played the slightly larger outdoor venue at Stage AE with Freddy Nelson as the opening act.

Photo by Camille Lurie

I understand attendance was low (http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/ae/music-reviews/low-turnout-misses-high-volume-high-energy-of-cheap-trick-700368/). Ain't that a shame, because they put on an amazing show. One of the highlights came during Need Your Love when they were accompanied by the perennial Pittsburgh fireworks display from Heinz Field. The climax of the coincidental light show lined up perfectly with the high energy final msuical break of the song. The amusement of the band at this synchrony was plain on their faces.

They dug really deep into their archives for a high energy Rock and Glam Metal show. Part of their appeal is that they have always crossed the boundaries of musical styles. I first heard of them in an article on Punk, though they have never really been part of that scene (like The Runaways, who they toured with a lot in the 70's, they were lumped into that category simply because of the time period and the venues they were playing in). They can play convincing hard rocking tracks and then follow up with the unapologetically bubblegum of I Want You To Want Me. They do it all with a nod and a wink and a sense of humor that borders on the camp but never lets you forget they're a rock band.

The shared nostalgia I mentioned in my previous post was true here as well. In 1979 I was the only real Cheap Trick fan at my small high school. Richard didn't really know the songs when I talked him into his Gong Show performance as Robin Zander. I Want You To Want Me was getting some traction on the radio but most of my hard rock friends thought it sounded silly and the disco fans had no time for it at all. But Heaven Tonight is one of the seminal albums of 1979 for me. Then, Surrender was My song. Just hearing the intro brings back a flood of memories and makes me feel like a teen again (the same is true of the intros to Rebel Rebel and School's Out). But thirty-four years later I find myself in a crowd of screaming fans, all of us singing along, just seeming a little weird. It wasn't just My song. It belonged to all of us who loved it, and we all have the same kind of stories and memories encoded in its sound.

Disparate lives and experiences give way to harmony as we sing our song.

It's all alright. It's all alright.