3/29/10

Rock And Roll DID Save My Life!

It's been over a week since my reading with Steve Almond and I still feel the power of his feedback-filled testament.

Steve's Rock And Roll Will Save Your Life is a stage dive into the mosh pit of hysteria, a hysterical version of A Fan's Notes written for the Teenage Fan Club set. Like the sports-lover in Exley's novel, Steve identifies with the drooling, desperate fans, realizing that despite their nasty skin conditions and even worse social skills, they still get closer to the music than the distant stars they watch.

Let me explain.

One of the greatest things about rock and roll is that it offers a Backstage Pass to bliss. Those same grease monkeys who perform lube jobs can also crank out garage rock, giving us all a spiritual oil change and firing our pistons before we head out on the highway. They may end up one-hit wonders not leading lives of inspiration, but they provide us with moments, their confabs with the spirits in the sky pushing us to move our hips and bite our lips and mouth words silently under our ear-buds till we perhaps scream Satis-FAK-tion!

Add up those moments and you start to get something damn important. A big heaping slab of the people’s words made as eloquent as a lover’s cry when the senses go guitar-crazy and reach for the stars and the high frets.

Do it, do it, do it till you're satisfied, whatever it is...


But wait, that's disco! Maybe I need another rock and roll injection. Join me in the shooting gallery of shooting the shit with the rawk writers like Almond, that fanatical fan's fan and the current fave on my literary play list.

3/15/10

Reading with Steve Almond

I'll be reading with the super-funny, super-cool, all round super-duper Steve Almond this Thursday. The occasion is the release of Almond's book, Rock And Roll Will Save Your Life. I, as the opening act, will be doing my Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's thang. In other words, it will be a literary battle of the bands with the two Steves going line to line, comma to comma to see who will be King of the Rawk Writers.

The event begins at 7:00 P.M. at the New England Institute of Art in Brookline Village (see poster). More info on Steve's book at: http://www.stevenalmond.com/index.html?utm_source=Masthead