I’m thrilled that my novel, “True Love Scars,” made four best-of lists for 2014.
Perfect Sound Forever publisher Jason Gross included “True Love Scars” in his best books of 2014 list. (His list of best books is down past the music lists.)
Triple R Radio host/ Addicted To Noise Australia publisher Brian Wise included True Love Scars in his ten best books of 2014 list. (Brian’s list is down the page a bit.)
Former Billboard magazine columnist/ current “Trakin Care Of Business” columnist Roy Trakin included “True Love Scars” in his best books of 2014 list.
And while I’m at it, there’s a cool review of “True Love Scars” in the latest issue of Ragazine. Writer M. Sedlof manages to both write about my novel (he digs it) and provide some insight into my subtle approach to marketing “True Love Scars.” You can read his review here.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Goldberg’s virginal sex scenes unwind at the same racing-heart-awkward-self-conscious-anxious pace one can almost remember from those good old, bad old days when the forbidden fruit was all one ever wanted then-and-forever-after, only how to get it without letting it slip through your hands like sand, when all you ever did was what it took to make like you cared, when all you knew about caring was what you heard at home, an attitude you didn’t know you didn’t have that may have cost you big time. …
“This was life in California during the denoument days-months-years of Summer of Love, Altamont, the winding up-down of Vietnam, of Roman Polanski and Charlie Manson, Sharon Tate … of Haight and Half Moon Bay, of kids who didn’t surf, who confused and burned-out ended up discovering what the core of life is really like, deep inside, where if you’re lucky enough to find yourself before you die you might even claw your way out. It’s one kid’s story, and then some.”
“… a gonzo look back at misspent youth in the 1960s called True Love Scars — the first in a projected Days of Crazy Wild trilogy. It’s a crackling good read, fillled with humor, pathos, drug use and Dylan references (seriously, I think there’s one on every page). Some of the book is quite harrowing — The Wonder Years, this ain’t. But Goldberg’s freewheelin’ style captures a certain late 60s/early 70s vibe (think the autobiographical writings of Lester Bangs) that makes True Love Scars a pleasure through and through. Check it out.
Jason Gross’s blog:
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[I published True Love Scars in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
The major musical event of 2014 was the release of Bob Dylan and The Band’s ‘Basement Tapes’ recordings – 140 of them (if you include the two songs included in the hidden track at the end of disc six). But beyond the six-plus hours of mostly better quality versions of these songs than we’ve heard before (along with a batch of songs that haven’t made the bootlegs – at least the ones I got my hands on), a lot of other noteworthy albums were released during the year.
The list that follows is based on what I heard and what I liked. No one can listen to everything, and I don’t pretend to try. But these albums are good ones, and if you haven’t heard some of them, I hope you’ll check them out.
1 Bob Dylan, The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11 (Columbia): As I wrote when the set was released: Dylan’s best songs are not the straightforward protest songs from the early ‘60s – “Masters Of War” or “The Times They Are A-Changing.” Rather, it’s songs like “Visions Of Johanna,” songs that are opaque. Songs that defy literal understanding. Those are the great ones. I’ve listened to “Visions Of Johanna” 100s of times and still its mysteries remain intact. And a song such as “I’m Not There” – do you know what it’s about? … The lyrics to many of Dylan’s Basement songs are opaque too; as if they’re written in an invisible ink, or in a language that defies translation. And it’s that mystery that keeps bringing me back. One line stands out, gives up something one day, then pulls it back on another.
“Ain’t No More Cane (Take 2)”:
2 Jolie Holland, Wine Dark Sea (Anti): Jolie Holland moved into a whole other zone with the avant-garde guitar sounds that help define “Wine Dark Sea.” She takes her idiosyncratic version of Americana, integrates some wild noise (think Sonic Youth) rock guitar and the result is thrilling. Holland is an incredible singer and songwriter. Perhaps my favorite here is “The Love You Save,” which finds Holland trumping the late Janis Joplin with her take on the Stax/Volt soul of the mid-‘60s.
Jolie Holland – Full Performance (Live on KEXP):
Songs:
First Sign Of Spring
On and On
Out On The Wine Dark Sea
Who Are you
3 Angel Olson, Burn Your Fire For No Witness (Jagjaguwar): At times on Angel Olson’s moving second album, as on “White Fire,” she sounds like a female Leonard Cohen. At other times it’s the Velvets I hear a faint echo of, but on the final track, “Windows,” what I hear is Angel Olson, what I hear is an exquisitely beautiful sound, even as she sings about a man who is oblivious to those around him. Her voice has a fragile quality, but there’s strength too.
“Windows”:
4 Wadada Leo Smith, The Great Lake Suites (Tum): A musician friend of mine compares this album favorably to Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, and I agree. Over two discs composer/band leader Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet), Henry Threadgill (alto saxophone, flute and bass flute), Jack DeJohnette (drums) and John Lindberg (double bass) deliver music as intense and spiritual as Coltrane and his combo. And an hour and a half after you start listening, when the music’s over, you’ll want to start it up all over again. This is one for the ages.
5 Karen O, Crush Songs (Kobalt): This low-fi bedroom recording of Yeah Yeah Yeah front woman O’s “crush” songs is intimate and addictive. There’s a hint of the Velvets’ third album here, and that’s a good thing. Proof that anyone with the songs and the voice can make their own “Basement Tapes.”
“Body”:
6 Spoon, They Want My Soul (Loma Vista/Republic): The album title nails what’s going on these days, when corporate America won’t settle for anything less than turning us into unthinking all-consuming zombies. I’ve been a Spoon fan since the mid-‘90s and this album of smart poppy rock is up there with their best. “Rainy Taxi” is intoxicating, and “knock Knock Knock” as well, but the whole album is a keeper. These Austin rockers are fighting the good fight, and winning.
7 Sharon Van Etten, Are We There (Jagjaguwar): The trials of a woman trying to deal with a (sometimes not-so-good) relationship is the theme running through Are We There. Whether these songs are about Van Etten’s real life, when one listens to this album they might as well be – these songs feel so confessional. With haunting voice and music that perfectly suits her theme, Sharon Van Etten has turned pain into songs that are deep, self-reflective and at times confrontational. Check these lyrics from “Your Love Is Killing Me”:
“Break my legs so I won’t walk to you.
Cut my tongue so I can’t talk to you.
Burn my skin so I can’t feel you.
Stab my eyes so I can’t see
You like it when I let you walk over me.
You tell me that you like it.
Your love is killing me.”
Wow!
“Your Love Is Killing Me”:
8 Tweedy, Sukierae (ANTI):Tweedy and his son Spencer recorded this 20 song album with help from a few musician friends. It’s beautiful and moving and wonderful. Tweedy says it’s a two record set and suggests the vinyl version is the best way to listen. Very Beatlesque at times – check out “Summer Noon.”
“Summer Noon”:
9 Ex-Hex, Rips (Merge): Mary Timony’s new band delivers a garage-rock explosion of a debut album. There are echoes of The Ramones and Patti Smith and Timony’s friends, Sleater-Kinney in the 12 songs. Great guitar riffs from Timony. There’s a priceless energy in these tracks. This trio is on fire.
10 tUnE-yArDs, Nikki Nack (4AD): Merrill Garbus has voice, a big soulful voice and she can really sing. And when you can really sing, and you have the knock for writing catchy songs with loads of hooks, you can go wild with the music and make it work. Sometimes it sounds like Garbus has utilized every object in the junkyard to make her unorthodox tracks, and at other times only her voice.
Also great:
11 Lykke Li, I Never Learn (Atlantic):
12 Lucinda Williams, Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone (Highway 20)
13 The Hold Steady, Teeth Dreams (Razor & Tie)
14 The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground – 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition (Ume):
15 The War On Drugs, Lost In The Dream (Secretly Canadian)
The Velvet Underground, “I’m Waiting For The Man”:
Books:
(In no particular order – these are all great!)
The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll In Ten Songs, Greil Marcus (Yale University Press): Greil Marcus’ latest book is all about what Marcus hears when he listens to ten songs, and what he hears is unexpected and sometimes revelatory. It’s not any kind of history of rock that you or I have ever read before, because Marcus sees no point in revisiting the same old story that we’ve read numerous versions of since the ‘60s. Not a history so much as a theory about rock ‘n’ roll, and then ten examples that, in different ways, back up that theory. Amazing.
I loved You More, Tom Spanbauer (Hawthorne): Tom’s Spanbauer’s book is 466 pages of heartbreak. Think about the love affair that went so wrong for you, the one that tore you down, left you devastated and in pieces. Yeah, that’s this book. Beautifully written. Every sentence is a gem.
A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, Holly George-Warren (Viking): A superbly written biography of Alex Chilton, who is best known as one of the leaders of Big Star. If you start to read it, you soon will find yourself deep into both the Big Star recordings and Chilton’s solo work before you know it.
Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante, (Europa Editions): The third in what looks to be a four book series that follows two girls in Italy from childhood to old age. With this book, Ferrante adds politics to the volatile mix of love, sex, family, money and friendship that fuels the first two.
Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues, Joel Selvin (Counterpoint): More than just a biography of Bert Burns, who wrote such classics as “Here Comes the Night,” “Piece of My Heart,” and “Twist and Shout,” discovered Van Morrison, produced records including “Under The Boardwalk” for The Drifters and so much more, Selvin also manages to detail the history of the New York-based rhythm and blues business.
My Struggle (books 1, 2 & 3), Karl Ove Knausgaard (Macmillan): This year I read the first three books of this six volume epic semi-fictional autobiography. Knausgaard goes deep into his first person narrator’s psychology, as he lays out his life for us in minute detail. Somehow it’s fascinating, even when it seems like he’s telling us way more than we need to know. Mesmerizing.
On Highway 61, Dennis McNally (Counterpoint): Actually, I’m only a third of the way through this incredible book, but it’s so good I have to include it. McNally has written the history of how blacks and whites influenced each other musically, as they created what he calls cultural freedom. Along the way he tells the stories of Mark Twain, Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Lead Belly, John Hammond, Sr., Thelonious Monk and many, many others. More on this book in 2015.
Not that I can keep from letting it go to my head (that’s long been a lost cause), but it is exciting that culture critic Roy Trakin has included my novel, True Love Scars, in his best books of 2014 list. The book is #4 in his list.
Writes Trakin:
Just call it a portrait of the young rock critic as a freakster bro, coming of age in the glorious peace-and-love innocence of the ‘60s dream, only to crash precipitously, post-Altamont into the drug-ridden paranoia of a ‘70s nightmare, characterized by the doom and gloom of the Stones’ sinister “Sister Morphine” and the apocalyptic caw-caw-caw of a pair of ubiquitous crows. The one-time Rolling Stone journalist turned-Internet pioneer with his groundbreaking mid-‘90s Addicted to Noise site has always been on the cutting edge and here he perfectly captures a horny, but romantic, teenager growing up in Marin County back in what he calls the Days of the Crazy-Wild, where getting your parents to let you grow out your hair was proof alone of your manhood. If you lived through those momentous times, or even if you didn’t, Goldberg conveys that rush of ideas, music and literature that made it such a heady era, while still ruefully acknowledge its fleeting, self-destructive aftermath in what amounts to his version of fellow one-time Stone scribe Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous.
And here’s a short audio clip of me reading and Henry Kaiser riffing from my reading last weekend:
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Yesterday afternoon, Saturday December 13, 2104, I read from my novel, True Love Scars, as the acclaimed, Grammy-winning experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser improvised. And then Henry did a short, brilliant instrumental. The reading took place at Down Home Music in El Cerrito, CA.
I called the event a “post-beat happening.”
It was thrilling to read as Henry’s music lit up the room. When you’re on a stage and you’re in the groove, and the music, music you’ve never heard before, is exactly right for what you’re doing, you levitate.
Two sections I read were about how Bob Dylan’s music changed the narrator’s life. I’ve included both of those and then another excerpt which is the first few pages of the novel. Plus an instrumental improvisation by Henry that concluded the reading.
Down Home Music was an incredible environment for a reading. A room filled with CDs and vinyl and a wall of music books and music posters on the walls and incredibly knowledgeable folks running the place.
Where else is an impulse buy going to be a Roscoe Holcomb DVD?
Yep, I now own that DVD.
There was a nice write-up in advance of the reading in the East Bay Express and that brought a great group of folks into the store to hear me and Henry do our thing.
I read about 30 minutes while Henry utilized a guitar, a whammy bar and more than a dozen pedals to create a sonic backdrop for my words. Actually, it was more than a backdrop, as you’ll see if you listen to the first excerpt, below.
1) The impact of “Like A Rolling Stone”:
2) “It was Dylan, man!”:
3) How the book begins:
4) Henry’s concluding instrumental:
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Big surprise today when I opened the latest East Bay Express and discovered that my reading Saturday with Henry Kaiser at Down Home Music is their pick for “Lectures & Lit” this week, and one of this weekend’s “Top Five Events.”
How cool is that!
I’ll read from my novel, True Love Scars, and experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser will improvise on electric guitar.
It’ll happen at 3 pm at Down Home Music, 10341 San Pablo Avenue, El Cerrito, CA. And it’s free, of course.
Writes Arts and Culture Editor Sarah Burke:
True Love Scars is a rock ’n’ roll novel about harboring nostalgia for the 1960s, getting lost in a drugged-up dream-world, finding love, and then losing it tragically.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
novelist michael goldberg +
experimental guitarist henry kaiser
december 13, 2014, 3 pm
Henry will join me in a reading/performance for the first time at the world-renowned world music/roots music record emporium, Down Home Music, located at 10341 San Pablo Avenue, El Cerrito, CA.
I’ll read from my critically acclaimed rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars, as Grammy award winning musician Henry Kaiser improvises on electric guitar.
Inspired by the fabled Beat jazz readings of the ‘50s, Henry and I will join together to make a new kind of post-Beat, post-rock noise.
There’s no charge. It’s FREE!!
I invite you all to attend.
Here’s a photo of me.
Copies of the book are available at Down Home Music, and online of course. Use the handy link in the right hand column to order a copy.
Grammy winner Henry Kaiser is widely recognized as one of the most creative and innovative guitarists, improvisers, and producers in the fields of rock, jazz, world, and contemporary experimental musics.
The California-based musician is one of the most extensively recorded as well, having appeared on more than 250 different albums and contributed to countless television and film soundtracks.
A restless collaborator who constantly seeks the most diverse and personally challenging contexts for his music, Mr. Kaiser not only produces and contributes to a staggering number of recorded projects, he performs frequently throughout the USA, Canada, Europe and Japan, with several regular groupings as well as solo guitar concerts and concerts of freely improvised music with a host of diverse instrumentalists.
Among the numerous artists Kaiser has recorded or performed with are Herbie Hancock, Richard Thompson, David Lindley, Jerry Garcia, Steve Lacy, Fred Frith, Terry Riley, Negativland, Michael Stipe, Jim O’Rourke, Victoria Williams, Diamanda Galas and Cecil Taylor.
Yesterday the pop culture site PopMatters, posted a terrific review of my novel “True Love Scars.”
PopMatters contributing editor Greg M. Schwartz writes:
…the novel is a whirlwind tale of a young music fanatic’s quest for true love, high times and “the authentic real” (not necessarily in that order).
Teenage protagonist Michael Stein, aka “Writerman”, lives in Marin County and longs to be a musician, or at least a music writer. He’s into almost all of the musical icons of the era, especially Bob Dylan. Writerman is obsessed with finding his “Visions of Johanna” chick, who eventually appears in the form of Sweet Sarah. But conflict is ordained from the start. Chapter One begins with Writerman speaking in a sort of fever dream about how he betrayed and lost Sarah and has been on a quest to redeem his crushed soul ever since.
And later in the review, talking about the narrator’s obsession with Bob Dylan, Schwartz writes:
He can analyze those Dylan lyrics all day. He and a girl who’s charmingly fond of speaking in Dylan lyrics pore over Dylan’s albums in a scene from 1965, going over his evolution as an artist. “First time I heard that Dylan song it saved my life,” Writerman says of “Like a Rolling Stone”. It’s a sentiment that speaks for several generations of rock ‘n’ rollers, from those who came of age in Goldberg’s era to the present. They get deep into Dylanology in the scene as Writerman speaks of how Dylan opened his eyes to “how almost nothing is what it appears to be and I think that’s when I got it in my head I got to figure out the authentic real, see the world for what it is and not the facade of delusional humans erect in front of the truth.”
That’s what great rock ‘n’ roll can do, and True Love Scars is deeply dialed in to rock’s dichotomy of enlightening powers versus stonered party time.
Early this year I read an incredible book about self-publishing called “Write. Publish. Repeat. (The No-Luck-Required Guide to Self-Publishing Success) by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant.
Turned out these guys, Platt and Truant, along with writer David Wright, have got a cottage industry going. They have written a lot of novels during the past few years and they’re selling books. Enough books that the three of them are making a living off the sales.
They have a website, Sterling & Stone, where, along with blogging about writing and their various projects, David Wright conducts interviews with writers and other artists.
He calls his interview series “Eight Questions.”
He asked me to participate in an interview, and I was happy to do so.
(By the way, from now until Saturday Octover 11, 2014, the Kindle version of my novel, True Love Scars, is on sale for $2.99 here.)
Here’s how the interview begins:
Michael Goldberg was a Senior Writer at Rolling Stone for a decade and wrote for Esquire, downbeat, Wired, Details, NME, British Mirabella, Creem, Crawdaddy, New York Rocker and many other publications. Goldberg founded the first web rock ‘n’ roll magazine in ’94, Addicted To Noise. Newsweek called him an “internet visionary.” Goldberg was editor-in-chief of SonicNet in the late ’90s, published Neumu.net during the first half of the 2000s and was editor-in-chief at MOG (now Beats Music) in the late 2000s. He currently publishes a popular music blog, Days Of The Crazy-Wild. Goldberg spent over six years writing the Freak Scene Dream Trilogy of which True Love Scars is the first book.
What is your daily creative routine like?
I’ve been a professional writer for nearly 40 years. For years I wrote stories about musicians and the music business. When I was writing journalism fulltime, there were days when I spent the whole day researching and preparing to interview an artist and did no writing. There were days when I just hung out with a musician or a band and took detailed notes and interviewed them. There were days when I spent the entire day on the phone doing additional reporting for the story. And there were days (and nights) when all I did was write. One time I flew to London, spent a week researching a cover story on Boy George, flew to New York and wrote the story on deadline in the New York Rolling Stone office in a borrowed office.
So I learned that I didn’t need a specific routine, or rather, the routine was that every day I got up and did what needed to be done to further the story. Prepare. Report. Write. But I’m an obsessive, workaholic. When I’m working on a project, I’m 150% focused on it and all my waking and sleeping mind is focused on is that project.
So when I started seriously working on what turned into three novels – the Freak Scene Dream Trilogy, of which True Love Scars is the first – I obsessively worked on that project. I brought my laptop everywhere. I wrote in cafes, airports, on planes, on hotel beds, in my office, on the dining room table…
When I went for walks I would make notes on my iPhone or on scarps of paper.
I probably wrote for at least six hours a day, sometimes eight or nine hours, seven days a week. I worked that way for over six years. I wrote and revised, wrote and revised, wrote and revised. When the first draft was done I went back to the beginning and wrote and revised, wrote and revised. Same for the third draft. Every word in the book was scrutinized. I probably spent three or four years getting the unique voice that tells the story just right.
I led a fiction writing group for three years – Sept. 2010 ‘til Oct. 2013 – and what I told the writers in my group, over and over, was they had to write every day. And I really believe that. When you write every day, your subconscious is working overtime on your book. Obviously it’s best if you can write for a couple hours each day, but even 15 minutes keeps the novel or short story alive in your subconscious.
Right now I’m in novel promotion mode which means I’m focused, 24/7, on promoting my first novel, True Love Scars.
I get up at 7:30 or 8 am and I get a bowl or uncooked oatmeal, blueberries, cut up apple, almond milk, and flax and eat it while I scan the New York Times. I’ve also got Feedly on my iphone with writing/publishing news. I scan through all the stories that happened after I went to bed. I run up to my office and do a quick blog post or two to my Days of the Crazy-Wild culture blog.
Then I go take my dog for a walk, go to the gym for an hour workout (very, very important to survive as a writer). Get home and work for an hour or two – emailing media people, doing blog posts about a new review of my book or an interview that ran somewhere, maybe come up with a new ad for Goodreads, research other sites where I might be able to promote the book, etc. etc. Eat lunch – an almond butter sandwich and a huge salad with vinegar and some vegan chili for a dressing, and then it’s time to get back to work. I’ll work from 2 to 6 or 6:30, have dinner and hang out with my wife and then by 8 pm we both get back to work and work on our projects until 10 or 10:30 and then I’ll read for an hour or so.
What are some of your best creative habits and what are some of the bad ones you struggle with?
I’m very self-disciplined. When I was working on the trilogy, I worked pretty much every day, seven days a week, for years and years. I read my work aloud every week to a veteran novelist who taught me a lot about writing fiction. I would read for two hours – he would stop me every 15 minutes or so and give me feedback. He was able to help me see what needed more work. Sometimes I’d be writing and revising a chapter for two months.
I don’t believe in writer’s block. I don’t really believe in the idea of inspiration. In other words, I sit down and I start writing. And if I don’t have anything to say, well I’ll start writing about how I don’t have anything to say. Weirdly, I always have something to say. And I don’t believe in waiting for inspiration. There are times when I’m totally in the zone and a scene is unfolding in this unbelievable way and the voice is perfect and words and phrases are appearing out of thin air and it’s mind-blowing. Other times it’s just all about getting my idea of what happens next down on the page knowing that I’ll be revising and revising and revising and so I never worry about whether the writing is any good ‘cause I know I’ll be fixing it anyway. Often, the next day, when I look at what I wrote, I find that much of it is useable, and even if some isn’t, it’s a hell of a lot easier to sit down to 3000 words and edit it into shape, than to sit down to a blank page. So the trick is to vomit what’s inside onto the page without any editing and then come back and edit.
I do want to note that at the end of the interview, I was asked: What do you want your legacy to be?
I answered the question, but after my final comment, I added :-), but that didn’t make the edit.
So when you read that final answer, keep in mind two things:
1) I’m smiling as I answer that question.
2) We all got a right to dream of greatness.
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
At this year’s LitQuake festival, a who’s who of music writers including University of San Francisco professor/ former rock critic Gina Arnold (author of the book “Exile In Guyville”), former San Francisco Chronicle pop music critic Joel Selvin (“Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues”), Kerouac/Grateful Dead biographer Dennis McNally (“A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead”) will read from their most recent books on Friday, October 17, 2014 at the Make-Out Room in San Francisco’s Mission district.
The high profile lineup also includes Addicted To Noise founder/former Rolling Stone Senior Writer Michael Goldberg (“True Love Scars”), musician Bruce Cockburn (“Rumours of Glory”), rock journalist and author Denise Sullivan (“Shaman’s Blues: The Art and Influences Behind Jim Morrison and the Doors”), rock historian and college teacher Richie Unterberger (“Jingle Jangle Morning: Folk-Rock in the 1960s”) and best-selling authors Keith and Kent Zimmerman (“Shining Star: Braving the Elements of Earth, Wind & Fire”).
Providing music will be Camper Van Beethoven cofounder Victor Krummenacher.
The evening will start at 7 pm and admission is a bargain at $10.
I think this will be a great evening. Kinda of like a greatest hits of recent music books. Each of us will read our best 7 minutes.
We’ll have our books for sale, and if you want a personal message written by the author, all you have to do is ask.
Meanwhile, I’ve got the Kindle version of my book. True Love Scars, on sale this week for $2.99. I can tell you it would be a bargain at twice the price.
This was a great weekend for True Love Scars, my rock ‘n’ roll novel.
First Andrew Phillips, ex-Editor-in-Chief of Mog and a former editor at Flavorpill, posted this excellent five star review at Goodreads:
True Love Scars’ adolescent narrator burns the pyre of hippie idealism as a revelation to the dark face of its excess. His coming of age is not without its grand revelations, but, can any summer be one of love when the price of admission is friends, family, and sanity?
Any piece by Michael Goldberg has a post-beat, hippie-savant poetry all its own, but this is a rare work, a passionate, immersive experience in the sound, attitude and language of an era.
Then on Sunday afternoon I was interviewed on the very cool Cheap Hooch radio program on San Francisco’s underground Radio Valencia station by DJ Holly.
Cheap Hooch, which airs every Sunday from 4 to 6 pm, features a laid-back fluid crew led by DJ Holly. She plays the coolest obscure Punk, Garage, Trash, Soul, Rockabilly and Primitive Rock n’ Roll. To get a feel for the show, stream it here.
Soon the show I was on (October 5, 2014) will be available to stream and I’ll do a post with the link.
Finally, I’ve been meaning to post this cool review of True Love Scars by Days Of The Crazy-Wild follower John Dunne:
Just finished the novel and, apart from minor reservations about the protracted sex scene with Michael’s (NOT MIKE’S!) friends and the sisters, I devoured every page. I feel that, in a novel already fairly steeped in sex, that scene was gratuitous. That’s the bad news out of the way.
Otherwise, I was moved to laughter and, occasionally, something near tears by the narrator’s misguided antics. I loved all the music allusions and, rather childishly, felt proud of myself for ‘getting’ them all. It’s great to read someone unafraid to write in great depth about something he clearly loves, in this case, music. This is extra welcome in a literary world that too often panders to publishers’ demands and readers’ expectations.
As a Dylan fan – my wife would say nutcase – the references, both obvious and oblique, added another layer of enjoyment and satisfaction. If you have any interest in Dylan at all, read this book. If you haven’t, read it anyway. I loved it nearly as much as Angelina, my all-time favourite Dylan song.
