Yes, it is I, the Prodigal Blogger, returning to yet again push syntax around the unforgiving glare of a blank screen, thus popping our greying head out from the salubrious confines of ye olde Grotto. Meantime the world keeps spinning, and likewise the fog rolls in and out and the dust blows forward and back as always, despite all the hovering nastiness of our world.
In case you’ve been wondering if the book I mentioned in my last missive immediately sailed up the book charts, resulting in neglecting my Grotto duties due to whirlwind, worldwide first class travails, Cristal and Moet brunches and visits to eye doctors to cure the damage due to flashbulbs and I-Phone glare directed at my peepers…no such luck.
In actual fact, The Book In Question will be out within a matter of weeks. You are invited to go to hatandbeard.com for more info. You can also read about my publishing benefactor here, courtesy the Los Angeles Times.
In my defense, I actually had what I thought at the time might have been a perfectly reasonable installment ready just before the blast and a half that was San Jose World Con (my first since Renovation in 2011, that is. to say, A While).
As I steamed forward, I kept in mind one good bit of advice extended to all scribes by the Bay Area’s own Anne Lamott: “Write lousy first drafts”. (Except she didn’t use the word ‘lousy’.)
However, re-reading said installment made me realize how much I had clearly taken Mme. Lamott’s advice to heart. Indeed, they might have passed muster as mere notes, but then I’m no Tom Wolfe, for all my highfalutin aspirations.
Speaking of which, it was very much a loss (though not a tragedy, having lived such a rich, creative life for so many years) when Mr. Wolfe passed last spring. He was among a handful of literate folks I coveted as a highschool student; his energetic, excitable prose really spoke to me. Tom certainly made the anarchic inner space excursions of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters sound attractive. Of course, I was to later discover the reality of ingesting mind altering substances to be a very different beast altogether, but that’s certainly not the fault of either Wolfe or Kesey.
More my speed were the essays found in what is still my favorite Wolfe read, The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby. Wolfe really brought the likes of early Sixties Warhol superstar Baby Jane Holzer, and Pop Music movers and shakers of the day like the legendary DJ Murray The K (and the ill-fated Phil Spector), to vivid, dynamic life.
Another writer I admired with a similar knack for engaging wordspinning was one Derek Taylor. He was part of the Beatles’ PR crew in the early days of Beatlemania, and in the Fabs’ final years their press officer keeping the clearest of heads during the altruistic madness of Apple Corps. In between he also handled PR for Safe As Milk-era Captain Beefheart, the Byrds and, most notably, got out the word (and the word was ‘genius’) about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys in their Pet Sounds epoch.
Taylor’s early Seventies memoir of those groundbreaking, mind-blowing days, As Time Goes By, has just been reissued by Faber And Faber. His recall throughout is detailed, sharp, witty and smoothly conversational; it really does at times read as if Taylor is sitting with you, spinning a massive web of Pop music yarns and imparting tidbits about his various famed clients and contemporaries. Any and all fans of the aforementioned classic Sixties greats will find much to enjoy and enlighten within the pages of As Time Goes By.
To close things out for now: thanks as always for looking in on my all too recently infrequent postings. And please keep coming back and, by all means, feel free to ask me questions or challenge me when you think I’m being stupid.
It’s not always easy to come up with stimulating topics for all of you excellent-taste-having sf/f-music-culture fans. I’m burning through my best rhetoric and witty observations at a torrid pace. Help an old man out.
With more to come and, with all luck, sooner than never…
MLH
9/8/2018