It Came From the Basement: "Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms"

The latest in a new series with which I'm trying to reinvigorate the DaveTronik 2000 blog. In these posts, I will write about an item or items currently stored in the unfinished side of my basement. Many of them have been stashed in boxes for decades, waiting for this moment.

This is a book that Super Sam gave me during my intership at my hometown weekly newspaper, the Farmington Valley Herald, during the summer of 1986.

"Who was Super Sam?" you ask. His full name was Louis H. Sampliner, and he had quite a journalism and fiction-writing history, some of which I vaguely recall him telling me about. Picture Wallace Shawn, but perhaps a little shorter and absolutely much less lively, although possibly with a similar slight lisp. And Super Sam was older, as he was in his early 70s when I worked with him, and Wallace Shawn is only 79 as I write this.

Like anybody working at a small-town newspaper, I wore many hats during my internship and my employment the following year, after I graduated. I reported on town meetings (planning and zoning), wrote features about local residents, helped the sports editor cover high school sports once in a while, took photos, copy-edited news and feature stories and columns, typeset articles and picked up lunch orders from local restaurants.

Sam was a mentor to me. He taught me that good news writing was tight, concise. He would point out my editing and writing errors and patiently wait while I fixed them. He was smart and confident and sometimes a little bit cocky when teaching me things. But he was also funny and self-effacing.

He worked as an assistant typesetter, alongside an amazing woman named Sally, and wrote columns once in a while. At age 73, he wasn't there full time, but he was a well-known and respected presence in the small office. He could be grumpy and short-tempered, but he was always loveable and just about always right.

I had to set up a free trial with Newspapers.com to access Sam's obituary from May 28, 1993. He was 80 when he died, and had spent his entire adult life working with words. He was the director of the University of Hartford news bureau for many years, according to the obit from the Hartford Courant. "Mr. Sampliner, better known as 'Sam' to most students and local media representatives, was a publicist since 1946, when he founded the news bureau of Hillyer College in the basement of a Hudson Street building," the appreciation indicates. "When the college joined the Hartt School of Music and the Hartford Art School to form the University of Hartford in 1956, he moved to the Bloomfield Avenue campus. He was director until 1978, but continued to work part-time until his death."

After graduating from a New Jersey high school in 1932, he worked for Atlantic City News; Standard Magazines, a New York-based publisher of pulp magazines such as Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories, per Wikipedia; and Popular Library, where he was a comic book editor, the obituary indicates. He never attended college.

Additionally, he published more than 50 science fiction and adventure stories. He is listed on Fancyclopedia as one of the hundreds of attendees of Chicon, the World Science Fiction Convention held in Chicago in 1940. Sam seems to have been somewhat on the periphery of the science fiction publishing world. I found a blog post about two Badger State writing groups, the Milwaukee Fictioneers and Allied Authors of Wisconsin, in which Sampliner is briefly mentioned. "In 1940, writer Louis Sampliner and Palmer swing through Milwaukee for Bloch, while making a pilgrimage to visit Derleth in Sauk City."

Let's break that down: Palmer refers to Raymond Palmer, an early member of Milwaukee Fictioneers best known as the editor of Amazing Stories and an author of books including the UFO-themed The Coming of the Saucers. Bloch is Robert Bloch, another sci-fi author who was first published at age 17, and was a member of the Fictioneers. Derleth is August Derleth, a native of Sauk City, Wisconsin, who was the first publisher of H.P. Lovecraft's books.

You'll notice that Super Sam is the only one of that bunch without his own Wikipedia page. Nevertheless, he seems to have worked alongside Palmer for quite some time. Addtionally, he published freelance articles in numerous publications, including the Farmington Valley Herald, the Hartford Courant, the West Hartford News, the New Britain Herald and New Haven-based The Elder.

At his death, he left two nieces, so I'm assuming he never had children.

As for the Farmington Valley Herald, I believe it was established in 1894. It went out of business in 2005. The publisher when I worked there was a wacky, energetic guy named Lou Ball, who was always the center of attention when he was in the office. When I knew him, he was in his 60s, and drove an orange Datsun 240-Z with the license plate "BALLS." He was known to dress head to toe in red-white-and-blue on July 4th, and show up in the office once in a while with an arrow through his head, a la Steve Martin. He was loud and funny and smart and most everybody loved him.

Below is a picture of me with Lou, taken at the going-away party the paper had for me when I left on my road trip in 1988.

Over the years, I have only used Soule's synonyms book infrequently. But I love coming across it once in a while, as it reminds me of my first "real" job all those years ago. And it has all the best words! Like "party-colored," a synonym for piebald and variegated.

The dictionary's namesake, Richard Soule, was born in Duxbury, Mass., in 1812, and died in St. Louis in 1877, according to Famous Americans. A descendant of a signer of the Mayflower Compact, he graduated from Harvard and worked as a civil engineer before turning toward literary pursuits. Other books he edited include Memorial of the Sprague Family, a poem, with genealogical and biographical notes; Manual of English Pronunciation and Spelling, with a Preliminary Exposition of English Orthoepy and Orthography with William A. Wheeler; and Pronouncing Hand-Book, with Loomis J. Campbell.

Giving me this book appears to fit one of Super Sam's life patterns. According to his obituary, "For at least 30 years, he wrote poems he read at special occasions and major university affairs to honor individuals."

I'm honored that he shared this book with me.

It Came From the Basement: Ramones Alarm Clock

The latest in a new series with which I'm trying to reinvigorate the DaveTronik 2000 blog. In these posts, I will write about an item or items currently stored in the unfinished side of my basement. Many of them have been stashed in boxes for decades, waiting for this moment.

This clock's alarm should just be Dee Dee yelling, "1,2,3,4!" on repeat until you slam it off.

Or better yet, stage-dive off your bed onto it and smash it after a single use.

I believe my in-laws gave me this clock, many years ago. My father-in-law, Rich, is a fellow Ramones fan. When I found that out early in my relationship with Beth, I was stunned and thrilled.

I have to admit that I've never used this clock. It sat in my attic for years, because that's where we used to keep all sorts of stuff that we didn't use or know what to do with. Then a few years ago all those things moved to the basement.

I first heard the Ramones sometime in 1982-83, when I discovered college radio and punk rock. During my college years, I saw the groundbreaking Queens-based quartet four times, at the Agora Ballroom in West Hartford, Connecticut, and perhaps at a club in New Haven. The shows were always a blast, as my friends and I slammed and skanked around the dance floor, pushing off people and doing our best to avoid getting pegged by stage divers.

I loved watching the band in "Rock 'n' Roll High School," the 1979 movie featuring PJ Soles, Vince Van Patten, Clint Howard, Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel. I only owned two of their records -- Rocket to Russia and It's Alive, the latter a live album -- but considered myself a pretty big fan during the 1980s into the '90s.

My college band, The Toastmen, included "Blitzkrieg Bop" in our set list for a number of shows. It was always a blast to play.

I want to wrap up this piece with a video that combines my musical taste from 40 years ago (!) with an artist from the Now Times that I'm into:

It Came From the Basement: The Never Bird's Wheelchair

The latest in a new series with which I'm trying to reinvigorate the DaveTronik 2000 blog. In these posts, I will write about an item or items currently stored in the unfinished side of my basement. Many of them have been stashed in boxes for decades, waiting for this moment.

This looks like something out of a late-19th century British orphanage, doesn't it? Made out of wicker and standing just shy of two feet high, this wheelchair -- or is it a carriage for a small child? -- was a prop that my son, Owen, used in one of his school plays a few years ago.

The Corwin-Russell School @ Broccoli Hall, located in Sudbury, was where Owen attended from 8th grade through a gap year. It was a great place for him. A big part of the school's identity and culture is theater. I should say, THEATER! Every year, the entire community at the small school -- students, teachers, office staff, parents, siblings -- gets together to "put on a show." They gather at the school and a local theater during January and early February to rehearse lines, make costumes, build and paint sets, rehearse choreography, bond with each other, rehearse and then rehearse some more. (To be clear, parents don't perform in the play, and only new teachers take a role on stage alongside the students.)

I wrote about Owen's first experience with the school's play back in February 2016.

In 2019, the students performed "Never Land: A Musical," an adaptation of J.M. Barrie's story, "Peter Pan." This was a change from the school's usual choice to perform well-known shows, ranging from "The Little Mermaid" to "Billy Elliot" to "Sister Act."

Written by school staffer Jake Egan O'Hara, the son of the school's founders, who has extensive experience in acting and costuming, the show was longer than the typical fare the students perform. Nevertheless, the show was well-acted as always, and the costumes and sets were as over-the-top brilliant as ever.

As for Owen, he played a character I -- and many other folks -- had never heard of: the Never Bird. The role was perfect for him, in that he didn't have to speak, and he was only on stage for a few minutes. His costume featured a riot of brightly colored feathers, striped leggings, topped by a bird-shaped hat full of plumage. For a kid who was already the tallest in school, this outfit made him stick out all the more.

He placed large eggs in the wheelchair/carriage, and then distributed them to characters on stage. His appearance on stage generated plenty of "Oh my gosh!" and "Amazing!" comments from the crowd.

As for the Never Bird, the character is mentioned only in passing in "Peter Pan," but features more prominently in "Peter and Wendy," according to this Neverpedia page. The character is female in J.M. Barrie's story, and "rescues Peter from drowning, when he is stranded on Marooner's Rock, unable to fly, as the tide is rising," per the Neverpedia page. "She lets him use her watertight nest as a lifeboat, enabling him to sail to the mainland."

When Owen graduated, in the early days of the Covid pandemic, the teachers and administrators from the school hit the road to hand the graduates their diplomas and other cool stuff. They gave Owen the Never Bird's wheelchair.

This season, the school performed "Matilda the Musical." You can check out a video montage here.

It Came From the Basement: My Favorite Stuffy?

This is the latest in a new series with which I'm trying to reinvigorate the DaveTronik 2000 blog. In these posts, I will write about an item or items currently stored in the unfinished side of my basement. Many of them have been stashed in boxes for decades, waiting for this moment.

Four posts into this new series, I feel the need to talk etymology. When I was a kid, my family used the word "cellar" to refer to the lowest level of our house -- where we stored toys, sports equipment, tools, old furniture, my rock collection (!) and my dad's boxes of stuff from his Army hitch in Europe (some items from which will show up in this series). The cellar was also where our oil burner dwelled, alongside spiders and other creepy crawlers.

Nowadays, I call that place in my own home the basement. I use the same word to name the subterranean room in my mother's house, where she has lived for the past 15 years or so. So what is the difference between a cellar and a basement? "While both are rooms that are located below or partially below the ground level, they serve different purposes," say the experts at Complete Basement Systems. "By definition, a basement is the floor of a residence or building entirely or partly located below ground level. A cellar, on the other hand, is a room below the ground level used as a storage area."

It seems to me that a basement is where normal people store their junk, maybe set up a pool or ping pong table and a laundry room, while a cellar is where serial killers stash bodies, marvel at their antique medical equipment and set up industrial-strength drains under their work sinks that can handle a LOT of blood.

OK, now that we've got our terminology straight, let's talk about this:

When I was a young lad, I loved this kitty cat.

I think.

Back then, it was soft and cuddly and I snuggled in bed with it.

Probably. I honestly have no memory of doing so, but considering the fact that I'm 58 years old and still have this stuffed animal among my possessions, it must have been important to me. I don't have any other stuffies from when I was a kid.

Today, it is stiff like a taxidermy model, and dirty and unloved and I don't care about it at all.

Well, but that's not true, is it? I've considered tossing it into the trash over the years, but I haven't been able to bring myself to do that. What am I afraid of? Do I believe this hardened little feline's soul will come back to haunt me? Am I afraid of throwing away a symbol of my childhood? Am I concerned it will claw its way out of the Pet Sematary, drag itself through the graveyard and across busy highways to find me and kill me?

This kitty -- I don't recall if it ever had a name or gender -- doesn't trigger fond childhood memories of any sort. Did I cuddle with it when I was scared by thunderstorms? No idea. Did I give it a voice and a personality to keep me company when I was bored and alone? I don't think so. Did I gather up other cats, both stuffed and live, and juggle them along with my favorite fake pet? Certainly not.

Who gave it to me? My parents? My Grandma Jo? Grandma and Grandpa Bogert? Did it come off a hot tin roof?

And why did that person or persons consider that this little white cat was a good gift for me? Why not a dog? Or a teddy bear? Or a Sasquatch?

Don't get me wrong: I imagine that when I was quite young, I really loved that cat. Probably petted it, pretending it was real and that it loved me. But I ask you, then, why isn't that cat in the picture below, which features me (left) and my older brother, Steve, and three stuffed animals, none of which are the cat in question.

Hmm.

Anyway, when I was 5 or 6, we got a dog. A real one. A puppy, actually. And it was a little cuter and way more interactive than my precious little puddy tat. I definitely talked to that dog, Lucky, when I was down. I absolutely comforted him when he would cower behind the oil burner when a summer thunderstorm swept through our suburban neighborhood. And I loved to play with him in the house, and outside in piles of leaves my family would rake up for him every fall.

But since we didn't enlist a taxidermist when Lucky died in 1986, I don't have him in a box in my basement. But I have my ratty old cat, who exists these days only to make me feel bad about dragging it through my life, stuffed into a tomato box that I grabbed from the produce department where I worked when I was in high school and college.

Poor cat.

I don't even remember how long I've been stashing you in that box, along with a mess of baseball cards, Mardi Gras beads, old coin wrappers, two canvas bank deposit bags and the cap and gown from my college graduation (!). Doesn't matter. What matters is that you're the oldest thing I own that was only ever mine.

For those of you who prefer the word "cellar":

For those who argue that "basement" is the proper term:

It Came From the Basement: Freakshow Wine Bottle

Welcome to a new series with which I'm trying to reinvigorate the DaveTronik 2000 blog. In these posts, I will write about an item or items currently stored in the unfinished side of my basement. Many of them have been stashed in boxes for decades, waiting for this moment.

Today's item: an empty bottle of Freakshow Wine, a Cabernet Sauvignon from Michael David Winery.

I gravitate toward things with strange names, whether on a restaurant menu (huaraches, for example, a lovely Mexican dish featuring pinto beans, onions, potatoes, red salsa, chicken/beef/pork and named for popular sandals of the same name), albums in a record store (Crippled Pilgrims, Butthole Surfers, And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Haircut One Hundred) or bottles of wine.

I don't drink much wine, so when I do, I like to buy something with a funny name that can taste like rancid pond water as far as I care, as long as the label makes me laugh. I initiated this method of buying wine back in 1989, when Beth and I celebrated our first dating annniversary on a weekend trip to Vermont. We whooped it up in a motel with a pizza and a bottle of Space Shuttle White Wine from Bully Hill Vineyards.

I'd never heard of the vineyard or the wine, but I couldn't resist the name and the label. I did the same thing when I bought the Freakshow Wine. I had no idea if it would taste any good (I think it did), and frankly I didn't care.

So why do I have the bottle? To give a little man-cave ambience to the basement. It sits alongside my guitars, pedals, cords, folders and notebooks of songs going back decades, the beer fridge and other random rock 'n' roll shit. I am the only one in my household who ever sees it, and I don't pay it much mind when I'm playing my guitar. But it's nice to know it's there, keeping things weird.

It Came From the Basement: TT the Bear's Beer Menu

Welcome to a new series with which I'm trying to reinvigorate the DaveTronik 2000 blog. In these posts, I will write about an item or items currently stored in the unfinished side of my basement. Many of them have been stashed in boxes for decades, waiting for this moment.

Bullet LaVolta.

Jack Drag.

Giant Sand.

Franz Ferdinand.

Mobius Band.

And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead.

Flaming Lips.

These are just some of the bands I saw over the years at the late, great TT the Bear's Place in Central Square in Cambridge, Mass.

Opened in 1973 near the location that became it's long-time home five years later -- 10 Brookline Street, next to the Middle East Club -- TT's over the ensuing 42 years played host to countless punk, indie, country and rap acts. The room was no-frills and intimate, with an occupancy of just 300. I loved going there because of its close quarters. You could shimmy to the front and bathe in the performers' sweat. The stage was low and there were no barriers, so you could bump up against the action on stage. If things got too crazy or you got bored with an opening act, you could retreat to the other side of the bar, but even there you were close enough to hear and see what was going on.

The club hosted local bands and touring bands from around the country and the world. Acts that played there that went on to play much bigger venues include Smashing Pumpkins, Jane's Addiction (blech), Til Tuesday, Indigo Girls and Mission of Burma, among many others. The club was founded by Bonnie Bouley and her then-boyfriend, Miles Cares, per Wikipedia.

As for the odd name: "The...name originated from the need to be unique, to not have a name like any other establishment; the owners considered their own names, Miles & Bonney's; eventually they decided to name it after their pet 'Teddy Bear'-style hamster, who was nicknamed Tough Teddy, hence they settled on T.T. the Bear's Place," per Wikipedia.

In 2014 Joseph and Nabil Sater, owners of the Middle East, purchased the TT's building. "In early 2015, the owners announced that there was to be a substantial rent increase, and a lease of five years, with an option for another five years," according to Wikipedia. "Ms. Bouley did not agree to the terms (she considered the rent high and the lease to be 'short-term') and, without the new lease, the club could not be successfully sold to a new owner. Bouley decided in May 2015 that the club would close."

In June of 2015, TT's held a goodbye yard sale. I stood in line with hundreds of other nerdy folks and shuffled through the place, feeling odd the entire time that I was picking through the ruins of a club where I'd had so many great nights. I spied a fantastic Elvis bust, but found out it was spoken for. In the small room at the back of the club, posters by the hundreds were piled on the pool table and all around. There were gnarly stage lights, old microphones, amp cables, you name it.

What I came away with was the beer menu featured above, as well as some swizzle sticks, a poster of The Neighborhoods (which I gave to my buddy Ray) and a drinking glass that says "Swampwater" on it above a caricature of an alligator. The owner, Bonnie, was working the checkout register. When I showed her the glass, she looked wistful for a few seconds and said, "Oh, we used to use those glasses a lot."

In late July of 2015, TT's held its final show, featuring local legends O Positive and Scruffy the Cat with Dave Minehan of The Neighborhoods sitting in for the late Charlie Chesterman.

The space is now a club known as Sonia.

It Came From the Basement: Uncle George's Banjo

Welcome to a new series with which I'm trying to reinvigorate the DaveTronik 2000 blog. In these posts, I will write about an item or items currently stored in the unfinished side of my basement. Many of them have been stashed in boxes for decades, waiting for this moment.

Was George Brigham a banjo master like Bela Fleck, Earl Scruggs, Pete Seeger, Roy Clark and Steve Martin?

Perhaps. But my uncle, who was born in 1924 and died in 2008, never let on if he was able to pick and grin with the best of them. I recall, as a kid, seeing his banjo in the basement of my cousins' house in West Hartford, Connecticut, and wondering whose it was. I never saw my uncle, or anyone else, play it.

My cousins were curious about George's banjo-pluckin', too. "I remember seeing that banjo at home and asking him to play it," my cousin Sue remembers. "He never would."

"I just remember him saying he took '52 lessons for 52 dollars' and I never heard him play!" my cousin Amy recalls. Her twin, Joy, agrees. "As Amy said, he didn’t play it for us, and seemed almost dumbfounded that he learned it after 52 lessons."

Fifty-two lessons! I'm not sure if that's once a week for a year, but regardless, that's plenty of time to learn how to play "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" with some flair. Below is a video that is oh-so-appropriate, as it features Steve Martin, Earl Scruggs, Pete Wernick and other banjo masters on the David Letterman show. Letterman always reminded me a bit of my Uncle George, even though he's nearly a quarter-century younger.

Notice that each of the banjoists is playing a five-stringed instrument, known as a clawhammer banjo. Uncle George's is a four-string piece, known as a tenor banjo. Evidently, the four-stringers are used more in jazz and Dixieland music, as opposed to country and bluegrass.

What sort of music might Uncle George have played on his banjo? "Not recalling hearing Dad plucking away," my cousin Ann says. "I always liked having a Banjo in the Basement!" Her sister, Lynne, tells me that she "never heard it played. Would have loved to!"

George liked to play tennis; he and my dad had regular Saturday morning games when I was a kid. My dad loved to sing and act in community theater shows, but he never learned to play an instrument (well, he did take guitar lessons for a short time). I don't believe their younger brother, Bill, did either.

When my uncle passed away, Amy and Joy bequeathed his banjo to me, along with old photo albums and scrapbooks. I hoped that I might be able to learn how to play it, since I have been a guitarist since I was 14 years old. I asked a friend (check out his tattoo shop if you're ever in Newton, Mass., and need some ink) who is a fantastic musician if he knew where I could get the banjo checked out. He suggested Sandy's Music in Cambridge.

So I headed to Sandy's shop in Central Square. He (or someone in his shop) looked over the banjo, examining the bridge, the rim, the tuning pegs, the frets, the neck and the head. He noticed a crack in the neck, and said if I wanted to get it fixed, they could certainly do it.

For about two hundred bucks....

"I don't know how to play it," I said. "You could hang it on the wall," he replied.

Sandy's, which opened in 1970, closed in 2013. The space along Massachusetts Avenue is now occupied by Mike's Monster Guitar, which is run by Mike Feudale, who worked at Sandy's as lead repairman for 18 years.

I haven't hung the banjo on the wall, but it's on a rack in the music area of my basement, next to a ukelele that my wife bought several years ago, a three-string slide guitar that my in-laws gave me for Christmas, and above the case that holds my grandfather's accordion.

Grandpa's Film Archive: Act One

I recently wrote and posted a video about my grandfather's collection of slides, home movies and film projection and editing equipment that my cousins gave me (see November 24, 2021, "Grandpa's Film Archive: Opening Scene"). Today I will provide a a more detailed look at the trove.

Looking through the items, the first thing I learned about my grandfather, Al Bogert, that I didn't already know was that he was damn good at record keeping. He was my mother's father, and he died in 1986 when I was 21 years old. I only saw him a few times a year at best, as my grandparents lived in New Jersey, and I grew up in Connecticut.

The first item I looked at more closely was the small filing cabinet drawer, which is jam-packed with index cards.

"Is there a card for each film reel in the collection?!" I wondered out loud. I thumbed through the cards filed behind the BASEBALL heading. There's one for my great-uncle, Bill Lohrman, who pitched nine seasons in the big leagues, on teams including the Philadelphia Phillies, the New York Giants, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds.

There's also one for Carl Hubbell, a Hall of Fame pitcher who wheeled and dealed alongside my great-uncle for the Giants from 1928 to 1943.

"Am I sitting on lost footage that could have some value to hardcore baseball fans?" I thought to myself.

There were plenty of other headings that intrigued me. RODEO + THRILL CIRCUS, for instance.

I've been to one rodeo -- during my honeymoon in Jackson Hole in 1997 -- and had a great time. I've been to a few circuses, and always had fun. I also thoroughly enjoyed the Joie Chitwood Thrill Show when I was a teenager, at the Big E in West Springfield, Mass. I love that my grandfather was into that same kind of stuff!

There are dozens of reels of film, of varying sizes, in the crates that my cousin gave me. I realized I needed to prioritize things to get digitized, in order to share with friends and family. Looking more closely at the trove of films, I realized that, contrary to what I initially thought, they're not all things my grandfather shot with his camera. For instance, there is official NASA footage of the Apollo 11 mission.

I've love to see that moon-landing footage! More important, though, is the reel labeled, "1955 VACATION TRIP WITH JOAN." I believe that's the trip that my mother took with my grandparents out West. There is also a reel indicating that my sister, Beth, and my cousin Gail (who handed over all of these great treasures), are featured. There is also one labled "BEHMS," which is the name of a farm my mother and her parents used to visit during summer vacations in upstate New York.

(There are actually two reels of that Western vacation.)

In addition to the old movie reels, there is a box of my grandfather's slides.

My cousin Wayne's daughter, Rachel, had some slides digitized a number of years ago. I have copies of some of those on a thumb drive. I'm guessing that at least some of the ones in this box, however, are ones I don't have.

Other items include a projector and a film editing/splicing rig. The thing that has really captivated me, though, is a Steno pad in which my grandfather chronicled his day-to-day life from 1978, when he was 74 years old, until shortly before he died in 1986.

His entries are short and to the point, talking about outings to go bowling or fishing, taking neighbors to doctor appointments, eating out at restaurants, taking vacations. Each one is accompanied by the mileage on his car for that given day. Looking through these journals, I had an epiphany: I had been thinking about transcribing my pandemic diaries, but figured people would find them long-winded and boring. But I realized that I could include my grandfather's diaries with my own, as well as those of my other grandfather, George Brigham, Sr., whom I never met. He wrote his in the 1920s.

And so a new project was launched....

Make sure to check back as I try to figure out how to look at the footage on these old reels.

Grandpa's Film Archive: Opening Scene

I've become the Library of Congress for both sides of my family, the repository for old photo albums, diaries and instruments. I like this job; it suits me. I love poring over pictures of, words by and information about long-gone ancestors, trying to understand better who they were, what their times were like.

Over the years, my cousins on the Brigham side have given me their father's banjo; family photo albums, including one that our grandfather filled with photos from trips to Europe, Russia and Japan; and diaries written in both English and French by our grandfather. I also have a photo album compiled by a great-uncle on my grandmother's side (the LaVentures) who I never met. It's filled with photos of equestrian events and military camps from WWII and it's absolutely fascinating.

From my cousins on the Bogert side of the family, I have inherited an accordion that belonged to our grandfather and, most recently, a treasure trove of home movies, slides and film equipment that also belonged to him. That's the subject of today's post, and others to follow.

(My grandparents at what appears to be a terrific picnic.)

I've written about my grandfather, Al Bogert, before (see January 5, 2015, "Take My Grandfather, Please"). He was a fun-loving guy who livened things up when he and my grandmother would visit my family, usually around the holidays. He would pull quarters from behind our ears, do card tricks, take part in games, play the piano and brighten up the whole place. My grandmother, Mildred, was sweet as could be and much quieter, but she was always quick to smile and laugh along.

Grandpa Bogert was good with his hands, and fixed TVs and radios on the side to make money. He also loved trains; one of my fondest memories of him is hanging out in his attic with my brother, running his model trains around the room. Perhaps my grandfather's greatest passion, other than family, was making home movies and taking pictures. I have a clear vision of him taking photos with a Polaroid in my childhood backyard. I was fascinated when the photo would emerge from the bottom of the camera, and so excited to see what it would look like when it had fully developed after a minute or two.

My mother talks a lot about how much she enjoyed watching her father make movies, especially around Christmastime. With the help of my grandmother, my grandfather would make movies of himself dressed as Santa, emerging from the fireplace (a cardboard prop). These movies were silent, so he would film intertitles indicating what the story was, and then offering credits at the end. If he was driving somewhere, and he saw a train approaching, he would call out, "Mil! Mil! Get the camera!" according to my mom. My grandmother deserves more credit than she gets for being his sometime-cinematographer, co-director and craft service provider.

Below is a short video I made soon after my cousins handed over our grandfather's film archive. Stay tuned for updates as I go through stuff more closely, and select movies to convert to digital files.

A 5th Grader Talks About the King of Rock 'n' Roll

Elvis Presley, for those who don't know, is a popular rock and roll singer. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee, in a big house with his parents. He has been in many movies and when he sings, people get excited. He sings songs like "Hound Dog," "Don't Be Cruel," "Jailhouse Rock" and, my momma's favorite, "Picious Minds." He's called the King of Rock 'n' Roll. Also, Old Chairman of the Board, or something.

He's on the $1 dollar bill, so I think maybe he was president when he was in the 1950's. I found a song on the Innernet that says Elvis is Everywhere.

That's pretty good of a song. My dad wrote a song about Elvis that's kind of mean. It's called "Worms Ate His Brain" and it's about how Elvis was supposably dead and how my dad made fun of him. My dad, geez.

Today Elvis is 135 years old. Or wait, no. He was born in 1935. So he's 68, I think. Anyway, he's old but he wears a white suit and boots and has recorded albums with bands including the Attractions, the Jordanaires, the TCB Band and even played baseball with the Texas Rangers.

Some guy named Dave Brigham wrote a book that's about the Elvis Presley Boulevard Inn. And getting drunk in a bar near there. And he went to Graceland, which is where Mr. Presley lives. If you're weird and want to read that book, you can see it in the Innernet.

The Grand Dragon Will See You Now

I have a simple question for you:

When was the last time you were in a Mexican restaurant/bar in Athens, Georgia, shooting pool and chewing the fat with your friends, surrounded by a mix of college students and hipsters and working-class folks and feeling, as a Yankee, maybe just a little bit out of place, talking about kudzu and the red dirt that seemed to be everywhere, and wondering where you might park your van for the night in a strange city, and when the hell are we all going to the 40 Watt Club, and speculating about where to go next on your aimless road trip across America, when out of the blue the bartender -- a nice guy named Vern -- mentioned matter-of-factly that there was a Ku Klux Klan rally just a few miles outside of town?

Part of me wishes that, when that opportunity arose for me in March 1988, I had driven out to see those robed degenerates spouting their hateful bullshit. Sure, I would've been scared to get close, but also fascinated. Read about that incident in my new memoir, Great/Dismal: My Four-Month Tour of Duty on the Battleship Patchouli.

Get Off the Bus!

The summer after I graduated from college, I read Jack Kerouac's On the Road and thought that Dean Moriarty was the coolest, wildest dude and that hanging out with him would be a non-stop carnival of insane adventure and mind-expanding conversation. He talked and talked and talked about all sorts of way-out ideas, took Sal Paradise (Kerouac's alter ego) to parties, listened to jazz like it was the most amazing thing on Earth and just burned burned burned.

This, I thought, is what I want to do: go on a cross-country trip that is full tilt all the way, meet new people, live on the edge, learn about new places, experience danger. You can read about how my expectations measured up to reality in my new memoir, Great/Dismal: My Four-Month Tour of Duty on the Battleship Patchouli.

As for Dean Moriarty -- known in real life as Neal Cassady -- I learned many years later that he was the kind of human firework who is fun to read about, but not for a guy like me to hang out with. He was a complicated guy who had a messed-up upbringing, sure. And he influenced Kerouac's writing style and featured not only in his books, but in the poetry of Allen Ginsberg. He was one of those characters we all meet on occasion in our lives, who seem like they walked off a movie screen because they're just so manic and funny and smart and loveable and frustrating and selfish that it's hard to believe somebody didn't create them on a written page.

But I would've tired of his shenanigans very quickly if he'd somehow been reincarnated and stuck his thumb out along the highway west from Oklahoma to New Mexico, looking for a ride that would've quickly turned into him taking the wheel and commandeering the conversation and putting my introverted ass into a tizzy. See for yourself, below.

We All Struggle with Something

We name things to help us understand them, and to create a shared knowledge with our fellow human beings. I sometimes get fascinated by language, and trying to figure out how even the simplest of words -- dog, cat, dodecahedron -- came to be. Naming things, however, can put people on a slippery slope. Nobody wants to be defined too narrowly by elements of their character or physical presentation.

Look at me and you might think, "White nerd with glasses." You would be right about that, but there's so much more going on. I play guitar, I love the Red Sox and Bruins, I make terrible "dad jokes," I love Public Enemy and Funkadelic, I love to wander around in strange places taking photos, I have arthritic big toes and a bad hip.

One label I don't mind tagging myself with, though, is person with Attention Deficit Disorder.

More than three years ago, I diagnosed myself with ADD (see November 28, 2018, "ADD Me to the List"). Read the linked post to get the full story on it. I want to reiterate one point, though: realizing there was a name for the collective struggles I had battled my whole life gave me some freedom. I no longer worried that I was crazy or stupid or lazy. Finding the right "tag" for myself was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

In my new memoir, Great/Dismal: My Four-Month Tour of Duty on the Battleship Patchouli, amid the highway hijinks and visits to Graceland, New Orleans and Memphis, the exploration of Albuquerque, the punk rock shows, the flashbacks to college, there is self-analysis. I didn't have as much fun during my adventure as I thought I would, and for years I had no idea why.

During the course of writing the book, I began to put together a better picture of why I struggled, with the light finally shining when I realized I had both ADD and executive function issues. Those two things combined make it difficult for me to plan ahead and stay on task, take things as they come and be more spontanous.

We all struggle with something: hearing loss, flat feet, bipolar disorder, taking care of a sick relative, narcissism, a love of REO Speedwagon. I hope my book will show readers that it's never too late to figure yourself out, and that discovering the name for what you struggle against can be incredibly empowering.

Below is "Cross Bones Style," the only song I know by Cat Power, aka Chan Marshall. She has struggled with mental health issues, so I feel it's appropriate to share her song here.

That's a Big 10-4!

"Convoy," the 1975 novelty country music song that inspired the 1978 Sam Peckinpah movie of the same name, spoke to me as the Lord speaks to Jimmy Swaggart. I was 10 years old and in 5th grade when the song hit the Connecticut radio waves. Kids brought their copies of the 45 into school and begged our teacher, Mr. Cashman, to let them play it on the classroom record player. Sometimes he said yes; we all sang along.

The song sparked my interest in CB radio. I loved the crazy lingo -- "pregnant roller skate" for a VW bug; "bear in the air" means a police helicopter; "brown paper bag" indicates an unmarked police car -- and even bought a book about it so I could learn and use it. Sometimes when using my walkie-talkie with friends, I picked up trucker conversations and was thrilled beyond belief.

During this same era, I watched "Movin' On," a TV show about truckers, starring Claude Akins and Frank Converse. I was also completely and totally in love with the "Smokey and the Bandit" movies during this time. When I was 14, I watched "BJ and the Bear," a TV show about the trials and tribulations of a trucker and his pet chimpanzee.

At the Big E when I was in junior high school, I bought a metal belt buckle with a semi-truck on it.

You get the idea. I was into big rigs.

I never would have guessed, when I was 12 years old, straddling my yellow three-speed bike by the side of the main road that ran through my town and giving truckers the "blow your horn" signal, that 10 years later I'd be a free spirit, too, bombing down America's highways in a van with three buddies.

Read all about my trip in my new memoir, Great/Dismal: My Four-Month Tour of Duty on the Battleship Patchouli.

Get in the Van

Part of me wishes I didn't ever have to get out of the van. -- Dave Brigham, 2021.

I got in the van, just like Henry Rollins. I got in the van and I liked it -- stomping on the gas pedal and making that V8 growl, sitting in the passenger seat and watching America fly by, reading a book in the back seat and thrilling as the miles away from home piled up, listening to Nancy Sinatra and the Fifth Dimension and Willie Nelson on 8-track.

I got in the van and wished I was as cool as the dudes I read about in custom-car magazines when I was an awkward teen who never thought he'd take a road trip....

I got in the van, and I would do it again in a heart beat.

Read about my road trip in my new memoir, Great/Dismal: My Four-Month Tour of Duty on the Battleship Patchouli.

Please Buy My Book! (Does This Headline Make Me Look Desperate?)

For nigh on a thousand years, I have been working on and talking about my just-released road-trip memoir, Great/Dismal: My Four-Month Tour of Duty on the Battleship Patchouli (see May 5, 2016, "Here's An Excerpt from My Road-Trip Memoir").

I hit the road with three friends in February 1988, traveling in a converted handyman's van. From Connecticut we traveled down the eastern seaboard, and then on through Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, before entering the southwest. We ended up in New Mexico, where we lived for a few months. In 2008, I wrote about this journey on a predecessor blog; in 2011, I began expanding my story into a book. That book has now been published.

Why did it take me 10 years to finish the book? That's par for the course for me. My first book, (C)rock Stories: Million-Dollar Tales of Music, Mayhem and Immaturity, also spent a decade in development. I'm not the most disciplined writer, that's for sure. But, as I discovered part-way through the process of writing my new memoir, I have ADD (see November 28, 2018, "ADD Me to the List"). That means I struggle to stay on task and organize my thoughts on paper, and I can get easily frustrated when I find things to be difficult.

Great/Dismal underwent a lot of changes from the initial draft all those years ago, to the one I hope you'll consider buying today. Because of my ADD (and executive function issues), I also procrastinate like a true professional. So it's not like I spent 10 straight years working on this book. I would leave it alone for weeks, sometimes even months. And even when I worked on it, sometimes progress was painfully slow. Also, I took my hands off it for a while, sending it to friends and family, seeking their input (see May 15, 2013, "Out of My Hands...for Now").

"What's the book about?" you might ask. It's equal parts Jack Kerouac's On the Road, detailing the adventures my three friends and I had while running amok in America (and also the boring parts), and Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor, with its nod to classic-era disco as well as new millennium club music.

Wait, that last part's not quite right.

It's a mash-up of Kerouac's famous book; John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley; the Rough Guide series of travelogues; the very tamest of Charles Bukowski; and a mid-life journey to self-discovery. I write not only about the four-month odyssey I took with my friends, but also about the various inspirations for the trip (National Lampoon magazine, the aforementioned Kerouac, a few free-form trips I took at the end of my college years, etc.). Additionally, I flash back to college and spend a chapter analyzing why I struggled to let my hair down during my adventure.

It's the most intimate thing I've ever written, which is another reason that I took so long to publish it. I don't like to talk about myself and my struggles, so this is a big step for me. I hope that if you buy it (and actually read it) you will connect with some part of it, whether the stupid stuff my friends and I did on our journey, or the struggles I had during the trip. And please let me know what you think, whether by posting a comment here, sending me a text or email or a Facebook message, or writing a review on Amazon, where the book is also available (along with other online retailers. You can also order one via your favorite indie bookseller).

Thanks!

"Blitzed"

At the beginning of this year, my buddy Steve Z. told me about a Ramones anthology that Fahrenheit Press was putting together. He had submitted something, and encouraged me to do the same. So I did. In late May, I found out that my story had been rejected. Trying to make me and the other poseurs feel better, Fahrenheit said they might put out a second Ramones volume, thereby doubling our chances to be rejected!

I've been a Ramones fan since my late teens; I saw them four or five times during my college years. My college band, The Toastmen, played "Blitzkreig Bop" at many of our shows. I own just a few Ramones albums, but really, isn't that all you need?

Fahrenheit wasn't looking for stories about the Ramones or even featuring the punk godfathers from Queens. What the publishing house asked was for writers to use a Ramones song as an outline or the theme of a story. There needed to be a connection to the song. "Keep it punk and keep it stripped down: 2k to 4k words only," the publishers said. "Preference is for clean narratives. This is punk storytelling. Don't over intellectualize it."

Below is "Blitzed," the story I submitted. It references "Blitzkrieg Bop" and features Scarlett, my favorite character from my short-story anthology, (C)rock Stories: Million-Dollar Tales of Music, Mayhem and Immaturity.

Blitzed

By Dave Brigham

“Yankee-boy, we’re coming to get you,” Scarlett whispered as she slowly rolled the El Camino down the litter-strewn alley behind Sniper’s Lounge. Her brother, Ray, rode shotgun, nervously caressing a pair of their daddy’s handcuffs.

“I can’t believe he’s headlining Sniper’s,” Ray said, pushing his platinum-blonde tips out of his eyes with manicured, black-lacquered fingernails.

“Of course he is, dipshit,” Scarlett spat at her brother. “He’s the fucking best there is in this town! He’s gonna clear 200, 250 bucks tonight. And then he’s gonna go for a little ride.”

Parking behind the graffiti-scarred dumpster, Scarlett pulled her cigarette holder from her purse.

“Eh hem.”

“Oh, Jesus, Scar. Why did you bring that goddamn thing?”

“A lady always needs to be delicate,” she said in her baby-girl voice, fluttering her eyelashes. “Now put a fucking Misty in my ox-horn cigarette holder!”

Scarlett flashed her headlights. A van parked 50 feet down the alley flashed back, then drove toward the club’s back door.

Through the swirling smoke from Scarlett’s extra-long cigarette, she and Ray watched as the heavy, black door swung open. In an instant, their two hired goons bolted from the van, grabbed the tall, thin guy who walked out and shoved him in the van. After a minute, the driver stomped on the gas and floored it toward the El Camino.

“What just happened?” Ray asked his sister. She slapped him.

“Those monsters you hired just abducted the bus boy.” The van pulled up to Scarlett’s side of the car.

“You stupid morons…” Scarlett yelled. Just then, Ray grabbed his sister by the shoulder – something he immediately regretted – and turned her toward the Sniper’s rear exit.

“Look!”

“Yankee-boy,” Scarlett whispered. “Alright, Raymond Justice the Third, it’s time for us to right the wrong committed by your large and idiotic friends from bridge club, or wherever it is you found them.”

“What about this guy?” one of the lugs in the van asked.

“Drive him around the block and drop him in front of the DQ,” Scarlett snarled.

Turning to her brother, Scarlett tingled with excitement and rage. “Don’t you, my younger and completely inferior brother, ever touch me. Ever.”

“Relax,” he replied, sweat rolling down his back.

Leaning closer, she whispered, “Ever,” in his ear, then grabbed the handcuffs off his lap.

“Let’s go.”

###################

Scarlett and Ray’s band, Fey Raye, a glam-punk quartet that rolled makeup train cases into their gigs before amps or guitars or keyboards, had been grinding for five years. Some local critics – “sad mama’s boys with too many glasses and not enough balls,” Scarlett said – used words like “annoying,” “shrill,” “god-awful,” “pretentious” and “hairspray-infected” to describe Fey Raye.

They had plenty of fans, though, among the record-store crowd, theater nerds and those looking for something a little dangerous. They played out a few times a month. Their one album, two EP’s and five singles sold well enough to keep the band members from having to get more than three part-time jobs apiece.

Yankee-boy and his band, Northern Army, became the darlings of the scene from the moment they moved to town. With his preppie good looks, tight wiffle and D.C. street cred, Yankee-boy drew crowds at every gig, anxious just to be near him, to scream along to his lyrics calling for revolution and to thrash to his bandmates’ tight hooks and pounding rhythms.

Scarlett didn’t like him, but deep down admitted to herself that he had an important magnetism. She was confrontational with him, just as she was with everybody else.

“Alex,” she laughed the first time she was introduced to him. “That’s about the most boring name any of God’s creatures ever did give an offspring. You talk like a fancy boy who went to Yale and learned about chromosomes and how to set proper margins on a typewriter and quadratic equations and laying down a bunt and using salad forks and how to find Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.”

She took a drag from her Misty.

“You probably skateboarded with people calling themselves punks, who were, in reality, rich kids who’d been kicked out of Georgetown row houses.”

Alex laughed.

“I do believe I’m going to call you Yankee-boy,” Scarlett said.

Alex was always nice to her, finding any small nugget of promise to encourage her band.

“Maybe we can cut a single together,” he said one night after Fey Raye opened for Northern Army. “Cool, right? You’ll be on the B-side, of course.”

“That ain’t gonna happen,” Scarlett replied, the air thick with exasperation. “Y’all are too pretty, too nice, too stuck-up, too tweedy. Our band is the real shit. We scrape our insides out and show them to our fans and they love us for that. You boys talk about revolution, but you already had yours. You ‘northern’ boys. We’re gonna blow up, soon. You’ll see.”

###################

As Ray chatted with Alex about Fugazi’s Repeater album, Scarlett snuck up behind the tall, muscular singer. Grabbing his left wrist, she slapped on a handcuff. He wheeled quickly, knocking her to the ground.

“What the hell?!” he yelled.

“Grab him, Raymond!” Scarlett demanded.

Ray jumped at Alex, but bounced off his right fist. Scarlett jumped on Alex’s back and began pummeling his head. In an instant, Alex flipped Scarlett over his head and on top of a charging Ray. The siblings sat there, stunned.

“What the hell?!” Alex yelled again. “What are you idiots doing?”

“Oh, Yankee-boy,” Scarlett purred. “We just wanted to take you to a party. Do you wanna go to a party, hun? Our band is playing and we were hoping you might deign to accompany us and maybe sit in for a song or two.”

“Well, why didn’t you just ask? You know I love to sing!”

“Do you need to help your band break things down?” Ray asked.

“Do you need to help your band break things down?” Scarlett said in a mocking, sing-songy voice. “Of course he doesn’t, you lily-livered sack of pancakes.”

“Scarlett’s right,” Alex said, laughing. “I carry those guys every night; they can spend a little effort to pack up my mic.”

Ray’s hired goons showed up and joined Alex in the back of the El Camino. Ray passed a bottle back through the sliding window.

“Want some Bop?” Ray asked Alex.

“What the hell is ‘Bop’?”

“Blitzkrieg Bop!” Scarlett screamed. “It’s Jagermeister, Goldschlager and Rumple Minze. It fucks you up.”

Alex took a long slug, passed it along. The goons drank deeply, too. Pretty soon all five of them were screaming and laughing at the top of their lungs as they headed deeper into the woods toward Scarlett and Ray’s father’s house.

“Whatta we want!?” Scarlett yelled from the driver’s seat.

“Punk rock!” the rest of them answered at full volume.

“When do we want it?!”

“NOW!!!”

“Gabba gabba hey!” Ray yelled. “We accept you one of us!”

“Lame!” Scarlett retorted.

Alex started rolling around in the El Camino’s bed, bouncing off the two goons. “Mosh it up, assholes!” he yelled. Then, standing up, he started pogoing and then slamming himself to the hard metal of the truck’s bed. “I love the Bop!”

“Yeah, Yankee-boy!” Scarlett yelled through the window. “He’s losing his mind – I love it!”

The road turned to dirt, the trees stooped menacingly close to the roof of the El Camino. The moon beamed onto Alex’s white t-shirt; everything else was black: Scarlett’s hair and dress, Ray’s leather jacket, the goons’ jeans and boots.

Ray jammed a cassette into the player. “This’ll heat shit up,” he said.

“Keep your hands on the wheel / But you’re playing with my stick / “I can’t help it if I slip / Keep your hands on the wheel”

“Is that Ram Jam?!” Alex yelled at Ray as he bent down to the window. “Turn that shit up!”

“Hell yeah, Yankee-boy!” Scarlett howled. “Get crazy!”

Scarlett drove past a few dozen cars and pulled into the driveway. There was a bonfire in the front yard, with people scattered around eating, drinking and dancing. On the expansive front porch, some dudes were plugging in amps, checking mic levels, setting up a drum kit, taping down cords, fixing a small spotlight. Paint peeled all around them.

Alex and the goons hopped out of the back of Scarlett’s car. A buzz pinballed through the crowd as more partygoers recognized the tall lead singer of Northern Army. Scarlett and Ray walked up on the porch; they talked with an older guy for a minute or two, then plugged in.

The older guy approached the mic, held onto it loosely with a right arm covered in tattoos.

“Hello, shitheads!” he yelled out. About six feet tall, with a pot belly barely hidden under a Link Wray t-shirt, the master of ceremonies was clearly Scarlett and Ray’s father. He had the same head of untamed black hair and crooked grin as his kids.

“Happy to have you here,” he said. “Don’t wreck my house or shit on my lawn. And if I see you mistreat my dogs – you know who I’m talking about, you two meatheads – I’m shooting first and asking questions later.” People clapped and whistled.

“OK, here’s Fey Raye.” And he jumped off the steps in a lame attempt at a stage dive.

“Jam out the kicks, motherfuckers!” Scarlett yelled and the band flew into a manic rage, the porch sagging under the heavy boots stomping away to the beat. Scarlett played guitar and sang; Ray was on keyboards and backing vocals; a skinny, longhaired guy in a Husker Du t-shirt attacked the bass; and an athletically built guy with a GBH shirt and a pink Mohawk pounded the drums.

The small crowd pulsated in the front yard, mesmerized by the music, stoned out of their minds, drunk on Blitzkrieg Bop. Alex stood on the fringe, pushing people back into the makeshift mosh pit, yelling encouragement, pogoing in place.

After three songs, Scarlett stepped back from the mic, shook sweat off her hands and took a long swig of something. The liquid sparkled in the stage lights.

“Let’s hear it for the Bop!” she yelled.

“Don’t hurt yourselves out there,” Ray said as he adjusted his mic.

“Fuck that,” Scarlett snarled. “They are revved up and ready to go!” The crowd whooped and screamed. “Alright, you idiots. This next song is a cover, and we’re gonna drag someone up here to sing it” A few hands shot up in the air, as if they were at karaoke bar rather than an illegal backwoods club run by a possibly psychotic punk and her gun-toting father.

“Yankee-boy, where are ya?”

“Nah, nah, Scarlett, this is your gig,” Alex called out through cupped hands. He took a few steps back, careful to avoid the dog shit. Lifting his plastic cup in the air, he saluted his rival: “To Scarlett – true punk, madwoman behind the wheel, mixologist extraordinaire!”

The crowd roared.

“Yankee-boy, don’t be rude. Don’t refuse a lady’s entreaty.”

People were getting restless. A few people yelled at Scarlett to play another song. Ray told her to forget it. Others, the drunker ones, started chanting, “Alex! Alex! Alex!”

“Where are Ray’s bridge-playing friends?” Scarlett said, all sugary sweet. “Get your fat asses moving, and get that boy up here!” she commanded.

The two lugs appeared out of nowhere, hands on Alex’s back, shoving him toward the stage. He fought them for a few seconds, but then, like a true professional, put on a big smile, jogged up the steps and wrapped Scarlett in a bear hug.

She stepped back, yelled something in his face then, after windmilling her right arm, launched into “Jet Boy” by the New York Dolls. Ray scrambled from behind his keyboards to grab his guitar and catch up with his sister.

Alex bumbled his way through, remembering most of the lyrics and singing some of them in time with the band as Scarlett kept charging faster and faster until the whole thing fell apart.

The crowd went wild.

“What’re we doing next?” Alex said into the mic, a big smile on his face. “Get me some more Bop, dammit!” Someone hustled up the steps and handed him a sloshing cupful.

Scarlett sashayed up to the mic, a big smirk on her face, blood dripping from her string-slashed fingers. “Yankee-boy, I bled for you,” she said, draping her arm around his neck. “Are you having fun?” she whispered into his ear. He nodded enthusiastically.

A girl at the bottom of the porch steps took off her top and threw it at Alex. Not to be outdone, her boyfriend took off his cut-offs and whipped them at Scarlett, just missing her head. Then they clasped hands and ran off toward the woods.

“They’re gonna go make some steam,” Scarlett cracked into the mic. “Yankee-boy, let’s play another song.” She leaned toward the drummer, spoke quickly to him and the bassist. Ray leaned in just a second too late; Scarlett flipped him off.

Again, Scarlett windmilled and then hit the first chord of The Stooges’ “Raw Power.” Alex jumped up and down, thrilled beyond belief to play this one.

“Dance to the beat / of the living dead / Lose sleep baby / and stay away from bed / Raw power / is sure to come runnin’ to you”

After the song was done, Alex did a flip off the porch and ran a few laps around the front yard, out of his mind. Most of the crowd followed hm around, pawing at him, yelling encouragement, flailing themselves onto the ground as he passed.

“Jesus Christ,” Scarlett mumbled to herself. “How distressingly messianic.”

Clearing the four steps back up to the porch in one leap, Alex was manic. “Let’s do a fuckin’ Ramones song!” he screamed.

“Take it easy, Yankee-boy,” Scarlett purred. “I call the shots up on this stage.”

“Do you guys wanna hear a Ramones song?!” Alex bellowed into the microphone. The crowd – really only about 25 people at this point, but a hardcore 25 – started chanting, “A-lex Ra-mone! A-lex Ra-mone! A-lex Ra-mone!” while they moshed around the front yard in a circle. He jumped back down and got on the backs of a few bikers and rode around the pit, like a king.

“Shit,” Scarlett said to the rest of the band. “Yankee-boy’s got those folks more riled up than a two-dicked rooster in big-city henhouse.”

“Yup,” Ray said, a big smile on his face. “He’s the fucking best there is in this town, as someone once said.”

Scarlett slowly took her guitar off over hear head, then quickly rifled it at her brother. “This ends now,” she growled.

“Hey ho, hey ho, Yankee-boy has got to go!” she chanted through the mic. “Hey ho, hey ho, Yankee-boy has got to go!” She clapped her hands over her head, turned to get her bandmates to join in. They half-heartedly did so.

“Yankee-boy – come on up here!” Alex came bolting to the bottom of the steps. “Stop right there! That’s close enough,” Scarlett yelled, pointing at him menacingly.

“Yankee-boy is the king!” she yelled. The crowd ate it up. “And I am the kingmaker,” she continued. “Y’all love him so much because he’s crazy and wild like I am. He’s only acting that way on account of the Blitzkrieg Bop we been making him chug. Y’all know that, right?” People started to boo and throw things – barbecue ribs, plastic cups, an El Camino hubcap – at Scarlett.

“Come on, y’all, you know I’m right. I make and break this boy. He was nothing before him and his band of marauding union soldiers invaded our scene and saw how Fey Raye dominated it. He needed someone to compete with, and I gave him that. He’s only so damn good because I made him fight for the title!”

“Fuck you!” some guy yelled. “Play a goddamn song!”

“Alright, alright, you weenies. We’re gonna play a song. This is a new one. I think y’all are gonna like it quite a bit, yessirree. “It’s called, ‘Yankee-boy, You’re Fired!”

Scarlett strutted down the steps and over to the El Camino, eyeing Alex the entire time. From the driver’s side door pocket, she pulled out her cigarette holder, inserted it between her teeth. Then, slowly, she unwrapped a new pack of Mistys, gave it a few good hard taps on her left palm, removed one and put it in the holder.

Next, she reached under the driver’s seat, smiling and winking all the while. She pulled out her custom black-and-pink 20 gauge, and began waving it in the air, slinking closer to Alex.

“Hey, Yankee-boy, where you gonna run to?” Scarlett teased as the big man backed up. “You’re not afraid of lil’ old me and my shotgun, are ya?”

“Of course not, Scarlett,” Alex said, suddenly sobered up. “You don’t want me to sing with your band? Fine, that’s cool.”

“No, sir, I don’t,” Scarlett replied, cool as a cucumber. “I’m gonna shoot you in the back, ‘cause you’re gonna start runnin’ like a big old baby-man!” She cocked the weapon.

Indeed, Alex turned tail, along with a half-dozen other people. Scarlett raised the gun to her shoulder, took aim and fired. BOOM!

Alex and his fellow yellow-bellies covered their ears, ducked and screamed simultaneously. Ray and his fellow bandmates howled with laughter. Scarlett let out a rebel yell to curl your toenails.

Crawling out of the mud and piss and beer and Bop, Alex checked himself, saw that he was all there, that nobody around him was bleeding and that he’d been made a fool by a jealous, conniving, delusional harpy.

“Rebel Woman!” Alex yelled at Scarlett. “You are a goddamn crazy bitch!”

“Aw, Alex, don’t be like that,” she purred. “Now be a gentleman, and come over here and light my cigarette.”

Book Review: Radio Waves: A Post-Punk Novel

I first met Shawna-Lee Perrin in late 2010 at a release party for my short-story collection, (C)rock Stories: Million-Dollar Tales of Music, Mayhem and Immaturity. She and her husband, Dave, traveled south from the Granite State to Waltham, Mass., to hear me read from my first book in the back room of the Skellig Pub (R.I.P.). We'd been Facebook friends for a few years, as we had friends in common from our respective days at Keene State College.

Back then, I wouldn't have guessed that 10 years later I'd be in a band with Shawna, and that I'd be extolling the virtues of her first book, Radio Waves: A Post-Punk Novel.

For years, our friendship remained a Facebook construct, maintained largely through commenting on each other's photos, rants and YouTube clips. I learned that we had a lot of similar musical tastes (old-time country music, some punk rock and post-punk). At some point, Shawna posted about studying creative writing through the Mountainview MFA program. As she traveled along the path to writing her first novel, we communicated here and there about her progress. I was excited for her, as I am for any friend or family member who makes the leap from "Some day I'll write a novel/record an album/fill that canvas" to "I'm actually doing it!"

While she plugged along on her novel, I was working on the road-trip memoir that I've written about here over the years. We would occasionally check in with each other to see "How's it going?" Writing is a lonely craft, so community outreach is important.

Shawna and my college chum Ken also knew each other through various channels, and at some point discussed playing music together. Since our time playing in The Toastmen at Keene State in the mid-'80s, Ken had played with at least a handful of bands in Rhode Island and New Hampshire, honing his lead-guitar chops. I don't think Ken and Shawna ever jammed.

Fast-forward to the fall of 2019. Ken and I put the word out on Facebook that we were looking for musicians to join our newly formed combo, The Slade Wiggins Band. Shawna said she and her husband, Dave, were interested. They'd played in a few bands together over the years, she on bass and him playing banjo, guitar and fiddle. For our little combo, Dave offered to play drums, something he'd picked up in recent months. Ken and I were happier than a double-neck guitar is to be strapped around Jimmy Page's shoulders.

We jammed in November of that year, and the four of us clicked pretty well, musically and socially, as Dave and Shawna are two of the nicest, most easygoing folks you'll ever meet. In between working on a few originals and a few covers (Hank Thompson, Silver Jews), Shawna and I talked about our respective books, and offered to help each other any way we could.

Before too long, Shawna put it out on Facebook that she was looking for folks to read the latest draft of what would become Radio Waves, and I happily agreed to dig in. Her story grabbed me right from the start, as it is about music that I love and people who I can relate to. I offered some constructive criticism, which she happily accepted. I also sent a draft of my road-trip memoir to her, and she provided lots of great notes on it.

Now, Radio Waves is out! I'm so excited for Shawna, because I know how hard she's worked to write her novel, and to get it published. And the book is great, even better than the draft I read a while back. Shawna has infused her lead character, Viv, with amazing passion for music. She lives for post-punk, punk and New Wave bands, from Wire and The Clash to Blondie and The Ramones. But it's Joy Division that unlocks her soul.

Let me say this: you don't need to be a total music spazz like I am to relate to Viv's story. Radio Waves is a coming-of-age story, a love story, an adventure tale, a music history lesson and so much more. Set in 1979-80 in New Hampshire and London, the novel finds Viv in her senior year in college, working at the school's radio station and contemplating whether she's ready to get married, settle down and have kids. Her fiance, Adrian, seems to have their life together planned out, even though he doesn't really know what makes Viv tick; he calls her musical tastes "weird" and "upsetting."

Viv practically lives at the radio station. She has developed her strongest friendships there and risen up the ladder from a 17-year-old trainee to co-music director. She goes inside those graffiti- and sticker-covered walls when she needs to get away from the world when it all seems to much: Adrian pressing her on their forthcoming nuptials and transition to an "adult" life; her mother bombarding her with questions about wedding minutae.

In the midst of her young-adult crisis, she meets John, who is visiting his brother Noel, a freshman at Viv's college. The brothers are from England; John and Viv make an instant connection over music and quite quickly they fall into each other's arms.

I'm not going to write anything more about this book, because I want you to go and buy it and read it. You can get it here.

Here's a little taste of Joy Division, for those of you who aren't familiar with this influential British band, which lasted for just a few years in the late '70s and early '80s.