Blog Title: Rock And Roll Love Story : A Novel

Politics

Now the crisis of George Bush's administration is fading and we have a new Democratic President, I will return to the subject of this novel and I will not bore you of what I think of the new president's actions. He's an intelligent, compassionate, moderate sort of person with a center-left mentality and I don't expect him to screw up badly. I think all artists felt like they had to come out of the shadows about their politics during the Bush regime, something that most of us really don't want to do. Our fans are Democrats and Republicans and Libertarians and Independents and Greens and we really do not like insulting our audiences. But I think that even die hard conservatives have to agree that the Bush Administration was so bad, we really could not remain silent. We all had to speak up, the people have decided, and now it's on to the business of healing this divided country in great crisis.

Success

I received word this week that my copyright has been registered with the US Copyright Office. If you're searching the database for my title, it may not be in there yet because I still don't have the certificates but it's been almost a year and it should be coming through any week now.

Charity

The Catholic Church doesn't want to give communion to anyone who voted for Obama. That's really intelligent, isn't it? Whenever I go to a Catholic Church I am struck by the fact that clergy is so dodderingly old and the congregation isn't that much younger. So instead of ministering to the Obama youth and 53% majority of the electorate and inviting into your Church to hear about Love, you're going to drive them completely out of your church with hate. You're going to stand by your outdated theology that only males can be priests, and priests can only be unmarried, so that the only men who want to be priests are old gay male child molesters who grew up in age where it was impossible for anyone to come out of the closet. Then you're going to stand there in the next sentence and talk about morality and Jesus's love for mankind and the forgiveness of God. You're going to tell people what they should think again, after a landslide election where the American people threw out a group of people who were so arrogant that they thought only they knew what morality was, and how to think. And youre going to embrace a Republican party that was totally humilated in the last election, and they are going to dig in their heels, convinced not that they lost because they were too right wing, hateful and reactionary, but that they weren't right wing, hateful and reactionary enough. You're going to send out Sarah Palin, who professes to be a born again Christian, to be a pit bull whipping up angry, ignorant racist mobs of lower class whites to the tune of hate radio to vilify the blacks and the Hispanics and the gays. Which if you think about it, is exactly the way Adolph Hitler and the Nazis came to power when the economy in the Weimar Republic collapsed. Really really what Jesus had in mind when he decided to go to the Cross and die for you? Somehow, I dont think that's how Christianity is supposed to work, and its now how American democracy works either. If the Church doesnt learn from the mistakes of history, they will be doomed to the same failures. There doesnt have to be a Catholic Church. Almost no one in Western Europe goes to Church anymore. Come to think of it, there's no more Republicans in New England anymore either...

Good Luck

Congratulations to President Barak Obama on his historic win. In 75 days, we will be able to put this dreary, ugly past eight years solidly behind us and get to work on a brand new era in American politics.

As Obama said, the system and the economy is broke, so bad it may take years and years to fix. We didn't get here in 75 days or one year, and we're not going to reach the promised land in one year or maybe even one Presidential term. With a landslide mandate to change and the power of the Presidency and the Congress behind him, however, I know that President Obama will have the support of many hard working and intelligent people who stand a better chance of righting this sinking ship than the team that got us into this mess in the first place.

To Senator McCain, all I can say is that if you ran on the kind of platform that you did in 2000 and showed this country who the real John McCain really is, it might have worked out much differently. But you caved into Bush and you caved into the evangelical far right wing, and it wasn't even close in the end. That's really a very sad way to end a sterling political career.

And I say that as a Christian who wrote a book with God as leading character. Johnny Rocket is a different kind of Christian than Sarah Palin, I think. Whatever you think of abortion, I do not believe that Christian ought to go around foaming at the mouth on right wing hate radio and whip up racist, zenophobic mobs, as too often Sarah Palin did. That's bitterly ironic, because she was known as a different kind of Republican for many years up in Alaska.

Perhaps if John and Sarah ran truer to their real selves, rather than try to whip up hate, anger, fear and resentment, this might have been a different election.

No Thanks

I take that back.

I don't want to sit in my hermit's cottage and drink green tea. I was thinking of the Arizona green tea that has all sorts of flavorings and sugar in it that makes it unhealthy. Green tea is a great concept and it has all sorts of health benefits but did you ever taste real, unadulterated green tea without anything in it? It's terrible, actually. I was really thinking of the black Chinese variety or the English kind they mix with cinnamon and apples.

I don't drink tea with milk and sugar. Just a little Sweet and Low.

Also, apples and cheese is great and I've been eating a lot of it lately but after a while you get sick of just apples and cheese. I'm trying to stick to the low carb diet, and sometimes you just want a bagel or a pizza, you know? It's really hard!

I love animals and I've been thinking of becoming a vegetarian. I would be the kind of vegetarian that eats dairy and eggs -- I think you call them lacto-ovo vegetarians. Some people think eating any animal product is exploiting animals but put it this way -- would anyone keep millions of dairy animals and poultry alive just to sit there and eat grain and do nothing? It's a fact of life that all these millions of animals have a life in the first place because they have a role in the food chain. And yes I know that the factory farms treat them horribly. I am not for that. I would hope in a perfect world that the dairy and egg laying farms could be humane and the animals who work there could be happy.

I used to love steak and cheeseburgers but I dont have them very much anymore so they would be easy to give up. My big bad food addiction right now is Campbell's Chicken Rice soup. Chicken soup also has great health benefits but not with the amount of salt that Campbell's has.

Pamela Anderson will have to forgive me. I am on a killer diet right now because of my diabetes and I am giving up tons of stuff. I don't have high blood pressure and giving up Chicken Soup at this point just isn't possible at the moment.

I also drink tons of Diet Pepsi, as does Johnny Rocket. It's not the best thing for you but it has no sugar and its better than water. I dont know about you but plain water is pretty gross. I can't see how people drink bottles and bottles of it.

Not much happening

Well folks I'm mired in suburbia right now, trying to get a landscaper over here for fall clean up. It's a bit late in the season and I hope I can get it all done by the street cleaning deadline.

The group of writers I'm networking with hasn't seen any of my stuff yet. The first chapter involves Ronnie James DeRenzo and he can be Googled, which would reveal my true identity. I'm trying to remain anonymous here.

Another pretty young blonde who could play The Fabulous Shelly is Ashley Tisdale. I'd like to cast a movie with Ashley and Blake Lively playing the roles of Shelly and Abby. As they are the same person in real life, it helps that they look a bit alike.

My prayers

Dreamgirl Jennifer Hudson is in my prayers this week at this time of her terrible tragedy. Jennifer is a great lady and she was very close to her family, and while no one really deserves to suffer such a horrifying loss, she is one the last people that anyone would wish any ill towards.

Also actress-dancer Julliane Hough, who is yet another gorgeous blonde who could play the Fabulous Shelly, is undergoing surgery for a painful case of endometriosis. She's only about 20 years old but this condition could potentially affect her ability to have children some day. She's another beautiful girl who is beautiful inside.

My best wishes and prayers to Jennifer and Julliane in this difficult time.

If I were King of the Forest

That's from the Wizard of Oz by the way. The Wizard of Oz is occasionally quoted in Rock and Roll Love Story.

A long time ago I wanted to be a king. I do not want to be a king now.

I want to be a hermit. I want to be alone in my lakeside cottage in the far off mountains and eat cheese and apples and drink green tea and wine smoke my pipe tobacco cigars and hack out my novels on my computer and fish for trout in the babbling brook...my children can come and visit me and they too can learn to be hermits...sometimes there is an attractive lady with me in the cottage and sometimes, there is not...

Actually some people tell me that I look like King Henry XVIII of England. There is an erie resemblance...

Rock The Vote - The Punk Rock View

"Rock and roll doesn't care who the President is," says Johnny Rocket, "The best music came under Eisenhower and Nixon,"

My punk rock take on the economy :

I think that Wall Street is over-reacting every day. Monday it was all gang busters and nothing much had changed. Tuesday and Wednesday some reports came due and they tanked. They knew the reports were going to be bad on Monday. Why did it go up so much and then come crashing down?

What's been going on is pure speculation. People are making money off this dive...

Just like gas prices were way too high. There was no shortage of gas; OPEC thought there was too much oil in the market. Now demand is down and everyone is buying roller skates, so the market is collapsing...

What these sharks are doing is terrifying Main Street so everyone has stopped buying anything that isn't absolutely necessary. Of course, inventories pile up and then jobs are slashed and its a whole vicious cycle....

Obama is not really even talking about how badly Wall Street has stabbed Main Street in the back this decade. That's because he is the candidate from Goldman Sachs. If you think its going to be socialism when he gets in there, think again. The average person might get a $1000 tax rebate but its going to be the big banks that get the really big money. And Obama is not going to stop that...

If McCain gets in, the Democrats won't let him privatize Social Security or pass a big tax on employer-paid health insurance. That's going to be so unpopular and dangerous that most of the Republicans aren't going to vote for it either...

The Iraqis are kicking us out over in the Middle East. We're going to be out of there in 2 years anyway...both parties say they will invade Pakistan to get at Bin Laden and Mullah Omar

The election, therefore, is mostly about judicial appointments. If they ever really over-turn
Roe vs Wade, there would be total hell to pay from the women. All it would really mean is that it would back to the states, and abortion is always going to be legal in the blue states...

So Joe Sixpack's wife or girlfriend is usually the one getting the abortion, and since Joe Sixpack will probably decide the next election, what the hell do I care if he takes his own right to have an abortion away from himself? Let him support his kids. I never needed an abortion. I used birth control and we planned our pregancies very carefully. We live in a blue state anyway, so our kids, who have been raised to be as cautious as we were, will never have to worry about this.

So if you ask me, vote your conscience. I am dead set against the Republicans and everything that they stand for, but I am not pro-Democratic either. Obama doesn't need my vote to keep McCain from winning New Jersey, so why should I vote?

Rock the vote my ass. I voted every single year and my candidates usually lost, and every year it gets worse and worse and worse. Because my one little vote counts as much as any idiots vote and there are a whole lot of idiots in this country.

Punk Rock

People reading this blog could get the wrong idea about this book.

First, one of the women in my life who inspired The Fabulous Shelly really did look like Morgan Fairchild, and that's why I have model pretty actresses and singers like Taylor Swift and Anna Faris theoretically cast in that role. But this woman, like all the women involved in this band, were real rock and roll chicks. They definately had a punk rock attitude, and punk rockers are not really known for their glamorous good looks. Like Debbie Harry, the true punk idol, they just happened to be some of the prettiest ladies on campus.

Second, I have supported Britney Spears and I have said that she influenced the earliest chapters of this book back in 2000. That also happens to be true. Britney however was not mentally ill at the time that she caused that effect, and from the start this book just happens to be about a rock star who becomes mentally ill. That's an accident of history, not any design by me.

I like Britney as a person and I continue to support her recovery, but in no sense is my world, real or imagined, anything like Britney's world. For better or worse, Britney lives in a world where sex and glamor and the trappings of stardom are all part of the game. She's a Deep South country girl turned Hollywood production number and this book is about a New Jersey band that was holed up in a hovel outside Greenwich Village in New York City in the late 70's, at a time when Manhattan was a complete mess. The music and entertainment scene in the 70's was totally different than it is now. Today it is pop world dominated by pre-teens and beautiful pop queens. Back then, it was a hard rock world dominated by college students and bands, most of them unwashed and unattractive.

Lastly, if this book ever becomes very successful, it is very doubtful that you would see me move to LA to become part of that scene. In the second book, Rocket actually does that and becomes lost in outer space very quickly. I don't know how a blue collar Jersey guy like Bruce Springsteen pulled that off. If I was very rich, I might move to an apartment in New York City, or I might buy a cabin in the woods of upstate New York or New England, and I would live my life as anonymously as J.D. Salinger did after Catcher in the Rye was published.

J.D. Salinger alas would not have a blog. He would not be seeking publicity for his novel. He would be content to let it speak for itself. Most writers out there are not however as lucky and talented as J. D. Salinger was. We have a lot of trouble finding agents and publishers who will publish our work.

Schizo

This blog and this novel actually seem to work in reverse proportion to what its really gone on. Back in the day when I was posting constantly, almost no work was being done on the novel and yet the hits were piling up. I guess I wasted quite a few months of free publicity at a time when the novel just wasn't ready.

I gave up waiting for an editor or an agent to come along last month, and I've been working hard to revise this thing. Mostly what I have been trying to do is to get the chapters to jive with what I have been saying about this book on the blog.

In the meantime, Britney has her comeback video and she looks real good in the bit that I saw. I have it downloaded from Itunes but I haven't had the time to see it in its entirity.

New Music

Rolling Stone says Green Day is producing a new album...

In the meantime, I am checking out Katy Perry on my cousin's recommendation....

Birthday

Today is John Lennon's birthday. John reached the heights of incredible fame and wealth and he was once compared to Jesus Christ. But he gave all that up to spend time with his wife and infant son.

Of course he had the means to do that in a nice apartment in New York City, but as Wall Street is rocked and socked, I think there is real wisdom in the choice that John Lennon made.

How sad that the world just would not leave John Lennon alone. He was ruthless killed by a psychopath who was driven by delusions of grandeur.

I don't want to be so rich and famous that I am driven crazy or killed. I just want to be successful enough that I can quit this rat race and spend more time with my family and my art.

New Edition

I've been networking with a bunch of unpublished writers in the Highlands, and I've read a lot of book chapters at this point. I always knew that the introduction, prologue and first chapter were much too long. By the time the real action started, you were at page 60 and nobody would have stayed with it that long. Reading other people's stuff, good and bad, sent me back to my word processor.

The introduction is completely gone at this point. The prologue about the Highlands of my childhood is down to just eight pages.

The first chapter is where we meet Ronnie James DeRenzo up close and examine his situation. Since this chapter is also the place where meet the Fabulous Shelly, the chapter works just beautifully. By the end of the chapter, the real action starts and we meet the band.

I was a lot easier to make these changes than I thought. I agonized for eight years over them. I always knew there would be cuts once we met an editor. But no editor, publisher or agent has appeared just yet.

Milestones

Richard Wright of Pink Floyd passed away at 65 this weekend, and while of course that is a sad thing to note, I think it's worthwhile considering that bands like Pink Floyd were already considered dinosaur bands when the real Speed Limit was reacting to the punk and New Wave rebellion that was sweeping the rock world in the late 70's. I said a long time ago that I wasn't going to sit here and reminisce and marking the passing of old rock stars and lament about things gone by.

Ronnie James DeRenzo is 19 years old and full of life when this novel starts in September of 1978. In my way of thinking, I am not so much listening to the old stuff constantly as I am waiting for the next greatest thing. The way things are going, a new Green Day album aside, I don't have much to look forward to. Music these days is what the corporation wants to bring to you. If its got any rebellion and anti-corporate feel to it, its contrived by the corporation to sell to unsuspecting youth.

The Ramones were starving at CBGBs for a good long time. And it wasn't till the 80's were in full swing that REM and Blondie reached any commerical success. Back when grunge was the rave, bands did not want to sell out. People like Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder turned their back on the corporations for the longest time.

Now don't mistake me. I do want to make some money with this book. The way its going now it will unlikely that I can sell the three books in this series and retire comfortably. It's not because I am greedy or I have a materialistic lifestyle. I am writing this blog on a five year old Dell Dimension that was not the most expensive model when I bought it. Unlike a lot of aging millionaire rock stars, I am not driving around in a Lamborgini.

But listen here, I wouldn't live that way if I won the $200 million mega millions lottery. I am a guy who thinks seriously about living in a small cabin in the woods and reducing my carbon profile down to the minimum. If I could live on rice and beans, I would. But I have a wife and two kids, and they need all the things that a wife and two kids need in this competive world. So off to work I go, and to the mall I am scurrying lots of times.

I am sad that Richard Wright died but its been 35 years since Pink Floyd did anything meaningful. I'm 50 years old, quite a bit younger than all those dinosaur rockers. I am still down there with the 25 year olds trying to make it.

More on Technology

I got through to Dell and they're shipping me a replacement laptop. That makes me feel better about Dell but I am still up a tree about technology.

I remember a day when you paid $50 for a 13 black and white TV you bought at Sears, you plugged it in and adjusted the rabbit ears, and you had instant broadcast. In those days, there were only three networks, PBS and three local New York channels, but the Yankees, Mets, Rangers, Knicks, Jets and Giants were free, you were watching the Beatles and the Stones live on Ed Sullivan all shiny and new, and there really was more to watch.

I'd like to go back to those days, when you had a $5 AM transistor radio and you had the whole world...Johnny Rocket stands on the Stairway to Heaven in 1978 and sees all that coming to an end and he cries out for justice...

Waiting

Now that my job situation has finally settled down, and my commute is more reasonable, I am dedicating the next couple of years to changing my lifestyle. The illness which nearly destroyed my life has been in remission for seven years now, but the diabetes that came along with it is still a problem, and I need to make some fundamental modifications to my diet and exercise programs which have been long overdo.

I have a goal in mind and when I hit that milepost, the Abby Warner character in my life has said she will read and edit my book. But it goes beyond that really. I have teenagers at home and I need to set a better example. I want to dance at their wedding and see their children grow up, something that my own father did not do because of cigarettes.

The book itself is awaiting copyright clearance. It's been a while but without a big publishing company behind you, the process is not very speedy.

I intend to continue blogging for another year. By Christmas, I will know whether we have a book for you.

To those of you who have been with me since 2005, I thank you for your patience. It was just that my hellacious commute and my long struggle to get out of the inner city situation was just too exhausting for me to do much of anything else.

Deepest Sympathies

Andre Young Jr., 20, son of rap master Dr. Dre was found dead this morning. Dr. Dre appears in cameo in my second book as 40 year old Johnny Rocket's guide to new music.

A 13 year old boy named Sean Francis died on a football field last night near my ancestral home of The River.

We still don't know killed either young man.

My deepest condolences to the families at this time of grievous loss. All we can hope is that they are home with a compassionate God. And at a time like this, it is little solace.

Casting

There are some new blonde actresses and singers on the horizon who remind me a lot of the Fabulous Shelly character. The most obvious is Anna Faris; but also Blake Lively, Taylor Swift and Julianne Hough.

I think you get the picture.

Life

You may look at the Ivy League degree and the Who's Who citing, and you may read on this blog about my near miss with band, but I mean to tell you, I am really no different in anyway than any other average American guy. I love rock and roll, and I love baseball, apple pie and fast cars, and if I am driving something greener these days, its only because I love the planet and I want to save the environment, and frankly at the moment, I don't lots of have money to spend on $4 a gallon gasoline.

This year marked a major turning point for me because I escaped from the job in the ghetto and I back in my beloved Skylands winning awards again. This next year is going to be another year of hard work and sacrifice, as I get ready to send off one of the youngin's to college.

After that, I can't say. I think very clearly that I will be in the process of getting rid of negative things in my life and negative people, and if that means wholesale changes to some long standing situations, so be it.

I didn't crawl over a mountain of cut glass to recover from my devastating setback to wind up with all the other hopelessly cases who cry in their beer and bemoan their situation. God help me, if I really wanted to do that I could have very easily given up, and either ended my life or wound up in Greystone Park for the rest of my life.

I refuse to submit! I refuse to let these creatures of darkness who drag me back into the cesspool or these bitter, negative people who don't believe in me have my way.

My novel is about hope, love and endurance. It's about victory over uncertainty. It's about a rock star who overcomes his demons, with a little assist from God, and that is the gift I want to give to the world.

All I wanted to be was just an average guy who played rock and roll and lived a normal life. One way or another, I am going to have it.

If you're in a kick ass mood day, post a comment and tell the world about it!

Thought Police

The original subtitle of my book was "Edging Ever Closer to Personal Responsibility : And Never Quite Getting There."

And I think that is the crux of the problem with people like Britney, Miley and Lindsay. This is rock and roll! This is the land of Make Believe! This is Hollywood!

Who the hell are the people out there who really think that a pop star has to be a perfect role model for America's youth? Were the Beatles? Were The Rolling Stones? Were the guys in Led Zeppillen?

Come on now, of course they were not role models!

I think we've all become too serious and yes too irresponsible ourselves at the same time. We're looking for actors and actresses and sports figures and rock stars and politicians to be the role models for our kids, and we're not working hard enough to be role models for our own kids. And then we all leap on these obvious and by definition all too imperfect celebrities, and come crashing down on them with our crap, when they do what rock stars and Hollywood people have just about always done, and act our their irresponsibility.

I wrote a whole book on this topic.

You want to see a real role model, look at a teacher, a nurse, a cop or a doctor. In most states in this country, teachers, nurses and cops are just everyday working stiffs who make $50,000 a year like everybody else. And doctors really don't get paid enough for their education and role in society relatively speaking.

These are the pillars of society who are holding up the planet.

On again, off again

The whole idea of this blog is not to post prolifically on all sorts of subjects and get my name in the search engines so that thousands of people will come here and glance at my novel. Occassionally I have done that and the counter on the old blog hit over 10,000. We're really at something like 11,000 right now, but I am not real concerned with that.

The real purpose of this blog is to give readers interested in rock and roll a preview on my novel, and discuss with them before publication some basic issues that may be interesting. I have been hoping that an agent or publisher will show up and express an interest, and while several reporters, publicists and leading rock stars have come through leaving me messages, no agent or publisher who wants to publish this thing has appeared just yet.

But keep in mind that blogging is all I am doing in that regard right now, and I am just beginning to reach out to agents in a more conventional way.

Hopefully I can hold your interest until publication day is at hand!

Again

Of course I wish Ronnie Wood of the Stones all the best in rehab...

But you know what?

I am a rock and roll writer from the 70's and my book is about a rock star who conquers his demons and goes on to make a hit record. But it's mostly a book about music...

I am getting real tired of writing these posts that somebody died or someone is in rehab. I'd like to be able to talk about music for a change....

The Shore

While I was at the beach enjoying the ocean yesterday I thought about how totally ruined it would be to look out over the beautiful, pristine clean smelling ocean and see oil wells sitting out there. For what? So some obnoxious person can sit in a 4 ton SUV that gets 11 MPG and run my Corolla off the road?

Bush or McCain could write all the laws they want. The Republican Senators from the Shore districts like New Jersey would never, ever agree to messing with that golden revenue sources that's a beautiful beach....the states with all the ocean front would never allow oil companies to drill out there...

There were thousands of people at Bradley Beach yesterday, just one of many, many shore communities withing commuting distance of Manhattan or Philadelphia. As the cost of air fare rises with the cost of gas, a vacation at the Jersey Shore becomes more and more attractive to people who live within a 3 hour drive.

Madame Marie

Marie Castello, otherwise known as the Asbury Park Boadwalk gypsy, Madame Marie, has died at 93. It was Madame Marie who first foretold the stardom of Bruce Springsteen, New Jersey's rock and roll patron saint.

In 1984 she told me that the girl I was after was not the one, and that another woman, a life partner was close behind and I would have two children. Two years later, I met the Abby Warner figure, and twenty years later we have two kids.

Madame Marie was a kind hearted seer who was truly gifted in the psychic arts. She told me a lot of things about myself that no one could know about me walking in off the Boardwalk like that.

In Rock and Roll Love Story, Rocket and the boys summer in Asbury Park and he meets Madame Marie.