Tag Archives: Michael Goldberg

World’s Best Roots Music Record Store Now Carries Rock ‘N’ Roll Novel ‘True Love Scars’

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Known around the world for carrying the best in roots music (and world music) – and rootsy world music.

While you can always order my rock ‘n’ roll novel, “True Love Scars,” from any physical book store, I’m thrilled to have the book carried and in stock at one of my favorite record stories, the irreplaceable Down Home Music, located in the down home capital of the world, El Cerrito California.

El Cerrito, which is located between Berkeley and Richmond, has a reputation for great music.

Both Down Home Music and Arhoolie have been based in El Cerrito for decades.

Arhoolie was founded in El Cerrito in 1960, when the late Chris Strachwitz released Mance Lipscomb’s Texas Sharecropper and Songster.

Down Home Music, Strachwitz’s record store, has been at 10341 San Pablo Avenue in El Cerrito since 1976, and the folks there can be reached by phone at (510) 525-4827. The store is open each week Thursday through Sunday, from 11 am – 7 pm.

Also worth noting: the great John Fogerty grew up in El Cerrito, which is where Creedence Clearwater Revival formed and were based during their ’60s and early ’70s heyday.

Les Blank, the award-winning filmmaker who made many important music documentaries including “The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins, lived in El Cerrito. Bob Dylan thinks enough of Les Blank that he has included “The Blues Accordin’ To Lightnin’ Hopkins” as the only film recommended on his website.

The excellent community world music radio station, KECG, which is based in El Cerrito, can be listened to here.

And James Brown, of course, played in nearby Richmond in the ’60s.

For more on “True Love Scars,” head here.

Audio: Dylan-Heavy Soundtrack To ‘True Love Scars’ – Part Two – Listen Now!

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My rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars, is heavy with references to music.

So I’ve been creating Spotify playlists for the soundtrack.

Today I added a second playlist to the True Love Scars Soundtrack area of my blog.

You can check both playlists out right now.

Here’s the new one:

And you’ll find them both here.

I’ll be adding more in the weeks ahead.

[I just published 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.]

— A Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog post —

Is ‘True Love Scars’ the Great Rock Novel? Simon Warner Considers the Pros & Cons

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“True Love Scars” rises to #18 on the Amazon Bestselling Literary Satire chart.

Fantastic review by Simon Warner, author of “Text and Drugs and Rock’n’Roll: The Beats and Rock Culture.”

TRUE LOVE SCARS
Michael Goldberg (Neumu Press)

Review by Simon Warner

The great rock novel? The pursuit of that ultimate piece of fiction that distils the primal energy, the ecstatic power, the neurotic craziness, of popular music has been something of a holy grail in recent decades and, in True Love Scars – a deeply ironic nod to Buddy Holly’s ‘True Love Ways’ – one-time Rolling Stone journalist Michael Goldberg is the latest contender for this Lonsdale Belt of rock‘n’roll writing.

His protagonist Michael Stein is a Californian teenager in the later 1960s, tangled to distraction in the sound and image of his hero Bob Dylan, a paradoxical blend of cocksure kid and deluded hipster, bruising his fragile ego in the choppy shallows of high school romance, then sabotaging his increasingly complicated love tangles in a haze of drug indulgence and casual disloyalty, and all to a backbeat of Highway 61 Revisited, the Stones and the Doors.

It’s the story of a disaffected geek and self-imagined king of cool who turns out to be much more naïve nerd, as his promising upward trajectory hurtles into reverse. But True Love Scars, the first part of Goldberg’s ‘Freak Scene Dream Trilogy’, is as much about style – the way he tells the tale – as it is about content. Penned in a staccato amphetamine grammar, its narrative is fractured and deranged, often unsettling but frequently compelling, an unsparing portrait of the teen condition: assured then despairing, would-be sex god then impotent has-been, from erection to dejection, an only child battling the wills of his domineering father and interfering mom in the anonymous, suburban fringes of Marin County.

Goldberg’s work recalls a number of those post-war stylists who have tried to capture the uncertainties of adolescence into adulthood, the lure of escape and the quest for forbidden fruit. It has elements of Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, a flavour of Richard Fariña and his smart college satire Been Down So Long It Seems Like Up to Me, and more than a dash of that frenetic gonzo gabble that Hunter S. Thompson utilised to frame the madness of the modern world as the American dream unravelled, around the very time that Stein is doing his incompetent best to grow up. The great rock novel? Perhaps we still await it but, for sure, this writer has made a creditworthy tilt at this literary crown, and produced a very good one.

Simon Warner is the author of Text and Drugs and Rock’n’Roll: The Beats and Rock Culture. He’s a lecturer, Popular Music Studies, School of Music, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom

[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.]

— A Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog post —

Review: Rolling Stone magazine digs ‘True Love Scars’ Novel – Goldberg Compared To Lester Bangs

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Rolling Stone TLS review

In a review of my novel, True Love Scars, in the new Rolling Stone (Taylor Swift on the cover), reviewer Colin Fleming compares me to Lester Bangs!

Too much!

Here’s the review:

Getting Lost in the ‘Real’ Sixties

A veteran rock writer explores the crazy side of Sixties nostalgia

True Love Scars

Michael Goldberg Neumu

If Lester Bangs had ever published a novel, it might have read something like this frothing debut by longtime music journalist Michael Goldberg. (It’s part one of a series called The Freak Scene Dream Trilogy.)

The year is 1972, and the book’s chatterbox narrator, 19-year-old Michael Stein, is 
the kind of Sixties-besotted college kid who shaves his hair off because John Lennon and Yoko Ono did it. His quandary: trying to figure out how to reclaim the “authentic real” spirit of the 1960s as the decade fades into memory. Stein spends most of the book flashing back to one sex-and-drugs-steeped Sixties misadventure after another.

If you’ve ever obsessed over bootlegs or argued with your friends late into the night about which Beatles or Bob Dylan album is the best, True Love Scars will hit home.

Goldberg’s style recalls the rush of the earliest rock criticism. He was a senior writer at ROLLING STONE during the Eighties, and he founded Addicted to Noise,
 an important online music publication, in 1994. His intimacy with the classic records Stein fetishizes comes through again and again. Yet, unlike his protagonist, Goldberg doesn’t idealize the Sixties. Instead, he’s fascinated by the ways in which we crave authenticity.

Readers from any musical era will come away with a deeper appreciation of how nostalgia can shape our lives, for better and for worse. COLIN FLEMING

[There’s info about True Love Scars here.]

— A Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog post —

Audio: Listen as Michael Goldberg Reads From ‘True Love Scars’ at Book Passage

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There I am, reading at Book Passage. Photo by Sam Barry.

Last night (August 21, 2014) I read from my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars, for the first time in public.

Use the player below to hear the entire reading which consists of me being introduced to the audience, my brief intro about the novel, me reading for about 30 minutes, and then a question and answer session.

The reading took place at Book Passage, a fantastic book store located in Marin County.

I had quite a large audience and it was a great crowd. There were old friends, new friends and folks who I guess read about the reading in the Marin Independent Journal.

Dana Kelly, who works at Book Passage introduced me, and it was quite an introduction, You can hear it in the audio clip above. Dana really made things easy for me.

It’s quite an experience to stand in front of an audience, folks who have no idea what they’re about to hear, and start reading. I could not have gotten a better response. People laughed at the funny parts, got quiet during the section of the final sex scene that concludes the book that I read, and applauded when I finished reading.

Who could ask for more?

Questions were asked during the Q/A part of the reading, and many books were bought.

You can see some of the audience in this photo. Photo by Jeanne Lavin.

I was surprised and pleased that John Goddard showed up. All during my youth John owned the best record store in the world, Village Music in Mill Valley. I first heard Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith and many others in John’s store.

Me and my friends would hang out there and it was always an education. My openness to new music to some extent comes from hanging out at Village Music and hearing so much “new” to me music as a teenager.

John and his store are mentioned in my novel. It meant so much to me that John showed up.

That’s John waiting while I write something in his copy of my book. Photo by Jeanne Lavin.

The folks at Book Passage were fantastic. From the first time I contacted them, right through last night’s reading, they made everything so easy. Book Passage is an excellent store. I’ve bought many books there and if you’re in Marin, or passing through, they’re just off 101 in Corte Madera and I highly recommend you stop in. In addition to books, and readings almost every night, they have a cafe where you can get food and/or a glass of wine.

And they’re got autographed copies of True Love Scars for sale.

I’ve got a Goodreads. book giveaway going right now. Click here and enter.]

— A Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog post —

Audio: ‘Michael Goldberg On Dylan In True Love Scars!’ on Australian Radio – Listen Now – Plus David Kinney & Bill Wyman on Dylan

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Recently I was interviewed at length by Triple R radio’s Brian Wise, who DJ’s a three-hour show every week called “Off the Record.”

Last Saturday the first of four or five segments from the interview aired on “Off the Record.” That segment focused on Bob Dylan and included some discussion of why Dylan is so important to the narrator of my novel, True Love Scars.

As part of his show, Wise also interviewed David Kinney, author of The Dylanologists, and music critic Bill Wyman talking about Dylan.

I was also recorded reading from my True Love Scars, and two sections about Dylan are part of the first segment.

You’ll find a transcript of the interview here at the Australian Addicted To Noise site, but if you listen you’ll hear me read two excerpts from the novel that are about how Bob Dylan has impacted the narrator’s life.

The Kinney and Wyman interviews follow the one with me.

Listen to “Off the Record” here.

[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.

Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.]

–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

Blurt’s Fred Mills Offers Moving Review of ‘True Love Scars’

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And Perfect Sound Forever has an excerpt in the latest issue.

I’ve gotten many wonderful reviews so far of my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.

This one by Fred Mills at Blurt blew me away.

Fred Mills writes:

Veteran rock journalist Michael Goldberg, of Addicted To Noise and Sonic Net fame, is clearly working through some personal demons in his debut novel, a kind of poetic-license memoir rendered in a vivid 1st person voice containing echoes of Holden Caulfield, Sal Paradise and Danny Sugerman (who of course was not a fictional person, being a member of the Doors inner circle, but certainly wrote with a definite ego swagger in his own memoir). And in a very real sense, True Love Scars contains echoes of my own voice, because in reading the book I felt some of my demons from that time being stirred up, including initial musical alliances with key albums/concerts, mixed feelings toward my relationship with my parents and friends and memories of my first few crushes (not to mention losing my virginity).

Indeed, Michael Stein’s recollections chart an emotional arc as striking as I’ve seen a novel’s lead character experience, from naïve and tender to streetwise and hip to cynical and wounded, with Dylan lyrics seeming, to him, laden with meaning and Rolling Stones tunes, likewise, churning with prophecy. When he meets, for example, the girl he calls Sweet Sarah and they embark upon a doomed courtship, Dylan’s there as their guide and their muse. Later, though, following a breakup and a dark descent into teenage debauchery, Stein’s haunted by mental echoes of the ominous slide guitar riff powering the Stones’ “Sister Morphine.” Similar musical reference points from the time abound, as befits novelist Goldberg, who cut his teeth as a rock writer and came of age in that same era; it’s tempting to play the is-it-or-ain’t-it-autobiographical game with the book, since Goldberg has a temporal, geographical and personal backstory that mirrors, to a degree, Stein’s. (Stein’s nickname in the book is “Writerman,” which should tell you something.)

Later in the review Mills writes:

Goldberg advises us that True Love Scars is the initial installment of his “Freak Scene Dream Trilogy,” full of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll plus the inevitable heartbreak and roadkill that comes with the whole package. “How the dream died and what there is left after,” he concludes. It’s worth noting that despite the timeframe outlined above, Stein/Writerman is actually narrating in retrospect from some as-yet-unspecified point in the near-present. So we know that despite the gradual sense of dread building up over the course of the book and present at its abrupt ending, he will manage to survive in some form and fashion despite whatever adventures—good, bad, ugly, tragic—will go down over the course of the next two volumes of the trilogy. I can’t wait to read ‘em.

Read the whole review here.

— A Days Of The Crazy-Wild blot post —

In The Dylan Zone: How Bob Dylan Changed My Life – Rock’s Back Pages Excerpts ‘True Love Scars’

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Today the British music site, Rock’s Back Pages, features “In The Dylan Zone,” a long excerpt from my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.

The excerpt is all about what it’s like to hear Bob Dylan for the first time, how it changed the narrator’s life, and the life of the girl he is dating. It’s powerful stuff and if you’re a Dylan fan, I think you’ll be able to relate.

You’ll find the excerpt here at Rock’s Back Pages.

So I have a favor to ask of any of you who have enjoyed posts at this Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog during the near-year that I’ve been posting here. I’m asking for your support, and the way you can support me is to buy a copy of my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars. The Kindle version is cheap — $2.99 — which is less than a penny a day. And if you do buy a copy, please leave a comment on this post so I can thank you. And if you read the book and like it, please post a short review at Amazon.

Here are the Amazon links:

Amazon US True Love Scars (Freak Scene Dream Trilogy Book 1)

Amazon UK

Amazon DE

Amazon FR

Amazon AU

There’s also a different, shorter excerpt in the latest issue of the online music zine, Perfect Sound Forever, which also went live yesterday.

You can read that excerpt here.

Introducing the excerpt, Perfect Sound Forever founder/editor Jason Gross writes:

“Writer/editor Michael Goldberg has had a pretty storied career. After working as an editor at Rolling Stone for 10 years, he went on to found the first online music magazine, called Addicted To Noise, and later became an editor and VP at another pioneering music site SonicNet (which would later fall under MTV’s umbrella).

“Goldberg is now turning his attention to fiction, coming up with the first book of a projected trilogy – True Love Scars, a stream of conscious coming-of-age story of a 19-year-old California kid who crawls through the refuse of the early ‘70s with an obsession for music, writing and women.”

Perfect Sound Forever has been covering great music since the mid-‘90s.

Gross has also been involved in getting some great compilation reissues released including two Kill Rock Star albums; one for Kleenex and one for Essential Logic.

Rock’s Back Pages excerpt.

Perfect Sound Forever excerpt.

The ‘True Love’ Scars Soundtrack, Playlist #1 – ‘Visions of Johanna,’ ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ & More

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In August I’m publishing my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.

Music is referenced throughout the book, and so I’ll be posting Spotify playlists of songs that are featured in some way in the book.

Playlist #1 includes songs from the first two chapters.

By the way, I will be on a panel at Lit Quake’s Digital Publishing Conference on June 21, 2014. My panel, Reinventing Your Career in the Digital Age, is from 4 to 5 pm. The conference is being held at Snodgrass Hall, 198 McAllister at UC Hastings Law School in San Francisco’s Civic Center. For more info head over to the LitQuake site.

And: I will be reading from True Love Scars at Book Passage in Marin County on August 21, 2014 at 7 pm. It would be great to see you there. Book Passage is located at:

51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA
(415) 927-0960

And now, the True Love Scars Soundtrack, Playlist #1:

–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

Am I a Crazy Dylanologist?

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Author David Kinney puts it all in perspective.

By Michael Goldberg

I always wondered if I was a bit, well, over the top when it came to Bob Dylan. After all, I’ve been listening to his records since I was 13, and I’m still listening.

Yeah, a long fuckin’ time.

And just this past week I watched D.A. Pennebaker’s addendum to “Don’t Look Back,” a film called “1965 Revisited,” finished up Larry “Ratso” Sloman’s On the Road with Bob Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Review, watched a YouTube clip of Dylan and John Lennon having a very stoned conversation in the back of a cab for the benefit of a cameraman shooting the never released “Eat the Document,” and listened to outtakes from Blood on the Tracks, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde, recordings made when Dylan rehearsed with the Grateful Dead in 1986, mostly unreleased recordings of a 1963 Dylan appearance at Town Hall in New York and, and…

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In my crowd in Marin County in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, I was the one leading our explorations into the new frontiers of rock. I was the first to get into the Mothers of Invention’s Freak Out, and Captain Beefheart’s Safe As Milk. I got my folks to drive me into San Francisco to buy an import copy of Pink Floyd’s trippy The Piper at the Gates of Dawn at the long-gone Gramophone Records on Polk Street. This was when Pink Floyd didn’t have a U.S. record label; when Syd Barrett hadn’t yet blown his mind.

Regards Dylan, I was his #1 fan, at least that’s how I saw it.

Sure the others I hung with dug Dylan, but I was the only one who bought the Great White Wonder bootleg when it showed up in a record store bin, and soon enough I had quite a few Dylan bootlegs, mysterious collections of songs that weren’t on his official releases, each in a white sleeve, usually with the name of the album stamped on the cover with one of those rubber stamps you could get made at a stationary store, typically to stamp your address in the left hand corner of an envelope.

These days we know artists record songs that don’t end up on official releases, and in fact, officially releasing those recordings years after they were made has become business as usual. But in 1969, when Great White Wonder was first released, it was a total shock to discover all this music I’d never heard before by an artist I totally dug. It was as if the world I’d known just fell away and another world was revealed, one with a hell of a lot more Dylan music than I had previously known.

When I got my hands on the supposed ‘Albert Hall’ live set (actually recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall as we learned many years later), and played it for the first time, it was the most ecstatic listening experience of my admittedly short life.

So you can understand why I’ve always considered myself obsessive regards Bob Dylan, and worried that there was something, well, extreme, maybe even a bit mental, about my obsession. There was a time — now this is back when I was 15, 16, so please don’t hold it against me — when I wanted so bad to look like Dylan, which I didn’t. (I’ve applied some of my own real Dylan fixation to the fictional character Writerman in my first novel, “True Love Scars,” which I’m publishing in August of this year.)

So I owe David Kinney a big thank-you. His excellent book, “The Dylanologists,” put my concerns to rest. I mean compared to the Dylan freaks profiled in Kinney’s book, I’m an average run-of-the-mill Dylan fan. Yeah, to be a Dylanologist you have to be operating on a whole other level.

Take Bill Pagel, who actually moved to Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota. Pagel spent years trying to buy the Hibbing house Dylan grew up in, and he succeeded in buying the Duluth, Minnesota house where Dylan’s folks, the Zimmermans, lived when Bob was born. Pagel also bought Dylan’s highchair, for God sakes! And a ceramic candy bowl that at one time belonged to Dylan’s grandmother.

Me, I can’t compete with a Bill Pagel.

For the rest of this column, please head to Addicted To Noise.

– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-