#Classic rock mag

[josephquinncurl]

Eddie Munson is on the cover of ClassicRockMag being part of the list of the best of 2022 🔥🎸

[paulic]

I love this genre of photos <3

[kaiserkeller]

Klaus Voormann writes biographies for himself and his fellow Manfred Mann bandmates for BRAVO, 22 April 1968.

"I, Klaus Voormann (26, bass guitar), am Manfred Mann's outsider. Firstly, I'm German in an English beat group. And secondly, I really am an outsider. Because I'm not a "duty man", I'm a "temporary man". This is again for two reasons.

Firstly: I don't want to stay with Manfred Mann forever. My interests continue. Despite all my modesty, I am a sought-after graphic artist. The other "men" know this - and are often angry about it. (Also about the fact that Klaus usually steals the prettiest girls from them).

Secondly: I am a "temporary husband". Yes, I am married. To a little English actress. This is how it happened: I really wanted to go to London, but it's hard to get a work permit for a foreigner in England. Unless you marry a British woman. I did it - and she did it for my sake. She's nice, a nice friend. We also live together. We eat together and talk. Unfortunately, that's all.

Love was lost, gone with the wind."

[hide-your-bugs-away]

WHEN I FIND MAGAZINES WITH THEM ON THE FRONT COVER... IT'S A GOOD DAY... 🥹🐾✨️

[ginsengkitten]

Nightfall: Chapter 1

⛧☾༺♰༻☽⛧

The morning light filtered through the canopy of tree tops, sprinkling rays through the trees. The sounds of leaves and bark crunching under the tread of their hiking boots piercing the peaceful silence of the woods.   A young family trekked optimistically on their summer break. Getting the kids accustomed to the parents preconceived love of hiking that they shared far before ever having kids. It was the kind of trip they had both imagined for their little family ever since their first was born. Billy was a natural outdoorsy kid, Maggie, however was full of animosity towards it and would rather be playing Barbies. Even toting one of her dolls with her wherever they went. Still she admired the foliage, collecting her own bouquet of wildflowers along the way. The innocence of a young child embracing the still of nature and what the earth has to offer just by being.

Maggie encouraged that curiosity by wandering from the trail after straggling behind Billy, fortunately, Billy noticed and alerted their dad. "Dad, Maggie's running off again." To which he rolled his eyes at his daughter's silly habit and proceeded to track her down. Maggie hadn't gotten far, and when the dad had found her, he found her to be mesmerized, standing still in her spot.

"Mags how many times do we have to tell you not to-" he began to scold until his eyes met what hers did, resulting in him also frozen in horror. Maggie had stumbled upon what can only described as a horror scene. A deer lie in a small grove, dead and completely mutilated. Its poor body, unnaturally contorted into a heap of twisted, mangled flesh. The fur, skinned from its body. Flies made feast upon the bloody remnants.

"Daddy, what happened?" Maggie asked in fear. Unfortunately, daddy didn't have an answer. His fatherly knowledge reduced to the same childlike fear as hers as he grabbed her and ran, only to turn around and be met with whatever beast had tore the deer apart. The beast releasing a harrowing growl.

-

"Sources are calling it a total family annihilation; Investigators continue to work with the California department of wildlife and game wardens to determine what animal may be causing these gruesome killings, but have not released any further details to the public.

Police have urged the public to stay within city limits and avoid camping and other outdoor recreation until the animal is apprehended and put down. Local government officials are in talks of implementing a city curfew if the animal is not caught soon."

You listened half heartedly to the news as you pinned another music poster on your wall of your new apartment. Mind you the apartment itself was not new, in-fact very decrepit. A cigarette perched in the side of your lips as you concentrated. A 'vintage' Rolling Stones poster. You stood back and admired the new addition, one more thing to make this dingy place feel like a home.

Your roommate Vickey walked in from the kitchen, handing you a coffee. "Stones huh? Always a classic, I can't complain." She grinned. Vickey was the only person you knew in the entire state of California. You had answered her ad in the paper about looking for a roommate. You had finally gotten a job as a music journalist assistant for a local magazine print. It was small but just enough to get by and get your foot in. Music was your passion, and music journalism at that.

Vickey was a goth punk with black choppy hair, a blunt attitude and big in the rock scene; especially in LA, so the arrangement was working out swimmingly. She took a genuine interest in your work and would supportingly read all your writings and offer insider knowledge about shows. The two of you quickly becoming close friends.

"Another animal attack happened yesterday." Vickey said sipping her coffee. "Pretty crazy shit." . You sort of glaze over that statement, still focused on your interior design pursuit. "An entire family, shredded."

"Yeah that's crazy.." you say tranced on your new poster.

The TV reporter continues:

"In related news, a local church group has began petitioning the state of California for a total recall of all metal and rock music from its shelves, claiming the genres are the primary contributor to LA's recent uptick in crime, violence, and potentially a connection to the recent killings, they say."

Your neck snaps to the tv at this. Vickey scoffs. "Here we go again with these fuckin prudes and their protests." She flops on the couch and starts rolling a joint. "Is this a common occurrence then?" You ask, sort of laughing. Vickey doesn't break from her intense focus on her joint rolling; "The day the churches stop blaming everything on the rock scene is the day the last whore stops working the sunset strip. Shits been happening for generations pretty much. You just gotta ignore it." She grumbles.

"Right. Huh.." you mumble to yourself.

"You know- this could be a good story for the print." You blurt out. Vickey looks up, ushering her joint to you, but you decline by wiggling your cigarette in your lips. "Nah. This shits been covered a million times dude. Those uptight nuns have nothing new to spew anyways." She replies. "No no not for the church, Vickey, but the scene." You countered her. Her expression changed now more intrigued. "Oh? How so?". You pace around gently in thought. "From the rock scenes perspective on it. We ask them what THEY think about it all. Like the musicians and shit." Vickey chuckles and coughs out a cloud of smoke, "I dunno I don't think any local band is gonna give you the time of day unless you got drugs or can give good hea- well, actually..." She gets lost in thought for a moment. "I think I might know a couple musicians that MIGHT be willing to say a few words on the matter. -" you jump slightly with a mute excitement. "BUT- I can't guarantee you'll get anything of real substance from them.." she tries to ease your hopes down on her half offer but your excitement is apparent. "Vickey seriously?! That would mean the world to me. Who is it? When can I see them?!" Vickey smiles at your innocent enthusiasm to go willingly into the guttural den of rock.

"It's a local band called Guns N Roses. They're playing down at the troubadour tomorrow night. I'll see if I can get you in."

[weneverlearn]

Aaron Lange, Peter Laughner, and the Terminal Town of Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland-based artist, Aaron Lange, tackles his first graphic novel, Ain't It Fun -- a deep dive into the oily depths of the Rust Belt's most influential music town, it's most mythological misfit, it's oft-forgotten artistic and political streaks, and beyond...

Aaron Lange and his book, 2023 (Photo by Jake Kelly)

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There’s a recurring line in Aaron Lange’s remarkable new graphic novel, Ain’t It Fun (Stone Church Press, 2023), that states, “Say the words out loud. The River isn’t real.” The river Lange was speaking of is the Cuyahoga, that infamously flammable mass of muck that dumps out into Lake Erie.

Peter Laughner (the ostensible topic of Lange’s book) was an amazing artist who probably could’ve ditched the banks of the Cuyahoga for more amenably artistic areas back in his early 1970s heyday. Aside from his frequent pilgrimages to the burgeoning NYC Lower East Side scene (where he nearly joined Television) and a quickly ditched attempt to live in California though, he mostly stuck around northeast Ohio.

While desperately trying to find his sound and a workable band, Laughner smelted a post-hippie, pre-punk amoebic folk rock, and formed the influential embryonic punk band, Rocket from the Tombs, which later morphed into Pere Ubu. All of which – lumped up with other rust-belted oddballs like electric eels, Mirrors, DEVO, the Numbers Band, Chi-Pig, Tin Huey, Rubber City Rebels, and more – essentially helped formed the “proto-punk” template.

Laughner was also a rock writer of some regional renown, and contributed numerous amphetamine-fueled articles to regional mags like The Scene and Creem -- mostly concerning where Rock'n'Roll was going, colored as he was by the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, David Bowie, and Roxy Music playing in Cleveland a bunch of times around his formative years.

Sadly, in June 1977, Laughner died of acute pancreatitis at age 24. Aside from the first two seminal Pere Ubu 7-inch singles, the rest of Laughner’s recorded output was just one very limited self-released EP and, posthumously, a great double-LP comp of demo and live tracks, Take the Guitar Player for a Ride (1993, Tim Kerr Records). A surprisingly large batch of unreleased lost demos, radio shows, and live tapes appeared on the beautiful and essential box set, Peter Laughner (Smog Veil Records, 2019), that brought Laughner’s legend just a few blocks outside of Fringeville, as it received universally great reviews….

The Dead Boys became the most well-known act of that mid-70s Cleveland scene, though that only happened once they high-tailed it to NYC. Aside from DEVO, Chrissie Hynde, and the Waitresses (all of whom did their own versions of high-tailing it), nearly every other act in that fertile Cle-Akron proto-punk vortex soon dissipated, eventually getting the cult treatment at best.

Cleveland is indeed right there with NYC and London as punk ground zero, but Americans tend to equate buyable products as proof of import, so shockingly, the Pagans and The Styrenes just aren’t the household name they should be.

Decades of tape-trading stories, sub-indie label limited releases, and fanzine debates kept the mythology of those acts barely breathing underneath the end of the milennium’s increasingly loud R'n'R death knell. And as that mythology slowly grew, the fans and even the musicians of the scene itself still wonder what it all meant.     

Which, as you dig deeper into Ain’t It Fun, becomes the theme not just about the legendary rocker ghost of Peter Laughner, but of Cleveland itself. Ala Greil Marcus’ classic “hidden history” tome, Lipstick Traces, Lange interweaves Laughner’s self-immolating attempts at Beatnik-art-punk transcendence with a very detailed history of Cleveland, with its insane anti-legends and foot-shooting civic development.

Like much of the dank, rusted, and mysterious edges of the one-time “Sixth City,” the Cuyahoga has been cleaned up since, though I still wouldn’t suggest slurping up a swallow if you’re hanging on the banks of the Flats. I grew up in Cleveland and visit as often as I can because it’s an awesome place, no matter what they tell you. Or maybe, because of what they tell you.

If you are keen to swim down through the muck and mire of Cleveland’s charms, you don’t just get used to it, you like it. As for the “Cleveland” that the City Fathers have always tried so vainly to hype, us hopelessly romantic proto-punk fanatics say to those who would erase Cleveland’s fucked-up past and replace it with that weird fake greenspace underneath the Terminal Tower: “The City isn’t real.”

-------------------------------------

Give us a quick bio.

Born in Cleveland, 1981. We moved to the west side suburbs when I was six. My parents didn’t listen to much music, and I don’t have older siblings. So I didn’t really listen to music at all until I was in high school, and I didn’t listen to any of the grunge or ‘90s stuff that was popular. I got real into the Beatles when I was in ninth grade, and at some point I got the Velvet Underground’s first album from the library because I saw Andy Warhol’s name on the cover. I didn’t know anything about them, so that was a real shock. I probably first heard Iggy Pop via the Trainspotting soundtrack, and pretty soon after I started getting into punk and generally more obscure stuff. Now I listen to more electronic stuff, ambient stuff. I also like most anything that falls under the broad “post-punk” umbrella. I really hate “rama-lama ding-dong” rock and roll.

What came first – music or drawing interest?

Drawing. I was always drawing… I’ve been a semi-regular contributor to Mineshaft for many years, which is a small zine/journal that features a lot of underground comix related stuff, but also has a beatnik vibe and includes poetry and writing. I’ve done the odd thing here and there for other zines, but I don’t really fit in anywhere.

Don’t really fit it – I feel that phrase describes a lot of the best / more influential Ohio musicians / bands. Did you feel that kind of feeling about Peter as you researched and wrote the book?

Peter was well liked, and he knew a vast array of people. If anything, he fit in in too many situations. He was spread thin.

When you lived in Philly, did you get a sense of any kind of similar proto-punk scene / era in that town? I sometimes, perhaps jingoistically, think this particular kind of music is almost exclusively confined to the Rust Belt.

I lived in Philly for nearly 11 years. As far as the old scene there, they had Pure Hell. But back then, anybody who really wanted to do something like that would just move to NYC.

So, is there a moment in time that started you on a path towards wanting to dig into Cleveland’s proto-punk past like this?

It was just something I had a vague interest in, going back to when I first heard Pere Ubu. And then later learning about the electric eels, and starting to get a feeling that Cleveland had a lot more to offer than just the Dead Boys. The Rocket from the Tombs reunion got things going, and that’s when I first started to hear Laughner’s name. A few years later, a friend sent me a burned CD of the Take the Guitar Player for a Ride collection, and I started to get more interested in Peter specifically.

Despite any first wave punk fan’s excitement about a Laughner bio, this book is moreso a history of Cleveland, and trying to connect those odd underground, counterculture, or mythological connections that the Chamber of Commerce tends to ignor as the town’s import. Was there a moment where you realized this book needed to go a little wider than only telling the tales of Laughner and the bands of that era? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)

Very early on I realized that none of this would make sense or have any true meaning without the appropriate context. The activities of the early Cle punk scene need to be viewed in relation to what was going on in the city. I think this is just as true with NYC or London – these were very specific contexts, all tangled up in politics, crime, rent, television, and also the specifics of the more hippie-ish local countercultures that preceded each region. You’ve got Bowie and Warhol and all that, but in Cleveland you’ve also got Ghoulardi and d.a. levy. Mix that up with deindustrialization and a picture starts to form.

So when did you decide on doing this book? You’ve mentioned this was your first attempt at doing a full graphic novel – and boy, you went epic on it!

I did a short version of Peter’s story back when I was living in Philadelphia. But upon completing that version – which I now think of as a sketch – it became clear that there was a lot more to say and to investigate. I spent about a year just thinking about it, forming contacts with some people, and tracking down various reference materials like records, zines, books, etc. Then my wife got a new job at Cleveland State University, so we left Philly. Once I landed back in Cleveland I started working on the book in earnest.

Page from Ain't It Fun -- all book images courtesy of the author.

By any chance was Greil Marcus’ book, Lipstick Traces (1989), an inspiration, as far as the “hidden history” factor, the trying to connect seemingly unconnected and lost historical footnotes into a path towards the culture’s future?

Yes. I read Lipstick Traces when I was around 19 or 20, and I’d never seen anything like it before. It really blew my mind, all the stuff about the Situationists and Dadaists and all that. Later on, I read Nick Tosches’ Dean Martin biography, Dino, and that was another mind blower. Another major influence is Iain Sinclair.

Ah Dino, another Ohio native. So, Laughner’s one-time partner, Charlotte Pressler’s book is mentioned, and I’ve seen it referenced and talked about for years – any inside word on if/when she might have that published?

Charlotte never wrote a book, though she did co-edit a book that collected the work of local poets. As far as her own writing, she’s done all manner of essays and poetry, and probably some academic writing that I’m not familiar with. As far as her completing “Those Were Different Times”— which was intended as a total of three essays— I’ve got some thoughts on that, but it’s not really my place to comment on it.

Pressler sounds like a very serious person in your book, as you say, she was kind of older than her years. But how was she to talk to?

Charlotte is serious, but she’s not dour. She’s got a sense of humor and she’s very curious about the world, always looking to learn new things. She’s an intellectual, and has a wide array of interests. We get along, we’re friends.

The fact that the town’s namesake, Moses Cleveland, left soon after his “discovery” and never came back – that’s like a template for how people envision a town like Cleveland: nice place to grow up, but you want to get out as soon as you’re legal. Even the musicians of the area might’ve agreed with that sentiment, even if many never left.  Do you think that has changed?

I’m glad I left Cleveland, but I’m also glad I came back. First off, my family is here. Second, the cost of living is still reasonable. I don’t know how people live in New York. I never have any money. I’d make more money if I had a full-time job at McDonald’s. That’s not a joke, or me being self-deprecating. How do artists live in New York? How do they afford rent and 20 dollar packs of cigarettes? I’m just totally confused by the basic mechanics of this. So yeah, I’m in Cleveland. It’s not great, but what are my options? I can’t just go to Paris and fuck around like a bohemian. I would if I could.

In Ain't It Fun, you reveal that one of the seminal Cleveland scene dives, Pirate's Cove, was once a Rockerfeller warehouse  – these kind of enlightening, almost comically perfect metaphors pop up every few pages. Not unlike the mythology that can sometimes arise in musician fandom, I wonder if these are metaphors we can mine, or just an obvious facts that the town drifted down from a center of industry to relative poverty.

“Metaphor” might be at too much of a remove. These facts, these landmarks — they create a complex of semiotics, a map, a framework. The city talks through its symbols and its landscape. If you submit to it and listen, it will tell you secrets. There is nothing metaphorical about this.

Is it a sign of privilege to look on destitution as inspiration? I’m guessing the sick drunks at Pirate’s Cove in 1975 weren’t thinking they were living in a rusty Paris of the ‘30s. Though I will say a thing I really loved about your book was that, for all its yearning and historical weaving, you still stick to facts and don’t seem to over-mythologize or put any gauze on the smog, like “Isn’t that so cool, man.” You capture the quiet and damp desperation of that era and Laughner’s milieu.

Poverty, decline, decay, entropy – these things are real. By aestheticizing them we are able to gain some control over them. And once you have control, you have the power to change things. This is not “slumming.” “Privilege” has nothing to do with it.

Page from Ain't It Fun

Do you know why the Terminal Tower (once the second tallest building in the world when it opened in 1928) was named that? It seems somewhat fatalistic, given the usual futurist positivism of the deco design era.

Terminal as in train terminal. It really pisses me off that there was once a time where you could go there and catch a train to Chicago or New York. It’s infuriating how this country dismantled its rail systems. And the Terminal Tower isn’t deco, but I think it is often confused with that style just by virtue of not being a gigantic rectangle. In that sense it does have more in common with a deco structure like the Chrysler building. Honestly, if you are looking for deco you might find more notable examples in Akron than you would Cleveland.

I notice a kind of – and bear with my lesser abilities to describe illustrative art – swirly style in your work that kind of aligns with art deco curves, maybe some Gustav Klimt…? In general, who were some illustrative inspirations for you early on?

That “swirly” style you describe is art nouveau. Deco came after that, and is more angular and clean. Additionally, a lot of underground comix guys were also poster artists, and there was often a nouveau influence in that psychedelic work – so there’s a bit of a thread there. As far as Klimt, I came to him kinda late, but I love him now.

The music of many northeast Ohio bands of that era has been generally tagged as “industrial” (the pre-dance industrial style, of course), cranky like the machinery of the sputtering factories in the Flats, etc… My guess is maybe the musicians were already finding used R'n'R instruments in thrift stores by that time, which would add a kind of layer of revision, turning old things into new sounds. Did you hear about of any of that? Or were there enough music stores around town? I know DEVO was already taking used instruments and refitting them; or electric eels using sheet metal and such to bang on…

I’m not a musician, so I don’t know anything about gear or stuff like that. I do know that Allen Ravenstine made field recordings in the Flats, and utilized them via his synthesizer. Frankly, I wish more of the Northeast Ohio bands had taken cues from Ubu and early Devo, because an “industrial” subculture definitely could have formed, like it did in England and San Francisco. But that never really happened here.

That kind of music was pretty popular on college radio and in a few clubs in Cleveland, though not many original bands with that sound arrived, aside from Nine Inch Nails who quickly took his act elsewhere… So in the book you mention local newsman, Dick Fealger. My memories of him are as a curmudgeon whose shtick was getting a little old by the time I was seeing him on the news, or his later opinion columns. Kinda your classic “Hey you kids, get off my lawn” style. You rightly paint him as a somewhat prescient reporter of the odd in his earlier days, though. I once had to go to a friend’s mother’s funeral, and in the next room in the funeral home was Dick Feagler’s funeral. I always regret not sneaking over and taking a peak into it to see who was there.

I like Feagler in the same way that I liked Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes. These were people that my grandparents liked. So I suppose my appreciation for Feagler is half nostalgia, half irony. I like cranks, grumps, letter-writers, street prophets. I like black coffee, donuts, diners, and blue plate specials – that’s Feagler’s world, the old newspaper world. Get up at 6 am and put your pants on, that kinda thing.

Yeah, I still found Feagler kinda funny, but like Jane Scott, while respect was always there, by the later ‘80s/’90s, both were set into almost caricatures  who were kind of resting on their laurels. 

Yeah, I remember seeing Jane at some random Grog Shop show back in the ‘90s, and I was kinda impressed. But no, she was never really cool. Jane was pure Cleveland, her career couldn't have happened anywhere else.

I remember seeing her sit right next to a huge house amp at the old Variety Theater for the entire duration of a Dead Kennedys show, taking notes for her review. Pretty impressive given her age at that point.

You also make a point of carving out an important space for The Damnation of Adam Blessing, a band that seems to get forgotten when discussing Cleveland’s pre-punk band gaggle. I find that interesting because in a way, they are the template for the way many Ohio bands don’t fit into any exact genre, and so often people don’t “get” them, or they’re forgotten later.

Damnation worked as a good local example for that whole psychedelic thing. They were very ‘60s. While the James Gang on the other hand, was more ‘70s— the cracks were starting to show with the ‘70s bands, they were harder and less utopian. Damnation feels more “Woodstock,” so they were useful to me in that regard.

I must add – for years I thought it was pronounced Laugh-ner, as in to laugh, ha ha, not knowing the Gaelic roots. Once I learned I was pronouncing it wrong, I still wanted to pronounce it like laughing, as it seemed to fit so darkly correct with how his life went, and Cleveland musicians’ love of bad puns and cheap comedians and such… Of course when I learned that it was an “ethnic” name, it made it that much more Cleveland.

Yeah, everybody says his name wrong. I used to too, and had to really force myself to start saying it as Lochner. But everybody says Pere Ubu wrong as well – it’s Pear Ubu.

I hate any desecration of any artwork, but I always loved the blowing up The Thinker statue story, as it seemed such a powerful metaphor of the strength of art, and Cleveland itself – the fact that The Thinker himself still sits there, right on top of the sliced-up and sweeping shards from the blast. It’s still there, right? And isn’t it true that there are like three more “official” Thinker statues in the world?

Yeah, I don’t condone what happened, but it is kinda cool. As a kid, the mutilated Thinker had a strong effect on me — I couldn’t have put it into words at the time, but I think it gave me a sense of the weight of history. It’s almost like a post-war artifact in Europe, something that is scarred. And yes, it’s still there outside the museum. And it’s a cast. I think there might be five official ones, but I’d have to look that up. If you are ever in Philadelphia, swing by the Rodin museum and check out The Gates of Hell.

I have only become a bigger fan of Laughner’s as the years pass. But there is something to the critique that perhaps he never really found his singular sound; that he was copping bits from Lou Reed and Dylan, and couldn’t keep a band together to save his life. And there was supposedly a feeling among some in the NYC scene that he was a bit of a carpetbagger.

Everybody has their influences, so Peter wasn’t in any way unique in that sense. I know he has a reputation for doing a lot of cover songs — which is true — but he also wrote a lot of originals, and there are some damn good ones which are still unreleased. “Under the Volcano” is just one such unheard song which I mention in my book, but there are others. As far as finding his own singular sound, he probably came closest to that with Friction. That group borrowed heavily from Television and Richard Hell, but also drew upon Richard Thompson and Fairport Convention. And when you think about it, those were really unlikely influences to juxtapose, and it created something original. Frustratingly though, Friction never achieved their full potential, as Peter was already losing it.

Yeah, Friction is kind of way up there with the “What if” bands… It’s interesting that for all his legend as a proto-punk figure, perhaps Laughner’s signature songs – Sylvia Plath” and “Baudelaire” – were gorgeous acoustic numbers. Though of course those early Pere Ubu songs were proto-punk and post-punk templates, somehow...

I honestly don’t know what happened with Ubu, as it is pretty distinct from Peter’s other work. Thomas isn’t really a musician, so we can only give him so much credit with how that sound developed. I honestly don’t know. There just must have been some sort of alchemy between the various players, and Thomas understood it and was able to encourage and guide it in the projects that followed over the years.

Page from Ain't It Fun

You also didn’t really detail Pere Ubu’s initial breakup – was there just not much to say?

Yeah, I think I mentioned it, but no, I didn’t really get into it. Pere Ubu is kind of a story unto themselves. But it might be worth mentioning here that Home and Garden was an interesting project that came out of that Ubu breakup. And Thomas also did some solo albums, but I’m not as familiar with those.

Yeah, I saw Home and Garden a few times way back, good stuff. You’ve mentioned to me that there were some people that didn’t want to talk to you for the book; and that people were very protective of Peter’s legacy and/or their friendship with him. To what do you attribute that?

It has everything to do with Peter’s early death. Some people are very protective of how Peter is remembered. And I think some people weren’t exposed to Peter’s dark side, so when they hear those descriptions of him it strikes them as untrue. I think Peter showed different sides of himself to different people.

I kind of felt as I was reading that you might say more about Harvey Pekar, as not only is he an interesting figure, but the most famous graphic novelist from Ohio, and I assume an inspiration of your’s.

Pekar’s great. Especially the magazine-size issues he was doing in the late ‘70s up through the ‘80s. It was important to me to include him in the book. But Pekar was a jazz guy, and that’s a whole other story, a whole other tangled web.

So, Balloonfest! Hilarious. I almost forgot about that. But I do remember Ted Stepien owning the short-lived Cleveland professional softball team; and for a promotion, they dropped softballs off the Terminal Tower, and if you caught one you won $1,000 or something. Do you recall that? It’s one of my favorite fucked-up Cleveland stories. Balls smashed car roofs, and cops immediately told people to run away.

Yeah, I’m aware of that baseball stunt. I generally try and stay away from anything even remotely related to professional sports teams — it gets talked about more than enough elsewhere. Oddly, I am interested in athletes who work alone, like Olympic skiers. I’m attracted to that solitary focus, where the athlete isn’t competing against other teams or players, but more competing with the limits of the human body, competing with what the physical world will allow and permit, that whole Herzog trip. I’m also interested in the Olympic Village, as this artificial space that mutates and moves across time and across continents.

As far as Balloonfest, I still watch that footage all the time. I use it as a meditation device. I’ll put it on along with Metal Machine Music and go into a trance.

A few years ago, as I am sure you are well aware, noted British punk historian Jon Savage put together a Soul Jazz Records comp of Cleveland proto-punk called Extermination Nights in the Sixth City. I grew up in Cleveland, lived in Columbus for awhile, and I never heard it called “the Sixth City.” Have you? If so, what does it refer to?

Nobody calls it that anymore. It’s an old nickname back from when Cleveland was literally the sixth largest city in the country.

I’d guess Ain’t It Fun was a tiring feat to accomplish. But do you have another book in the works? And if someone wanted to option Peter’s story for a movie, would you sign on? I personally dread rock biopics. They’re almost universally bad.

Yeah, I’ve got an idea for another book, but it’s too early to talk about that. As far as biopics, they are almost always bad, rock or otherwise. Rock documentaries are often pretty lousy too. A recent and major exception would be Todd Haynes’ Velvet Underground documentary, which is just goddamn brilliant. A film about Peter in that vein would be great— but there’s just no footage to work from. He didn’t have Warhol or Factory people following him around with a camera. So unless somebody like Jim Jarmusch comes calling, I won’t be signing off on movie rights any time soon.

Unless there is more you’d like to say, thanks, and good luck with the book and future ventures!

Stone Church Press has a lot of projects planned for 2024 and beyond, and I encourage anyone reading this to support small publishers. There is a lot of very exciting stuff going on, but you have to work a little to find it. Amazon, algorithms, big corporate publishers — they’re like this endless blanket of concrete that smothers and suffocates. But flowers have a way of popping up between the cracks.

Aaron Lange, 2023 (Photo by Jake Kelly)

[addicted-to-his-knife]

WHAT THE REPO! CHARACTERS WOULD LISTEN TO.

Do you find yourself bored, looking for new music? Do you happen to like Repo! The Genetic Opera and have you ever wondered what music the characters would listen to? Here are my headcanons! I'm submitting them directly to "addicted-to-his-knife" since my blog doesn't have much reach, I have like 30 followers and I also think this blog is great ♡ Songs are taken from my own gothic rock-metal/darkwave/goth playlist.

Shilo Wallace: I have a feeling Shilo would really like Siouxsie And The Banshees, I can see some of her favorite songs being Sick Child, Happy House, The Lonely One, Spellbound or Cities in Dust. I think she would also like The Birthday Massacre, particularly Looking Glass, In The Dark, Shallow Grave, The Sky Will Turn and All Of Nothing. Shilo would also find solace in the lyrics of So Alone by Anna Blue, Illusion by VNV Nation, Isolated by Chiasm, Coma Baby by Nicole Dollanganger and Walking On Air by Kerli. After all the isolation and grief she's gone through, Shilo needs music that makes her feel understood.

Nathan Wallace: Nathan, as we all know, is going through it. I can see him listening to some Joy Division songs with lyrics he would find comforting, such as Disorder, Shadowplay, Dead Souls, New Dawn Fades and I Remember Nothing. Nathan would also enjoy some Depeche Mode songs, for example Enjoy The Silence, Ghosts Again, It's Called A Heart and Strangelove. Cuts You Up by Peter Murphy is another song he really likes. He will listen to Bauhaus as well, classics like Dark Entries, She's In Parties or Bela Lugosi's Dead. Anesthesia by Type O Negative or Spectre by Christian Death are songs Nathan would like as well. Overall, he needs music that helps him deal with the pain within his soul, torn between being a protective father who wants to keep his daughter safe at all costs, even if that means lying to her, and a bloodthirsty, macabre and violent Repo Man.

Graverobber: Graverobber listens to Rob Zombie, and he actually tries to imitate his style. Songs like Dragula, Superbeast, Feel So Numb, The Life And Times Of A Teenage Rock God and Dead City Radio And The New Gods Of Supertown are some of the tunes he listens to while he's partying with the Zydrate addicts. Graves also enjoys Light Asylum, with songs like Shallow Tears, Dark Allies or Knights And Weekends. Sometimes he listens to Absence by Ludovico Technique, Dig Up Her Bones by Misfits or The Wanderer by The Cemetary Girlz. Graves finds that music helps him relax as well as petting any rats he comes across. Other songs he also vibes to are Rats by Ghost, Drunk On Shadows by HIM, Entombed by Deftones and Grave Robber At Large by Creature Feature.

Blind Mag: When she's not blessing others with her beautiful voice, Mag listens to Within Temptation, songs like Forgiven, Stand My Ground, Angels, Somewhere, Our Farewell and The Swan Song are her favorites. She sings along to Phobic Sea by Autumn's Grey Solace, Procession by SRSQ and Bless The Child by Nightwish. Mag also enjoys Lebanon Hanover, particularly Midnight Creature, Saddest Smile, Gallowdance, Hollow Sky and The Last Thing. Mag is a sad soul, a caged bird who can't escape so she just sings. Music helps her feel a little more free.

Amber Sweet: Amber is definitely into Diva Destruction, she loves their aesthetic and their sound, especially their songs Tempter, Snake, Valley Of Scars, Cruelty Games, Enslaved, Screaming Inside and The Broken Ones. Hole is another band she likes, with songs such as Reasons To Be Beautiful, Doll Parts, Violet or Nobody's Daughter. Amber also enjoys The Raveonettes, their songs Love In A Trashcan, Kill or I Wanna Be Adored (a cover) are just a few examples. She likes the song Gothic Girl by The 69 Eyes as well. Amber is very girly but also very gothic and that tends to reflect in her music taste.

Pavi Largo: Pavi listens to Male Tears, with some of his favorite songs being Hit Me, Model Citizen, Trauma Club, Good In The Dark and Embrace Death. He also likes Drab Majesty, with songs such as Kissing The Ground, Forget Tomorrow, Too Soon To Tell or 39 By Design. Pavi likes The Cramps too, especially The Way I Walk, Human Fly and Goo Goo Muck. I also feel like Pavi would vibe to Barbie Girl by Aqua, his bisexual ass loves both Kens and Barbies. He also likes Lullaby by The Cure, Beast Of Blood by Malice Mizer and Dressed For Death by Fear Cult. And if it's possible in the Repo! universe he would definitely listen to Skinny Puppy as well lol.

Luigi Largo: Luigi has severe anger issues and I think his music taste would reflect that. Luigi listens to Korn, songs like Falling Away From Me, Coming Undone, Freak On A Leash or Make Me Bad. Luigi likes She Wants Revenge as well, especially their songs Tear You Apart, Written In Blood, Take The World and Red Flags And Long Nights. And he probably likes some Shayfer James songs too, like Villainous Thing, For The Departed and Where We Belong. He would also enjoy In The Dark You Die by Dark, Watch You Bleed by Haunt Me, and Samael by Ankst.

Rotti Largo: Rotti has lived a very privileged life, but he's dying and he thinks none of his kids are worthy heirs so I can see him turning to music for comfort. A song I think he would like is (Don't Fear) The Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult, since it would help him feel less afraid of death. As CEO of GeneCo, he probably has contacts and associates in other countries, since GeneCo would probably exist on a global scale, so I can see Rotti enjoying music in other languages as well. She Past Away would be another band he'd listen to, with songs like Ruh, Monoton, Kasvetli Kutlama or Ritüel, as well as liking Molchat Doma, for example their songs Kletka or Sudno. He would also like Crow Baby by The March Violets and Dead, Cold, Autumn by This Cold Night.

Thank you all for reading, feel free to make similar posts if you'd like, add more songs in the comments, or make playlists, if you enjoyed it maybe I'll submit some more in the future! Have a great night/day wherever you are ♡ Stay kind and spooky! The best season of the year is around the corner.

[drleevezan]

And now, having finished All Of Classic Who (with the exception of Dimensions in Time and the TV Movie, which are next on the list), some random lists, most of which are of little interest to anyone but myself:

Favorite Doctors: Hartnell, Troughton, Davison, McCoy.

Favorite companions: Susan, Ian, Barbara, Vicki, Steven, Jamie, Zoe, Jo, Leela, Romana, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough, Ace.

Top five serials of each Doctor: (roughly, because it's difficult to choose)

An Unearthly Child, The Edge of Destruction, The Web Planet, The Gunfighters, The Time Meddler

The Faceless Ones, The Enemy of the World, The Mind Robber, The Web of Fear, The War Games

Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Ambassadors of Death, Inferno, The Three Doctors, The Curse of Peladon

The Brain of Morbius, The Horror of Fang Rock, The Ribos Operation, Warrior's Gate, The Keeper of Traken

Snakedance, Terminus, Enlightenment, Frontios, The Caves of Androzani

The Mark of the Rani, Revelation of the Daleks, The Mysterious Planet, Mindwarp, The Ultimate Foe

Delta and the Bannermen, Remembrance of the Daleks, Battlefield, Ghost Light, Curse of Fenric

Least favorite stories: Destiny of the Daleks, Four to Doomsday, The Sea Devils, The Ark in Space, The Dominators, The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Two Doctors, Warriors of the Deep, The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Seasons with the highest overall story quality: Season 7, Season 13, Season 18, Season 20, Seasons 25 & 26

Best regeneration story: The War Games

Best post-regeneration story: Power of the Daleks

Best companion departures: Ian, Barbara, Jamie, Zoe, Jo, Sarah Jane, Romana, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough

Random one-off characters whom I particularly liked: The Commandant (The Faceless Ones), Anne Travers (The Web of Fear), The Karkus (The Mind Robber), Isobel (The Invasion), Milo Clancey (The Space Pirates), Jennifer and Carstairs (The War Games), Hal the Archer (The Time Warrior), everyone in The Ribos Operation (The Ribos Operation), Professor Emilia Rumford (The Stones of Blood), the DJ (Revelation of the Daleks), Goronwy (Delta and the Bannermen), Lady Peinforte (Silver Nemesis), Mags (The Greatest Show in the Galaxy), Bambera, Ancelyn, and Shou Yuing (Battlefield)

List of particularly effective moments/images that come to mind:

The extended disorientating first dematerilisation of the TARDIS in An Unearthly Child

The white void in The Mind Robber.

The end of the doomed universe in Inferno.

The 'Binro was right' scene, and Graff Vynda-K unraveling after he accidentally kills his second-in-command and imagining that he's leading a military charge as he runs away and explodes in The Ribos Operation.

The Tharils' world in Warrior's Gate.

The statue garden in The Keeper of Traken, the Master's poisonous influence at the heart of the otherwise-beautiful world, and the story's happy ending being subverted as he re-emerges at the end.

The Doctor and the Master rushing to stop the accidentally-unleashed entropy wave in the latter part of Logopolis as it destroys half the universe.

The first episode of Terminus as it builds in tension from the skull materialising behind Nyssa at the beginning to the final revelation of their location at the end.

All of the setting and set design in Enlightenment.

The dialogue-free scene of Omega returning to the universe in Arc of Infinity and stumbling dazedly throughout Amsterdam and watching a puppet show before he begins to disintegrate.

The ending of Mindwarp as the structure of the story is sent off the rails by the Time Lords pulling the Doctor out of time before the climax and sending Yrcanos to assassinate Peri within their visually-warped time-bubble.

The ending of Ace's arc in Curse of Fenric as she dives into the sea and emerges having confronted her lingering fears from her old life, as well as her earlier fight with the Doctor and the idea of her confronting her mixed feelings about her mother through meeting and loving her as a baby.

The Doctor confronting and rejecting the survival-of-the-fittest worldview in Survival, and the show's final scene as Ace declares the TARDIS her home and the Doctor makes his speech.

Random lines that are eternally stuck in my head for some reason:

"People keep giving me guns, and do I wish they wouldn't!" (The Gunfighters)

"Hey, who's that? He looks smashing!" (The Macra Terror)

"Plastic cups!" (The Faceless Ones)

"We all follow his adventures in the strip sections of the hourly telepress." (The Mind Robber)

"I'm not one of your stuffy Norman nobles. I like a bit of rough fun!" (The Time Warrior)

"Praise the company!"; "The money to be paid from your private purse." "Argh!" "You spoke?" "Merely a cry of gladness at being so honoured." (The Sun Makers)

"Tell Dexeter we've come Full Circle™" (Full Circle)

"I've never seen such a State of Decay™" (State of Decay)

"There's only one place in the universe a Terileptil can acquire such scarring. The tinclavic mines on Raaga." (The Visitation)

"This is Terminus, where all the lazars come to die. We're on a leper ship! We're all going to die!" (Terminus)

"Deaths unaccountable."; "He said the earth was hungry." (Frontios)

"One of the best, my friend, was that time by the fountain." (The Twin Dilemma)

"It was not a true syllogism, Tandrell. It contained only the major and minor premise." (The Mysterious Planet)

"Hey, that's the property of Uncle Sam!" "Where is he, your Uncle Sam?" (Delta and the Bannermen)

[desultory-novice]

MariPav Omake Ficlet - “...With Lingering Side Effects”

@driftwoodmfb drew the result(s) of what would happen if you fused MariPav's Marx and Magolor together and for some reason my mind went right to the classic "matter transporter accident" trope. 

So, I wrote a little script bit exploring that very thing...!! (It’s mostly fluffy with a side of thoughtful!)

---

<On the ship>

Magolor: "Muahaha... Now THIS is interesting...!"

Marx: "What?"

Magolor: "Did you know, Marx, that the Lor actually has a matter transportation function...for people!"

Marx: "Like a teleportation spell?" "I don't see what the big deal is. I can use teleportation magic. Doesn’t require an Ancient artifact.”

Magolor: "How wonderful for you. Have you considered others for once in your life?" "Now, what's interesting about this is that it's not listed among any of the ship's main systems. It's buried deep within the code. I'm not sure I would have discovered it had I not had to make so many custom routines to speed up data processing to deal with the extreme workload I'm putting on the ship given its power supply. Isn't life is full of little miracles?!"

Marx: "Mags...? Did you stop to consider this function might be hidden because they never got all the bugs figured out?"

Magolor: "We'll find out. As I'm testing it right now!"

Marx: "...Heh! Good luck not getting turned inside out!"

Magolor: "Same to you. Heh heh heh."

Marx: "...Huh?"

Magolor: "I'm teleporting us both! Simultaneously. For safety's sake."

Marx: "S-Safet--?! Hey, hey, hey! Hold up, you mad scient---!"

---

<BWEEM to just outside the volcano>

???: "...iiiiiist.......?"

???: "Huh. We didn't end up trapped inside a rock like I feared we would. But of course, I trusted myself the entire time. No I didn't? I thought that was insane. How long have I been living on this crazy planet that I've taken to experimenting with poor, innocent, positively-fascinating-though-often-annoying creatures like myself to... Hmm?? Why am I...both of us...?!"

Margolox: "Wha--ooh, hey, this is...fascinating!"

Margolox: "Also, I have...legs again. Except I've always had legs. Not...always...? Mostly, then. Mostly...?? Well, hmm, I'll just have to agree to disagree on this with myself, won't I? No, it's the hands are new. Are they really? Completely new? In this form? Yes, didn’t I explain that to myself? Interesting. Then I'd love to know what's different about them. Though I already know, don't I...? I know...so much... Two lifetimes worth..."

Margolox: "There are so many memories now. Conflicting ones. And ones that feel...frighteningly similar. And memories I don't want to touch. Are those MY memories that I'm afraid to revisit...or do I want to avoid them because they are MINE and I'm the one looking at them, not myself? Is it because I'm me and not me that I'm afraid to let myself get any closer to me? But...if I'd know that I was so much like me, maybe...I wouldn't have to be afraid to let myself in a little..."

---

<BWEEM to back inside the ship>

Marx: "...GAH!!!!'

Magolor: "...Ah..."

Marx: "What the hell, Mags?!" "...Huh? We're ourselves again?!"

Magolor: "...Yes. What, did you think I HADN'T planned for the possibility of this orphaned routine accidentally scrambling our data together and fusing us into an amalgamate being? (We have entertainment programs on Halcandra. I know my sci-fi tropes!)" "I set several failsafes and some very generous rollback code to restore us to our original physiological patterns after a set period of time if any of the expected anomalies occurred."

Marx: "Maybe you’re a genius after all? Doesn't make you any less of a mad scientist though!"

Magolor: "You like the fact that I play fast and loose with my morals."

Marx: "Who said I do?"

Magolor: "...Your mind."

Marx: "...!!!"

Magolor: "Though I need to correct you on your assumptions. It's not purely thrill-seeking on my part. My choices are born from necessity--"

Marx: "I know. I...saw...the the stuff you had to go through..."

Magolor: "...Mm......"

Marx: "It messes with your head to have other people's thoughts in there, I know..."

Magolor: "Yes... And yet...as galling as the invasion of privacy was..."

Both: " "..." "

Both: ((..I found it strangely comforting...))

Magolor: "W-well...I say we break on repairs for the day!" "The one thing I hadn't planned for was the, err, let's call it a mental toll. I may need some time...to sort through things a little."

Marx: "Same."

Magolor: "...Marx?"

Marx: "Yeah, Mags...?"

Magolor: "..." "Nothing."

<They head off in opposite directions>

Both: (( ...It was maybe the first time I didn't feel so alone...))

Both: (( ...now that feeling's gone...and all that's left is emptiness...))

<Later>

Marx: (My legs...hurt. My back too. Like I could never get comfortable. It hurt the whole time we were fused together. Magolor can’t be in that much pain constantly...can he...?)

Magolor: (Marx’s mind... It was so crowded with-...I don’t even know WHAT that was... But I don’t understand how he can concentrate on anything when his brain is always screaming...)

[bluebyrd-bookreviews]

I feel like a lot of complaints about Return to Oz that it is too weird and too creepy just lack a general understanding of the true source material and only know Oz from the Judy Garland film

The original books were creepy and weird, to put it simply

Like, Tik Tok's backstory is so fucking watered down in the movie. In the book, he was bought by an abusive king who literally abused his servants until they died bc TikTok could never be killed bc he was never alive to begin with

"It is a long sto-ry," replied the copper man; "but I will tell it to you brief-ly. I was pur-chased from Smith & Tin-ker, my man-u-fac-tur-ers, by a cru-el King of Ev, named Ev-ol-do, who used to beat all his serv-ants un-til they died. How-ev-er, he was not a-ble to kill me, be-cause I was not a-live, and one must first live in or-der to die. So that all his beat-ing did me no harm, and mere-ly kept my cop-per bod-y well pol-ished. "This cru-el king had a love-ly wife and ten beau-ti-ful chil-dren--five boys and five girls--but in a fit of an-ger he sold them all to the Nome King, who by means of his mag-ic arts changed them all in-to oth-er forms and put them in his un-der-ground pal-ace to or-na-ment the rooms. "Af-ter-ward the King of Ev re-gret-ted his wick-ed ac-tion, and tried to get his wife and chil-dren a-way from the Nome King, but with-out a-vail. So, in de-spair, he locked me up in this rock, threw the key in-to the o-cean, and then jumped in af-ter it and was drowned."

-Ozma of Oz by L Frank Baum chapter 4

The second book in the series is about a little boy who is abused by an evil witch (though not really a witch bc technically holding that title is illegal) and runs away because she is feeding him a potion to turn him into a marble statue

There is also the classic: the emerald city is not really emerald in the books, simply shiny, and all of the citizens and visitors to the Emerald City are made to wear emerald colored glasses to make it appear as if it is really made of emeralds. Like the wizard, it is all a facade

Like, the books aren't the darkest things ever, but if you are complaining about the darkness of the film I'm gonna need you to read the source material and then come back to me and tell me if you think it's too scary

[getoutofthisplace]

Dear Gus & Magnus,

Mom worked today, so the Choate Boys went down to the Clinton Presidential Library and walked around for a while before the sun came all the way up and scorched the Earth. We went to Buffalo Grill for the second Saturday in a row (at your request). After nap time, we played, then Magnus helped me remove the child-proof locks from the kitchen cabinets. I debated removing them all, but then I realized the ones I was concerned about weren't even locked, so I took them off, too. Just like I was glad to get the crib out of the house, I'm excited to get these locks out, too. I'm excited that Magnus is no longer a baby. His personality is really starting to come into being. He's fun-loving and likes to go and do. Also, his curly hair is becoming part of his physical identity. At lunch, a stranger said, "That hair is just...beautiful." In response, he said, "RAWR!" Classic Mags.

Dad.

Little Rock, Arkansas. 8.17.2024 - 5.29pm.

[hide-your-bugs-away]

CALL MY ROOM A ZOO BECAUSE THERE ARE A LOT OF ANIMALS IN HERE.

[damonalbarn]

The Ballad of Darren - Major Albums Reviews

METACRITIC

Louder than War 5/5 ★

Clash Music 9/10 ★

Rolling Stone UK 4/5 ★

Record Collector Magazine 4/5 ★

UNCUT 8/10 ★

NME 4/5 ★

DIY Magazine 4/5 ★

Classic Pop 4/5 ★

MOJO 4/5 ★

The Skinny 4/5 ★

Music Connection 8/10 ★

The List 4/5 ★

The Upcoming 5/5 ★

Unilad 5/5 ★

Riot Mag 10/10 ★

Gigwise 9/10 ★

Load and Quiet 7/10 ★

Gigslutz 5/5 ★

The Rock Revival 5/5 ★

Slant Magazine 4/5 ★

Narc Magazine  4/5 ★

The Quietus 8/10 ★

Concrete Islands

The Mancunion (track by track review)

Wall Street Journal 

Cult Following 

Arctic Reviews

Ultimate Classic Rock

Yahoo

[untilthenextencore]

Nights To Remember Ch 2.: Flashes & Flickers: Light & Shade~...

~

~

In the car, Robert saw a transformation occur in Dahlia. A fire lit in her eyes. Her body grew tight. Expectant. As his was too, albeit for a completely different reason.

As a familiar DJ howled over the radio, she called out. "Mag, mind changing the channel? I love Wolfman, but I'm in the mood for something else. Try KRLA or something."

"Mag" or Magnet obliged. He turned the dial as he turned the corner.

A voice crooned from over ten years ago.

"Those Oldies But Goodies remind me of you~..."

He knew who it was.

Knew what she wanted.

Magnet knew too, hence his turning the dial in just the right direction.

Art Laboe.

Dahlia proved them both right as she recognized the station instantly.

"Yesssss…" Dahlia hissed.

Magnet flicked an amused grin back at her through the rear view mirror.

Robert's eyes were drawn to her too. In full. Closely watching. He saw her toes curl. Her fingers tightening over her small clutch purse & book. Fingers tightening. Toes tightening. Body tightening. Anxious. Expectant. Excited.

Was this how girls were like in making their way to their concerts?

Perhaps.

He saw an aura grow around her. Bated breath & something swirling about her in the smoky haze in the car. Cracks in the veneer. Little glimmers of light peeking through from within.

She was coming alive.

Or about to.

Memories of her dancing & carrying on with her friends at the Chuco flash through his head. Drinks & dancing.

Robert dancing with dusky maidens under the stars. Making him feel home sweet home. Little Mexican Maureen facsimiles. More Indian beauties. More weaknesses. More indiscretions. More things to apologize to the actual, original, one & only true Maureen to.

Robert danced with her too. Dahlia. Bopping around to the rock'n'roll songs they grew up & cut their teeth on. Robert even managed to snag a few slow dances with her. Under the same stars & streetlights.

Until Jimmy appeared out of the ether seemingly. Sidling up to them & spiriting his girlfriend and then fiancee away & into his own arms. Slowdancing with her himself under the stars & streetlights. The flashes of lights both from that & the headlights & taillights of the classic cars that surrounded them all bathed them in a flickering warm glow that matched the warm glow that seemed to emanate from the couple themselves.

Just as Jimmy would want & the only way he'd have it.

Light and shade.

That memory sent him rocketing back to the present. The present that had him beside Dahlia in the backseat as she went from allowing her body to flit from two extremes in her response to the best Art Laboe could play; melting at ballads to winding back up at the rocking tracks as they played. All the while, that same sharp, inscrutable look remained in her eyes. Deep brown depths alight with more than the passing flicker of a streetlight. All as they were similarly surrounded by a tight phalanx of headlights & taillights.

That last bit quirked the corners of his mouth & would've made him laugh had he not been otherwise occupied.

No, instead as Dahlia's head craned back & let yet another sweet ballad from yesteryear wash over her, Robert's head craned back, peering myopically into the following headlights & trying to make out any familiar faces amongst the blinding beams.

No luck.

He thought he saw a familiar town car. Perhaps even a familiar curly black head. But would he ride in the front seat? Was he just seeing things? He didn't know.

All he knew was that as ever, a half an hour or so alone with the lovely young Miss Dahlia was never enough for him. But now he found it stood true for a whole different reason entirely.

As Magnet gunned the engine along with the twanging guitar of Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" Robert's stomach clenched to match his fist. Twanging guitar. Mentions of someone who could "play guitar like ringing a bell". He knew someone like that. Someone who was hot on their tail. Whose smoky dragon breath curled hot on the back of his neck, tickling the golden curls there.

Magnet's driving chugged the car along like the train alluded to in the lyrics. Robert was the conductor. Or at least he had been. The chain of cigarettes he took down produced the smoke.

Dahlia's fingers on her right hand stayed "strumming with the rhythm that the drivers made". Her left hand shifted over Robert's. Clearly, she sensed his nerves. Even if she didn't understand them or why he was in their clutches. He just was. She wanted to help. That was that. Even if he didn't want to talk. Wasn't ready to talk. She was there for him as a friend. That was all that mattered.

The contact elicited two reactions in him at once. It both soothed his soul. And inflamed him. In a way she seemingly had no idea. To paraphrase Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, the very song that was playing then as she did that; "If she didn't know by now, she'd never, ever know."

She didn't know.

But he did.

Magnet did.

Peter did.

Virtually everyone else did.

Especially a special someone.

One whose stately diamond ring glinted in the flickering light as it circled her left hand's delicate third finger. One whose slim delicate fingers paired with his massive fucking hands in strumming with the rhythm that the drivers in his head made, playing his guitar like ringing a bell, like a fuckin' menace.

The PreRaphaelitic faced, star-suited dragon lord himself.

Paganini with a pick.

James Patrick Page.

The one Robert remained keenly aware of as he verily sensed the town car trailing them mimicking each twist & turn his "getaway man" Magnet made behind the wheel. Johnny B. Goode himself. Hot on the trail of a "country boy" who - despite his best impulses - always seemed to telegraph his wants & needs to be a little bad. Impish. Impulsive. Impetuous.

Peck's bad boy.

Plant's bad boy. Anthony Plant's bad boy. With Page's good girl. His best girl. His wife. His fuckin wife!

And though he never did anything really. Though never crossed the line. Never behaved untoward with Dahlia. Page knew.

Page knew.

He knew.

He knew Planty.

He knew Plant's tastes in women. Hell, he knew Planty's fuckin' wife! He knew Dahlia fit right in line with Planty's tastes. How sometimes the only thing saving some stupid journalists from telling Mrs. Page from Mrs. Plant was that Dahlia was just a few inches taller.

He knew Robert. He knew how he took to loneliness. He knew how it was on the road & how easy it was for Robert to go looking for company. How easy it was for his eyes to go astray.

And how easy he found it & how often it was that Robert's eyes found themselves straying to her. Straying on her. Her face, her eyes, her curves, her entire figure, her hair, her smile, her whole self, her entire being.

He saw. Even when Dahlia didn't.

He saw how he looked at her. How often he looked at her. The way he looked at her. He knew that look. He'd seen Robert give it to other women before. Women he intended to take to bed.

Jimmy had given girls that look before himself. He'd had similar results. But that was before Dahlia. Before he gave it to Dahlia. And after a slow seduction, months of letters & calls & a pen pal friendship that blossomed in between her on and off relationship with Jim Morrison, that he found himself the first to take Dahlia to bed. Not just any bed either. His bed. When she visited England in the spring of '67 & stayed in his then new house. Pangbourne.

Prize won.

But he found there was no moving on from that point. She was in his blood. One taste. And that's all it took. She was his. No matter what. Even if it took a while sealing the deal. No matter. He'd do whatever it took to ensure that. The deal was done.

Robert knew the whole story of course.

He also knew that it was Jimmy's knowing that look, and knowing those results, first hand no less, that only made it so Jimmy did his damndest to ensure that only he could get such a result when giving Dahlia that look. Not anyone else. And certainly NOT Robert.

And as Robert registered another pat of his hand by Dahlia, he smiled. Both from the tenderness shown. Classic Dahlia as ever. And for how succinctly Eric Burdon was then summing up the many things that had been whirling about his mind then, in yet another old song from years past.

"Well, don't you know that no-one alive…

Can always be an angel…

When things go wrong I seem to be bad…

I'm just a soul who's intentions are good…

Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood…"

The situation found itself more succinctly - if vaguely - summed up when Magnet slowed the car to a stop & parked, announcing. "We're here." Then "Mag" jerked the handle shortly, opening the door wide and supplanting the last strains of Eric Burdon & the Animals with a slow, slinky bluesy intro.

Dahlia instantly perked up, recognizing the sound & crooning. "Ohhh! I love that song. C'mon Robert, let's go!" And with a series of clicks, the unclicking of her belt, opening of her door by Magnet & the hurried clicks of her heels towards the music as it swelled, she was gone.

Robert was left to finish his last cig, brooding, contemplating, mulling over Big Jay McNeely voice as it drawled out the first line. The words teasing him in their seeming concise reading of him upon arrival.

"There is something on your mind~..."

~

As ever, this is forever under construction~...

Hope y'all enjoy~!...

[thesabrinatheteenagewitchblog]

Some big Sabrina horror news today, starting off with Madam Satan featuring in "The Cursed Library: Alpha" miniseries releasing between August to October! (Images and details from ArchieComics.com) Sabrina and Salem feature in sone of the covers!

Dark worlds converge in August when Archie Comics opens the doors to THE CURSED LIBRARY, an all-new premium-printed limited series that unites Archie’s three main horror heroines — and its various one-shot comics — in one explosive storyline by writers Magdalene Visaggio (ETERNITY GIRL) and Eliot Rahal (BLEED THEM DRY) with art by Craig Cermak (RED TEAM).

“The CURSED LIBRARY event that Mags and I have been asked to helm is unlike any other moment in Archie Comics history,” Rahal said. “It’s both a throughline and nexus point that weaves together everything in the Archie Horror universe that’s happened so far. Its goal is to provide shape to the world that has been created. THE CURSED LIBRARY is essentially saying: ‘All of this matters. There is a fabric.’”

Archie Horror readers have been treated to a series of standalone one-shot comics in recent years that can be enjoyed as chilling ghost stories and campfire tales, but eagle-eyed fans will have noticed hints of connection, which came to a head in last fall’s MADAM SATAN: HELL ON EARTH. That story ended with Madam Satan, the escaped Queen of Hell, captured by Jinx Holliday, a teenager interested in magic and rock ‘n’ roll who is rumored to be Satan’s daughter. Jinx is often aided by her loyal best friend Danni, who made global headlines last summer when she was revealed to be Archie’s first transgender character. While all three protagonists have charted their own course thus far, their worlds collide in THE CURSED LIBRARY when each will be tested as Danni descends into the depths of Hell to save her friend’s soul — and the world.

“This is an ambitious project led by two of the best writers we’ve had the pleasure of working with on our horror titles, and, honestly, two of the best writers in comics, period,” said Archie Comics Senior Director of Editorial Jamie L. Rotante. “I have the ultimate trust in them to craft a story that is layered, poignant, and still metal AF. This feels like the culmination of almost everything I’ve personally worked on as an editor, and I’m thrilled that I get to watch Eliot and Mags create a world (or rather, convergence of worlds) that I’m, frankly, in awe of. This is not just a love letter to our fans, but to the art of storytelling as a whole, complemented by the stunning artwork of Craig Cermak.”

Cermak has made a big impact on the Archie Horror line, having illustrated Jinx’s horror adventures and the initial appearances of The Cursed Library itself, a mysterious collection of books that seem to chronicle the events depicted in recent one-shot comics like CAMP PICKENS and BETTY: THE FINAL GIRL. “It’s been exciting to go on this journey with Jinx and see it develop into something much grander,” Cermak said. “Building on top of all the various horror tales featuring so many great Archie characters is providing such a gratifying opportunity as an artist, with so much great material from which to pull.”

Reiko Murakami

Rahal has written all of Madam Satan’s modern adventures, relating the anti-hero’s struggle against Satan and her efforts to chart her own destiny. Madam Satan is one of Archie Comics’ oldest characters, debuting in PEP COMICS #16 in 1941. She was reintroduced as Sabrina’s antagonist in the horror series CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA, which was adapted as a Netflix streaming series in 2018. Visaggio is the architect of Jinx’s modern resurgence, where she is an older and more macabre version of the classic Archie humor character known as Li’l Jinx, who first appeared in PEP COMICS #62 in 1947. Visaggio scripted Danni’s return alongside Jinx and her solo star turn in last year’s STRANGE SCIENCE one-shot. Danni first appeared in DILTON’S STRANGE SCIENCE in 1989 as an equally brilliant friend and foil to Dilton, Riverdale’s resident genius. The talents of, and more importantly, the bonds between all three women will be the focus of THE CURSED LIBRARY.

“I think what I love and am most proud of is that this connectivity is secondary to the story,” Rahal added. “THE CURSED LIBRARY can stand alone because, at its heart, this is the culmination of two stories: Madam Satan’s and Jinx’s. These two characters have had painful journeys of self-discovery and are finally meeting their climax –– but it’s all wrapped up in the Apocalypse. It’s both the end and a new beginning. And by the time we’ve closed the chapter on the Cursed Library, the Archie Horror line will be diving into a very new and exciting future.”

THE CURSED LIBRARY: ALPHA releases August 21 in comic shops nationwide, with colors by Matt Herms, lettering by Jack Morelli, and open-to-order variant covers by Robert Hack, Soo Lee, and Reiko Murakami. It will be available for pre-order on May 24. The first issue will be followed by OMEGA in September and the final chapter, UNBOUND, in October.

The Cursed Library: Alpha

This is it… this is the moment our horror one-shots have led to… THE CURSED LIBRARY! When we last left off in MADAM SATAN: HELL ON EARTH, Jinx has the former Queen of the Underworld trapped in the mysterious library, as her father-bestowed demon powers have intensified. To stop Jinx from becoming like her father, her best friend Danni Malloy must rescue and convince Madam Satan to guide her through Hell itself to find the one thing that can possibly save her friend’s soul––Jinx’s mom. Along the way, they’ll also discover a number of faces they’ve seen before, though only in the pages of the terrifying tomes within the cursed library. This three-issue limited series horror event tells a story about the bonds that tie us together and how the only thing that can save the world from evil is radical love. It’s Riverdale’s Return of the Jedi meets Dante’s Inferno. A three-part event that will close the door on the Cursed Library and usher in a whole new chapter of horror stories.

Script: Eliot Rahal, Magdalene Visaggio

Art: Craig Cermak

Colors: Matt Herms

Letters: Jack Morelli

Cover: Craig Cermak

Variant Covers: Robert Hack, Soo Lee, Reiko Murakami

On Sale Date: 8/21

32-page, full color comic

$4.99 U.S.