L.V. Sage's Blog, page 2

Five-Star Review From Readers’ Favorite for “Red, White & Blues: Book Two”

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Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers’ Favorite


 


Red, White, and Blues by L.V. Sage is book two in the eponymous historical fiction series, preceded by book one of the same name. The story begins at the end of 1979 and carries forward through to the latter part of the 1980s, imparting some of the real-life events of the time and bits of pop culture, both major and minor. There are multiple points of view characters with most of the narrative in third person past, but occasionally the writing lapses into the omniscient present. The plot goes in several directions with each character intertwined but independently depicted, the centerpiece being the Souls of Liberty Motorcycle Club, its chapters, and the four veterans who find common solace in the shadow of the Vietnam war. A community is built around mutual links in Northern California, tackling themes such as suicide, PTSD, grooming/statutory rape, cancer, AIDS, retaliatory murder and gang life that cuts deeper with scarring that’s both physical and emotional, and a plethora of other issues that reinforce the tumult of the era.


 


Red, White, and Blues takes a moment to get into without having read the first book, but L.V. Sage has written an ambitiously long book that allows a reader the time to meet the characters and continue on the journey with them. The big moments within the plot are balanced nicely with tidbits of everyday life that lend an authenticity that respects the time and those who live in it. I chuckled a little when two characters were at a movie theater to see River’s Edge, and loved the inclusion of some of the Bay Area’s iconic sights and venues such as San Francisco’s Swedish American Hall. Pandora is my favorite character and is truly one that stands out with coming of age subplots. In close second is James and Asher, gay partners who can do nothing as members of their own community succumb to AIDS. There are moments within the book that feel somewhat like information overload, told outright by an omniscient narrator instead of through character action, but as there are so many elements in the placement of the story it is easily forgiven. This is an excellent book with so much potential to grow as it moves forward with the next installments.

In Tribute to Bill Withers-An Excerpt From the Forthcoming novel, “Red, White & Blues: Book Three”

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With the recent news of the passing of soul great Bill Withers, I thought I’d post an excerpt from the third and final (& forthcoming) book in my trilogy.

Now in their mid-twenties, Jimmy Clark and Eve Blackhorse have just attended a rehearsal and dinner for the upcoming wedding of Eve’s brother, Free.  Jimmy has recently experienced a terrible tragedy and is vulnerable and in need of his old friend’s company, sympathy and caring nature.

Remember that this is a work of fiction and that the bar names in this excerpt are not real.

 

 

“Are you going home?”

He is stirred from his thoughts by Eve.  “I dunno.”

“Wanna go to a really cool bar I found?  It’s close by.”

Jimmy takes a last drag on his cigarette before throwing the butt into the gutter.  “Sure.  Why not?”

“I’ll drive.”

They get into Eve’s bright red 1992 Mazda Miata.  The bar is in downtown Monterey and looks like a dive from the outside, but once Jimmy’s eyes adjust to the darkness, he can see that it has been updated with high-end fixtures, tables and chairs and the old bar has been refinished and outfitted with nice, new barstools that actually have backs.

“I think I remember this place,” he says as they take a small table near the karaoke stage.  “Wasn’t it called something else?  The Sly Fox or something?”

Eve laughs.  “The Moose Lounge!  That was so long ago!”

“What’s it called now?”

“Echoes.”

Jimmy smirks.  “Not really the same appeal.”  He looks around.  “Or crowd.”

They order a couple of Long Island iced teas as the karaoke crowd gets ready to embarrass themselves or impress the patrons.

“This can be pretty entertaining,” Eve says.

Jimmy shifts his chair to watch the first brave soul take up the microphone and tentatively sing “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce.  He is a middle-aged man, balding with fat sideburns, wearing Wrangler jeans, old Sperry Topsiders and a short-sleeved, blue button-down shirt.  When he finishes, there is a spurt of applause from a small table nearby and then several minutes go by before a younger man jogs up to belt out a surprisingly good version of Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl”.

“Could you ever do it?” Eve asks, signaling the waiter for another round.

“I’d have to be pretty fucked up,” Jimmy admits.

After a few more songs, there is a break in the action.  Sipping the remnants of her second Long Island iced tea, Eve is feeling tipsy, adventurous and flirty.  She excuses herself and goes off to the bathroom to touch up her face and take a minute away from Jimmy, whom she is finding herself very attracted to.  The trouble is she doesn’t know what the etiquette might be for the situation that Jimmy is in.  He didn’t just break up with his girlfriend; he lost her and his baby in a tragic car accident not more than five weeks ago.

“Ordered two more,” Jimmy says when she sits back down. “I know these things are fucking strong, but what the hell, right?”

“Cheers,” Eve says, hitting her glass gently against his.  After a few large gulps, she puts the glass down, twirling the straw.  “How are doing?  I mean, it must be really hard…”

“It’s a nightmare,” he says.   “But this helps!”  He picks up his glass.

“I’m so sorry.  I can’t imagine what it must be like.”

“Hopefully you’ll never have to know.  I try not to think about it.”

“That must be impossible.”

“I said I try.”

“Do you ever feel like, I don’t know, death or tragedy surrounds you?  I’m not sure how to say it…”

“You mean because of my dad and now this? Sure. I can’t help it.”

“I think I might, too.”  Eve feels her eyes well up a little.  She blinks, but a single tear rolls down her cheek.  She quickly wipes it away.  “I’m sorry…”

Jimmy reaches across the table and takes her hand.  “I love you, you know that?  You’ve always been a sweetheart.”

Behind him the karaoke is starting up again.  Five twenty-somethings-two men and three women-stand at the machine, a pair of microphones between them.  The music starts and they all watch the screen roll up the lyrics to Hootie and the Blowfish’s “I Only Want to be with You.”  It is a drunken, flat and painful production, but the quintet laughs their way through to the very end.

Jimmy drains the last of his iced tea and sets the glass down.  “Watch this.”

Eve watches as he drunkenly saunters up to the karaoke machine, finds his selection and then, with head down and long blond hair covering his face, delivers a somewhat sensuous version of Bill Withers’ “Use Me”.  When he finishes, he sets the mike down and walks back to the table where Eve is smiling magnificently.

“That was good!” she says.  “Really!”

“It ain’t Pavarotti, but…”

“Really!  It wasn’t bad!”

“I think I’ve had enough to drink,” Jimmy laughs.  “We’ve got a big day tomorrow. Let’s get outta here.”  When they get back into the Miata, he asks, “You’re living in the apartment at your parents’, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I come back with you?  My mom-you know how she is.  I just don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Despite it being May, the apartment is chilly.  Eve cranks up the wall heater and pulls out two throw blankets, then brews up some chamomile tea.  She lights some candles on the coffee table and they sit snuggled up, sipping the tea.  It is quiet and they talk some more about what Jimmy is going through, what he might do next.

“I don’t know,” he says.  “All I can do is get through each day by itself.  Then I wake up and do it again.  The nights are the hard part.”

Eve pulls her blanket up under chin and looks over at him.  “I wish there was something I could do to help you.”

“You have done something.  I had fun tonight. Thanks for that.”  He pauses for a minute to sip his tea, then looks back at her.  “You have really pretty eyes,” he says.  “And hair.  You’re a natural beauty.”

“Kiss me, Jimmy.”  She leans forward and he takes a handful of her dark hair in his hand and kisses her softly on the mouth.  She sighs and lets her head fall to his shoulder.  “I really like you,” she whispers in his ear.  “I always have.  I know I’m drunk, but I mean it.”  She lifts her head and kisses his cheek.  “Really kiss me.”

Jimmy presses his lips to hers, his tongue sliding along her lips.

“I don’t want you to think I don’t care about…” Eve starts.

“I don’t.”

“I don’t know how to act.  I want to be with you so bad, but I don’t want to be disrespectful or rush you or…”

“Eve,” he says, pulling her close.  “It’s me.  The same old Jimmy Clark.  You’re the only one that I can count on right now to see that.”

They move down onto the couch and under the blankets.  Clothes come off and that old familiarity begins to evolve into something new and different.

 

A Story in Tribute to Neil Diamond

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I recently learned the sad news that Neil Diamond has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and will no longer be touring.  I never had the chance to see him live, but as a child, I used to listen to his live album, Hot August Nights, quite a lot.

Sometimes referred to as the “Jewish Elvis”, Neil’s voice is a beautiful combination of power and soothing smoothness.  In light of his recent diagnosis and as a sort of tribute to him, I am posting an excerpt from my second novel, Red, White & Blues:  Book Two that mentions Neil as the Jewish Elvis.

Lucas had turned forty at the end of October.  Because of his work schedule, he and Julie didn’t really celebrate other than to spend an evening with Mike and Sarah, Wes and Sandy.

An old friend of Julie’s calls one day to catch up.  She and her husband had moved from Boulder Creek, where she, Julie and Sandy had grown up, to a small mountain town in southern California called Idyllwild.  She invites Julie and Lucas to come up for a long weekend.  To Julie, it seems like a good way to have a belated celebration for Lucas’s fortieth, so she accepts.

The seven-hour drive seemed even longer as the last part of it climbed up the mountainside until it leveled out and dropped down into the small town.

Julie spreads the directions out on her lap as Lucas comes up to a stop sign.  A series of turns brings them up to a rustic cabin nestled in the big ponderosa pine trees.  The front door opens and Martha, Julie’s friend, comes bounding out, an Irish setter following close behind.

“You made it!” Martha cries over the dog’s enthusiastic barking.  “Ellie!  Shush!”

Julie hugs her friend.  “It’s been so long!  Since my wedding, right?”

“Yes!  The first one!  Come in!” she says, pulling away.

Lucas grabs the bags from the backseat of Julie’s old Cutlass Supreme.  The car had been a bitch to maneuver up the mountainside.  He would have preferred to have taken his truck, but he had left it in case Wes needed it.

“This is so cute,” Julie says of the cabin’s interior. She follows Martha on a short tour of the rooms and then they step out onto a deck that overlooks the trees.  Bird feeders are attached to the deck railing and crafty squirrels scamper quickly away from them.

“Damn squirrels!”  Martha cries.  “They steal all the bird seed!”

Lucas goes over to the railing, looks down below, and then back up to take in the view.

“You must be Lucas,” Martha says, stepping forward.  “I’m Martha.  I’m so glad that you two could come!”

Lucas takes her extended hand.  “Yah.  It’s nice up here.”

Martha turns back to Julie, her hand still in his.  “You didn’t say how gorgeous he was!”

Julie smiles.  “Thought I’d surprise you.”

Lucas follows them back inside where Martha brews a pot of coffee while she and Julie reminisce and catch up on old acquaintances, one of which is Sandy Porter-Meyers.

“Now what’s going on with Sandy?  I heard about Pete, of course…” Martha says.

“She’s remarried.  Her husband, Wes, is Lucas’ partner.  They own a landscaping business.”

“Isn’t that something!”

“And she’s a grandmother,” Julie says.  “Can you believe that?”

“How old is her son?  What’s his name again?”

“Jimmy.  He’s only twenty, but he got his girlfriend pregnant, married her and now they have a baby girl.”

“Shit!  That’s, well, not really unbelievable, but…”

“Nothing surprises us with Sandy, right, baby?” Julie says, taking Lucas’ hand and drawing him nearer.

“Lyle will be home soon,” Martha says of her husband.  “He’s cutting out early so we can go to dinner.  You’d never guess, but there’s the best Chinese restaurant up here.”

Not accustomed to socializing with people he doesn’t know, Lucas appears reserved.  At dinner, he opens up a bit more, but feels awkward making small talk.  He tries to fade into the background, content to drink his beers and listen to the others talk, but Lyle misreads him and tires to draw him into their conversation.

“So, Lucas,” he says.  “You know there’s a lot of Native American history up here.”

Martha raises her eyebrows at her husband from across the table.

“Oh, yah?”

“Yes.  There’s a legend from the Cahuilla Indians.  Their fallen chief, Tahquitz, was possessed by evil spirits, which caused him to kill his sweetheart.  They chanted over his body and it began to glow like fire.  Suddenly, he rose and settled on Tahquitz Rock.  Apparently, they believe that he is trapped inside the rock with a rattlesnake and a condor.  Whenever there’s an earthquake, it’s really Tahquitz shaking things up instead.”

“Hmmm,” Lucas mutters, nodding.  “Interesting.”

“What’s your tribe, Lucas?” Lyle asks forking up some steamed rice.

“Ojibwa.”

“He’s from Wisconsin,” Julie adds hastily.

“Ah!  That explains the Midwestern accent,” Lyle says.

“Well,” Martha says, trying to steer the conversation away from Lucas’ ethnicity.  “Do you have any children, Lucas?”

“Two sons.  One is getting married next year.”

“How exciting!  How is Pandora doing, Julie?”

“Really good!  She’s still living with Haven in San Clemente, but I think she’ll come back home after she graduates next year.”  She takes a sip from her wine glass.  “Here’s something crazy:  her boyfriend is Lucas’ nephew!”

They all laugh and then Lyle and Martha tell of their own children, a daughter and two sons, one of which has autism.

“I’m so lucky to have made many dear friends here in town,” Martha says.  “Ross-that’s our autistic son-is staying with a friend while you visit.  The older teens are with Lyle’s sister in Palm Springs.”

“I hope we didn’t out them out,” Julie says.

Lyle laughs.  “Not at all.  They love to get away from us for a few days-even Ross.”  He smiles, takes a sip of water.  “Of course, we like to have him stay in town if we’re not with him.”

After dinner, they head back to the cabin.  Lyle makes a fire while his wife brews coffee.  She brings it out on a tray with mugs, cream and sugar and then asks her husband to put on some music.  Julie has brought some photo albums with pictures of her life, including her two weddings, Pandora and the new house.

“He’s done all the landscaping,” she beams, looking over at Lucas.  She can see that he is uncomfortable.

Lucas smiles slightly and spoons sugar into his coffee.  He recognizes Neil Diamond on the stereo and remembers that one of his old coworkers had told him that Diamond was the Jewish Elvis.  Lucas snickers a little at the thought.

When they finally retire, Julie snuggles up close to him.  The bed is freezing, but Martha had provided them with an electric blanket that is taking its time heating up.

“Thanks for coming,” she says.  “I know this probably isn’t your idea of the best way to spend your fortieth birthday.”  She kisses him.  “I’m sorry, baby.”

“No, it’s okay.  It’s nice.”

“I haven’t seen Martha in…God, twenty-two years?  Can that be right?  She’s a bit of a square, always was.  And Lyle!  He’s pretty nerdy, too.”

“Well, not everyone can be as cool as us, right?”

Julie laughs.  “That’s for sure!”  She snuggles down into the blankets.  “Mmmm.  It’s finally getting warm in here.”

“Yah.  This bed’s pretty small, too.”

“I think it’s a twin,” Julie says, reaching into Lucas’ pajama bottoms. He flinches.  “Sorry!  My hands are still warming up.”

He wraps his arms around her, surrounding her with his heat and smell.  Julie always feels so small and feminine when they make love.  She loves his smooth hard chest, his scars, his deep black eyes, his long dark hair.  He pushes into her and she braces herself against the flimsy headboard as it begins hitting the wall, pounding out a rhythm of their movements.

“Shit,” she breathes, laughing.

As he moves faster, the bed springs join the headboard and Julie is giggling through her moans.  Lucas smiles above her, thrusting ever deeper inside her and as she begins to shudder beneath him, the bed collapses onto the floor with a loud thump.

They lie perfectly still, fighting off their laughter until they hear a door open and then a knock at their own.

“Is everything okay in there?” Martha asks.

Lucas puts a finger to Julie’s lips.  “Yah.  Guess the bed’s not made for two.”

In the morning, they emerge sheepishly to face their hosts.  Martha gives them a knowing look while Lyle chooses to hide behind the local newspaper.

Three days later, with their bags packed and the bed haphazardly put back together, Lucas and Julie say their goodbyes and head back up north.

“I love you,” Julie says, leaning over and kissing his cheek as he navigates the Cutlass Supreme.  “I guess your birthday wasn’t so boring after all!”

Lucas laughs.  “That’s definitely a story for our grandkids!”

 

Red, White & Blues: Book Two is Scheduled For August 1 Release

 

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After several years of editing and rewriting (which I had started to document here), the second book in my trilogy is finally done and will be released for Kindle on August 1 and paperback soon after.

The grueling process of editing a manuscript of any size can be overwhelming, but, as with my first novel, this one was another massive document of 251,753 words and 383 pages.

As I read and reread and reread the story, I knew that a lot of it had to be deleted and the rest revised. It seemed that I was doing quite well for a while and I happily watched the page count go down while the file that I put all of the deleted material grew. However, the more I tossed and turned at night thinking about the manuscript, the more I felt needed to be addressed even if it was briefly. This, of course, led to additions and the page count started to slowly go up again. So much for reducing the bulk.

Although I was somewhat unhappy about having to add in more parts, I was ultimately happier having done so. This is not so much a complex story (in fact, complexity is something I try to avoid), but because of the connection I feel to my characters and readers, I felt myself needing to further deepen certain situations. My story is ultimately about human connections, experiences and interactions and how all of that creates bonds, love, understanding and even friction and hatred among a large group of friends and family members.

Picking up two years later, “Red, White & Blues: Book Two” revisits the main characters from the first book and introduces new ones.

With the sixties and seventies behind them, the majority of the young hippies and bikers from Book One are now parents of tweens or teens and face the challenges of raising children in a world that is changing quickly. While parents like Mike and Sarah Blackhorse embrace and take seriously the responsibility, Sandy Porter, as a single mother, falls back on bad habits and lackadaisical parenting. Young teen Pandora Hartford embraces her budding sexuality with frightening confidence; Warren and Shane Clark learn about the female anatomy from their father’s dirty magazine collection while Toby Weston questions his sexual orientation and Lane Stewart butts heads with his mother, step-father and estranged father, Morgan.

As the kids deal with adolescence, their parents are dealing with life changes as well. Mike Blackhorse, still troubled by his memories from the Vietnam War, begins to learn the healing powers of motorcycle riding and club camaraderie. His brother, Lucas, learns that running away from his parenting responsibilities isn’t as easy as he had thought and Sandy Porter learns a similar lesson, but with a better outcome.

Souls of Liberty MC club members go through their own emotional odysseys as crack cocaine enters their world, trust and loyalty are put to the test and intrigue and danger lead to a terrible and final outcome. John Clark questions his involvement in the brotherhood as bad situations continue to rock the club’s world; Morgan Stewart comes face to face with the strains of being the club president as some members challenge his ways of thinking with drug use and broken trust. And Salem Lund ignites a series of troublesome incidents while trying to keep his marriage together and his twin, Alex, safe.

In San Francisco, unlikely friends Louise and Maura continue to run Moonstone Books as the AIDS epidemic grows around them. Unable to ignore what is happening in the community, they plunge in head first and the bookstore soon becomes a special place for the gay community to gather, sip tea, get a crocheted hat when sickness sets in and most importantly, find loving and sympathetic friends.

I am pleased and proud to offer the second book in my trilogy to the reading public. It is a book that I would read with great interest and pleasure (and will do so again as soon as I can forget about it for a while first).

If you haven’t read “Red, White & Blues: Book One” now is the time! Get caught up this summer and you’ll have the sequel at your eager fingertips right after you finish!

Please remember that authors and especially indie and self-published authors rely on and appreciate your honest reviews, so do us a favor and head over to Amazon or Goodreads and write a few (or more) words about what you thought and felt reading the book.

***READ***RECOMMEND***REVIEW***

The Short-Lived Love Affair Between the Hippies and the Bikers

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In the mid-1960s in San Francisco, the hippies had established a strong foothold in the community.  Haight-Ashbury, Golden Gate Park, the Panhandle and other areas had effectively been taken over by the influx of young people who were seeking a new way of life, free from the constraints, rules and norms of the previous generation.

At the same time, bikers like the Hells Angels were also firmly entrenched in the city and had been since 1953 when the San Francisco chapter was established. Taking a house at 719 Ashbury in the late sixties, they were in direct contact with the hippie population, which swarmed the neighborhood streets by this time.  Local musicians, the Grateful Dead, lived in a Victorian right across the street at 710 Ashbury.

Initially, the two groups shared a close bond.  Both considered themselves outside of society, living lives that were out of line with the norm.  Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, independence and a deep mistrust of authority, police and others created a shared understanding.  Several Hells Angels became celebrity figures in the community, including “Chocolate George” Hendricks, “Harry Henry” Kot, and Oakland members John Terence Tracy or “Terry the Tramp” and George “Baby Huey” Wethern, who provided the Haight with LSD.

In 1968, writer Tom Wolfe’s book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, documented the relationship between the hippies and Hells Angels, which began in 1965 when the club was invited to a huge two-day party out at Ken Kesey’s three-acre property in La Honda, up in the Santa Cruz mountains, a private and peaceful (usually) location with boundless beauty and plenty of  mystical and spiritual ambiance.

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After introducing the bikers to acid, free love, music, DayGlo paint and other hippie trappings, an alliance was formed.  The partiers included many notable characters from the counter-culture including Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, journalist and writer Hunter S. Thompson, Neal Cassady, Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Dass) and Beat poet Allen Ginsberg.  You’d think that these people would have about as much of a chance at blending together as oil and water, but despite the obvious polarity between the two groups, a bond formed that August that set off a short-lived coexistence.

There are several reasons why these groups came together and then just as quickly (two months later, the Oakland Hells Angels, led by Ralph “Sonny” Barger,  literally attacked the Vietnam Day Committee (VDC) during a large protest of the Vietnam War).  At odds with their anti-authority stance and outlaw lifestyle, the Angels were staunchly patriotic. The club had been formed in 1948, made up largely of returning servicemen from WWII, and thereafter became a sanctuary of sorts for veterans of all subsequent wars who came back from combat and service feeling lost, angry and in dire need of communing with a brotherhood of like-minded men as well as craving that adrenalin that war provided, for better or worse.

One reason that the two groups melded at Kesey’s party was because the counter-culture elite was made up of people who admired authenticity, an outlaw attitude, and disregard for authority and society’s imposed rules.  Kesey saw the Angels as the epitome  of what he preached as “real”; the Angels lived the way they wanted.  They did whatever the hell they wanted and didn’t care who didn’t like it.

Another reason this initial dance went off so splendidly was because the Hells Angels liked to party.  They liked sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll and Kesey and his intellectual friends were offering it up to them  for the taking.  Under the influence of good acid, the two groups intertwined like old friends, reveling in the hedonism that the Angels embodied.

When the Angels agreed to attend the party up in La Honda, they were greeted by a large banner reading: “The Merry Pranksters Welcome the Hells Angels”, in red, white and blue lettering.  Police cars kept vigil outside the gate as the festivities commenced and didn’t interfere much.  If they had, they would have found the Angels (and others) gang-raping a young woman who by most accounts willingly participated in “pulling a train”.  The girlfriend of Neal Cassady at the time, she reportedly had become jealous of his flirting with poet Allen Ginsberg and sought to give him a dose of his own medicine, taking things a bit further for a more dramatic effect.

As the hippie culture began to derail in the late sixties (many were leaving for a communal life outside of the city by then), the relationship between the two subgroups dissipated.  After the incident with the VDC and the Oakland Hells Angels, hippies realized that the Angels, in fact,weren’t  their advocates, allies or even friends.  However, there was a huge difference between the Oakland Angels and the San Francisco Angels, some of whom were genuinely friendly and kind to the hippies.  In fact, member William “Sweet William” Fritsch had been a member of the Diggers with Emmett Grogan, Peter Coyote and Peter Berg, among others before becoming a Hells Angel.

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Later, in 1969, Fritsch acted as a bodyguard of sorts to the Rolling Stones at Altamont, where the two factions came together and then clashed for a final time.  The Hells Angels had been hired as a security force for the free concert by the Stones, in part because they were known to be friendly with the San Francisco musicians of the day like the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane and others.  Unfortunately, and for too many reasons that I won’t go into here, things didn’t work out as planned and the concert, which ended with a concert-goer being stabbed to death by a prospect of the San Jose chapter right in front of the stage, went down in the eyes of some as the event that put the last nail in the coffin of the 1960s.

In my novel, “Red, White & Blues:  Book One”, bikers and hippies come together and largely remain friendly.  Members of the fictional motorcycle club, the Souls of Liberty (SOL) are a mix of Vietnam veterans, thrill-seekers, lonely and disaffected souls and even a rebellious rich boy.  What keeps some of the members friendly with their hippie counterparts is the fact that their worlds intersected early on through a key member of the SOL before he had joined the club as well as when the group of friends re-locates from San Francisco to Monterey, CA.  A close bond develops between the Vietnam veterans in the club and the vets who are part of the hippie group.  As time goes by, the groups criss-cross one another’s paths constantly via fourth of July parties, weddings, Halloween balls and businesses owned by members of the club and affiliates.  SOL member John Clark’s wife, Edie, owns the small-town cafe where both club members and hippies come to eat; Mike Blackhorse owns an auto repair shop where a member of the SOL works; the club owns a strip club and bar where bikers, Vietnam vets and occasional hippies go for a beer or two.  While there are infrequent clashes between the groups, their shared history and continuous crossing over into one another’s lives keeps the two groups more or less friendly for the rest of their lives (the saga will continue in two upcoming books).

Of course, this is what fiction allows an author to do:  create a world where the unlikely becomes believable (hopefully).

 

All Things Must Pass: The Legacy of Russ Solomon and Tower Records

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Tower Records, El Toro, CA #138. My home sweet home for nearly fifteen years.

Russ Solomon, the founder of the late, great record empire, Tower Records, couldn’t have gone out in a more fitting way.  Watching the Oscars with his wife, commenting on how ugly he found someone’s clothing, he requested a bit more whiskey.  When his wife returned with it, she found him dead from an apparent heart attack.  Russ had gone out with a bang with all of his feisty spirit intact.

Tower Records was an important part of my life from an early age.  Living in Southern California during the seventies, the closest Tower to us was the West Covina location (we lived in San Dimas).  Although I rarely visited, I remember requesting records for my mother to pick up while she was out shopping.

Our house was always filled with music.  Both my parents loved and listened to rock ‘n’ roll.  My father loved the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Creeedence Clearwater Revival, Chicago and others.  My mom was a big Janis Joplin fan.  After they got divorced, my mother’s taste grew to include artists like Neil Diamond, Helen Reddy and, of course, the disco-era music of the Bee Gees.  When Saturday Night Fever came out, we went to see it as a family (with my step-father) and every Saturday or Sunday morning, the soundtrack would click into the 8-track player.  Us three kids spent weekends at Dad’s house in Newport Beach.   As a handsome, single lawyer, he was open to having a varied record collection, often influenced by the music of the girls that he was dating.  Added to the familiar Stones and Beatles albums were music by Heart, Jefferson Airplane, Donna Summer and Bob Dylan.

As I came into my teenage years, I began to develop my own taste.  Having my own stereo system in my room allowed me to explore and experience music in a way that perhaps other kids didn’t.  I never realized how lucky I was to have that luxury; I thought all kids had their own stereos!  My younger brothers loved KISS while I gravitated toward Aerosmith.  My Donny Osmond crush had matured; I was now in love with Steven Tyler.  I also listened to a lot of radio and because I had access to a stereo, I made mixed tapes, mostly of dance and disco music, that made the rounds at my junior high school, especially among the many black kids that attended there.  And although I was genuinely friendly with many of them, I was also very naive as I found out that many of them thought that I was a “wannabe”, a term that I learned about the hard way when one of them taunted me in the hallway, sing-songing, “Be whatcha wannabe!”, implying that because I listened to black music I wanted to be black.

When we moved to Mission Viejo in Orange County, I was a lonely, awkward fourteen-year-old, getting ready to start high school in a brand-new town with no friends.  Music, my ever-present friend, was there to ease my pain.  After a rather enlightening introduction to FM radio stations like KLOS and KMET and the ground-breaking KROQ, I spent most of my free time in my room, surrounded by my Rolling Stones posters (I had forsaken Steven Tyler for Keith Richards by this time), listening to classic rock and new music and on Sunday nights, the Dr. Demento Show.  DJs became important and loyal friends.

A job stuffing newspapers for my stepfather’s early morning paper route allowed me my own money and where did I go to spend it?  Tower Records in El Toro.  Whether my mom took me or I rode my bike there, I spent hours on each visit, flipping through the record racks while wondering what was behind that beaded partition in the poster section.  (At the time, this Tower location still had a head shop; too bad I was a tad too young to benefit from it before it was removed).

My record collection grew and grew and included all the Stones albums and records from my youth, but now with new music like the Pretenders, Pat Benatar and the soundtrack to The Decline of Western Civilization.  My mother had always been a small theater actress and loved to give cast parties.  I remember at a  particular one there was an English fellow, who was a member of the cast, who knew that I was a Rolling Stones fan.  He handed me the Marianne Faithfull album, Broken English, and told me I’d love it, but no to listen to it if my mom was around (a reference to the explicit lyrics in the song, “Why’d Ya Do It?”).

When I graduated in 1983, I went to live with my dad in Newport Beach while the rest of my family moved to rural Fallbrook.  I spent a year lazing about before my dad demanded that I get a job.  A trip to El Toro to get my hair cut led to a tip from my hairdresser, to whom I’d mentioned I was looking for a job.  “Go over to Tower,” he had said.  “Ask for Robert.”

Sporting a short skirt and a trim figure, I followed Robert, the store manager, into the back room where I was briefly interviewed and given a job working the Ticketmaster counter Tuesday through Saturday.  I had no idea what a punishment that was until later (that is another set of stories unto itself), but my nearly fifteen-year career at Tower Records began that April day in 1984.  I was nineteen.

Besides the dreaded Ticketmaster counter, I also worked in the new video section where my knowledge of foreign and independent films was fostered.  On the record side, my musical tastes branched out to include Bauhaus, the Cocteau Twins, the Cure and other so-called Gothic musicians.  Later, I became a Deadhead and followed the band around Southern and Northern California.  Still later, I learned about rap, international, jazz, vocals, grunge, metal and cocktail/lounge music.

And the friends.  Where do I begin?  A vast age group ensured that we all learned from one another as did the expertise of those that ran each music section.  Charlie, our fearless classic music buyer, was renowned throughout not just the county, but the state, it seemed.  Customers came from far and wide to listen to his advice and suggestions on not only specific composers, but symphonies, conductors, soloists and more.  An extremely smart and eccentric fellow, he could spend hours ruminating on not only classical music, but Egyptian history, science, lemurs and other exotic animals, the Grateful Dead and Frank Zappa.

Bob was our jazz buyer and he, too, knew his subject inside and out.  An accomplished musician, he played washboard in the South Frisco Jazz Band, who at one time was Disneyland’s New Orleans Square house band.  Bob knew everything about jazz, but also had a keen interest in World War II memorabilia, notably German uniforms, medals, runs, etc. and was also an avid train enthusiast.

Oh, the crazy times we had back in the day!  Kids these days couldn’t conceive of what went on at Tower back in the eighties and nineties. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll is a good start, but I don’t use those terms rhetorically.  Literally, I mean there was sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll going on at the store.  Hours-long lunches with record label reps where the alcohol flowed like water; Christmases with schnapps bottles stashed under the counters; breaks out to VW vans where copious amounts of pot were inhaled; cocaine snorted off records and sex in cramped bathrooms and makeshift offices.  Ah, yes, these were good times, my friends, never to be seen again, at least in that type of abundance and acceptance.  It was a good time to be alive and young!

After a few years in the video department, I moved over to records where I was the assistant tape buyer for a while before becoming the record buyer (probably the last one as CDs were already on their way to taking over).  Bob and I were appalled and wore our “Save the LP” buttons proudly every day to no avail.  When the receiving clerk announced he was leaving, I jumped at the chance to work in the back room and to have a Monday-Friday, 8-5 schedule.  I approached Robert and asked for the position and I stayed on as the shipping and receiving clerk for my remaining eight years.

Soon after, Robert left to go and manage the Boston store and in came out new manger, Dennis.  I was apprehensive at first; we all loved Robert, despite his sometimes explosive temper.  But Dennis and I soon became close friends.

My decision to leave Tower was a difficult one, but I sensed that big (and not good) changes were around the corner.  Our store was moving to a new location and was to be combined with an audio retailer, The Good Guys; my raises were too small and infrequent.  My heart was beating out of my chest as I approached Dennis to tell him that I was leaving.

It wasn’t long before my intuition panned out and the new location closed.  It was heartbreaking; some of the old employees were still there, including Charlie, who really had no other prospects.

Over my years at Tower and beyond, I kept in touch with everyone and hosted a big Halloween party yearly, which served as a reunion of sorts.  I became the Mother Hen and archivist for our store location, good, old Tower El Toro, #138.  Many ex-employees had moved away, but with the introduction of the Internet and Facebook specifically, we all found one another again and picked up right where we had left off.  Our Tower family was intact once again and more than one of us joked that Facebook had been invented for Tower El Toro employees to find one another again.

In 2015, I heard about the Tower Records documentary that Colin Hanks had made, All Things Must Pass.  An exclusive screening and reunion was to be help in Sacramento, the home of Russ Solomon and the original Tower Records location.  I had to go and there I met Russ for the second time.  I had met him in 1990 when a Tower friend and I took a road trip to Sacramento to visit her family.  While there, we stopped by the Tower corporate office where we were greeted warmly and given a tour, then asked if we wanted to meet Russ.  Of course we did!  We were shown into his office and there he was behind his desk, music memorabilia surrounding him on the walls, shelves, etc.  We talked for a few minutes and he asked if he could take us to lunch-what a surprise and honor!  Russ took us to a restaurant on the riverfront.  He was gracious, kind, engaging and funny.

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Me and Russ at the screening of “All Things Must Pass” and Tower reunion, Sacramento, October 2015.

After viewing the documentary with hundreds of other Tower employees, Colin Hanks and Russ himself; going to parties and events around town and meeting a lot of new Tower friends, I came back home and decided to have my own reunion for our store, Tower El Toro.  I got to work planning it and in October of 2016, I hosted fifty friends from as far away as Colorado for a day and evening of music, food and reminiscing.  Reconnecting with old friends was good for our souls and once again, our Tower family was together.  No other job (I hesitate to call my time at Tower a “job”; it was more like hanging out with friends everyday, listening to music) created the bonds and camaraderie that Tower did.  We are a worldwide family and when we meet another member, we embrace one another as an unquestioned member of our special tribe.

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Tower Records, El Toro, CA #138 Reunion, October 2016.

I consider myself among the lucky ones who can claim membership in the Tower family. The friends I made are lifelong, the music I was exposed to will be forever in my soul and the memories will keep me smiling until I die.  Thank you, Russ, for creating the most magical, wondrous infusion of freedom, music, individuality and common freakiness the world may ever know.  The misfits found a place to call home, a forever family to belong to.  Rest in peace and we’ll all see you on the other side.

Why Indie Writers are Important to Readers

A recent blog from a fellow indie author…

J.D. Adamsson

There’s been some publicity recently about the lowering standards of books, about how indie writers have an overblown opinion of their abilities. Generalisations like that are rarely accurate, things are just never that simple.

There are many writers in this world. The natural geniuses, who still nevertheless need a firm hand in editing, spelling and developmental input. The ones who aren’t great at the start, but love reading good literature, who want to write too and who put in the study and hours to improve their skills. There are those who have ideas, maybe good, maybe not so good, who perhaps have enough funds to pay a ruck of line and developmental editors to make their stories shine. Some even go as far as hiring ghost writers to write their ideas for them, and who then take all the credit, but they aren’t really writers (no famous names named). There…

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Upcoming Book Signing, Reading and Slideshow, Saturday, October 14 at Pipe & Thimble Bookstore, Lomita, CA 11AM-2PM

 

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Book Signing at Pipe & Thimble Bookstore in Lomita, California

I will be reading from and signing copies of Red, White & Blues:  Book One” as well as playing a slideshow that will showcase events, fashion, culture and music from the years that the novel takes place:  1964-1977.

If you are in the area, please stop by!  I will have copies for sale, but if you have your own, please do not hesitate to bring it!

Thank you for your support of indie authors and bookstores!  Please be sure and review and recommend “Red, White & Blues:  Book One”!

Filed under: Media, Uncategorized Tagged: 1960's, 1960s culture, 1970's, 1970s culture, authors, bikers, book signing, books, ca, california, entertainment, fiction, hippies, historical fiction, indieauthor, interview, lomita ca, motorcycles, music, novel, pipeandthimble bookstore, promotions, PTSD, read, San Francisco, sex, southern california, Vietnam veterans, Vietnam War, writers, writing

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band 50 Years On

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I must begin this blog by admitting that I was two years old when the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released.  I grew up already knowing the music, well aware of rock ‘n’roll through my parents’ record collections and as I grew up, my own.  Music was an important part of our lives.  The radio was always on in the car when going anywhere.  At the house, the Beatles, Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Janis Joplin blared from the stereo system, located in the living room.  My dad recorded me and my two younger brothers on eight-track tape singing along to “Joy to World” by Three Dog Night.  “Jeremiah was a bullfrog!  Was good friend of mine…”

I had my own stereo system in my room from an early age.  I could listen to my own records in my own room (Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion was a favorite, as was the 1970s classic kid album Free to be You and Me, featuring Marlo Thomas and Mel Brooks).  Later, I received rock records for my birthdays and Christmas and my great love of music took off.  Growing up in an upper middle class neighborhood, I had no idea how rare it was to have your own stereo and records until I began going to school.

Although my parents didn’t have the Sgt. Pepper album, I was given the Beatles double anthology album (or blue album) as a present one year.  On it was the song “A Day in the Life”.  I remember being terrified of it (perhaps the crescendo in the middle did it).  I was a rather sensitive child, prone to a vivid imagination and nightmares.

I’ve since lost my fear of most things, including “A Day in the Life”.  With the fiftieth anniversary of the album I decided that I should listen to it from beginning to end through headphones.  Over the years, I have often thought about and marveled at what it must’ve been like to experience that album for the very first time, to experience the birth of psychedelic rock.  Being born into rock ‘n’ roll, it’s impossible to conceive of a time when it was new.  What could that have been like?

I cued up the album and began my morning walk, a four-mile roundtrip through the better part of town, which is across the street from where I live.  I concentrated on the music and the nature around me:  large trees lining the streets, beautiful flowers and interesting plants, squirrels and occasional cats, birds and insects like huge, bumbling scarab beetles and monarch butterflies.

Being so familiar with the album, it was hard to listen to it with the fresh ears that I’d hoped I could.  The diversity of the music on the album is the most evident thing to me.  From the opening track (“Sgt. Pepper’s…”) and subsequent segue way into “With a Little Help From My Friends”, the mood seems playful, cheerful.  Following is “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, which John Lennon has sworn ad nauseam has nothing to with LSD, but listening to it you can’t help but put the two together.  I must confess that as a twenty something-year old Deadhead in the mid-1980s, I took LSD on several occasions, but never experienced anything remotely like what is described in the song.

Onward.  “Getting Better”-another jaunty number, followed by “Fixing a Hole”, a song that always really appealed to me for some reason.  “She’s Leaving Home”, with its timely tale of a young girl running away to find her true life/self being sung so beautifully over that sort of rambling, Victorian-sounding music and then the strange sounds of “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” and that BOOM-CHA, BOOM-CHA beat behind the swirling carnival music!  That must’ve been a revelation.

It is morning, but not too early, around 8:00 or so.  The sun is out, there’s a nice breeze.  I am looking up through the trees, seeing the streaks of rainbow sunlight pulse through and “Within You Without You” begins.  I am a huge fan of Indian music as well as other Eastern sounds like Moroccan music.  I listened and kept my eyes skyward and finally caught a glimmer of “that feeling”, what it must’ve been like to hear something so new and unimaginable.

“When I’m Sixty-Four”…well, when I hear that song now, I think, “Most of the people that heard that for the first time in 1967 probably ARE sixty-four or older…”  I also think that I myself will be sixty-four in a mere twelve years and how impossible that seemed to me when I was twenty.  “Lovely Rita”, never one of my favorites, but it never fails to make me smile and think of my own dear friend, Rita (who is not a meter maid).

“Good Morning Good Morning”, a brassy, sort of balls-out young man feeling his oats song with all those farm animals blasting off behind him.  This is followed by a second, more rocking version of “Sgt. Pepper’s…” that followed by the dreaded “A Day in the Life”.

Since I have since lost my fear of the song, it’s hard for me to realize what was so terrifying about it, but it’s a snarky song, to be sure.  A statement on the burgeoning state of disengagement from the world and its events, kinda like how things are today with social media.  At least parts of it seem that way to me, a human who has skyrocketed from living in a world where riding your bike unattended all day was the norm and plastics were more than okay to one where kids and adults alike live vicariously through their computers and are deathly afraid of using microwaves.  (I am fully aware that my perceptions about this song are wrong, by the way…)

And how about that last bit of weirdness at the end of the album?  Back in its day, you’d have thought that the record was defective since that bit with the noise and the indecipherable muttering (actually Paul McCartney saying, “Never could see any other way”) stuck in the run-out groove and played over and over until the needle was picked up.  Clever boys, those Beatles.

I guess the only real way for me to fully appreciate the brilliance and absolute revelation of the album is by learning of all that went into its creation.  The Beatles before this time could be easily categorized as a very talented pop/rock group, but once Sgt. Pepper’s came out, the sky cracked open and people’s heads exploded with new ideas about music.  Of course, there is also the time in which the album came out.  Nineteen sixty-seven was the Summer of Love.  Young people all over the world were dismissing old ideas and conservative ways of living, they were dropping acid and believing, really believing that if the entire world were to turn on, tune in and drop out, there would be world peace, communal living, money would no longer be valid, hunger would end and all preconceived notions would be universally and immediately dismissed.  Music was a part of all of this-a big part.  Back then, musicians often set the pace and tone of the times, they were a tangible part of the youth culture.  People listened to them.  (This could also go horribly awry, as when Charles Manson claimed that the Beatles were speaking directly to him through the White Album, also known as simply The Beatles.)

I have many friends who are older than me, who actually did experience the birth of psychedelic rock, who heard Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with fresh ears and minds.  I envy them because as hard as I have tried, I cannot imagine the world before it.  Since those breakthrough years of rock ‘n roll, when electric guitars went freeform and wild, drums went tribal and loud and singers lost themselves in soulful self expression, there hasn’t been any movement in music as important or groundbreaking.  And that says an awful lot about a great many things.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: 1960's, 1967, 1967 Summer of Love, entertainment, hippies, LSD, music, psychedelic rock, San Francisco, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles

BookGoodies Author Interview May 2017

Read my author interview on BookGoodies here:

 

BookGoodies Author Interview May 2017

Filed under: Blog Posts From Other Sites, Uncategorized Tagged: auditor interview, authors, books, fiction, indie authors, interview, l.v. sage, novel, red white & blues, writing