June 18, 2024

Well, I did it. After much trial-and-error (and some tribulation), I uploaded my book to Lulu, and today I ordered a proof copy. That's the copy you order for yourself first, to "proof it" for any mistakes and make sure it looks good in it's printed form before you offer it for sale. The total cost, with shipping and tax, was 32 bucks (yikes), but that's about what was expected, and it's a long book with a beautiful cover so you'll get your money's worth and remember: it's only the cost of two fast food meals, so if you skip those you'll come out even. Hopefully I will receive my proof copy in the mail in a week or so, and if everything looks good, I will post a link here at the blog where you can buy it if you wish. We will call that the "soft launch", just for folks here at the blog. I will give you the book's title and a synopsis then also, once I confirm the quality of the proof copy. Fingers crossed more than ever! After the "soft launch" (similar to a "soft opening" for a Disneyland ride), I will be setting things up as best as possible for an "official release date", which will be in late August for a specific reason. That will give me about two months to make a Facebook page and anything else I can think of. As mentioned before, my first goal is to sell 100 copies, then jump exponentially to 1000. That's not easy because I don't know 1000 people (heck, I'm not sure I even know 50, even counting acquaintances and friends of friends and friends of relatives), so the key will be just one or two people buying from out of state, or even just people who don't know me, and then word-of-mouth from there. The hardcover is expensive, so I'm not expecting a bestseller (until I get to the paperback next year, lol), but if I can sell 100 hardcovers....as Paul McCartney said, "That Would Be Something", and since today is Sir Paul's birthday, I feel that is serendipitous.

So, enough fanfare. I will let you know when I get the proof copy, and I will then give you the Lulu purchasing link and a synopsis. The book ultimately came in at 442 pages, and as noted, I've put my all into writing it. It's fun, it's weird, it's heartfelt and I hope you like it.

The blogs of late are mostly music, which I realize might be boring if you aren't a progressive rock fan, but we must press on. Sooner or later there will be other things to write about. 

Recently, I listened to Triumvirat's "Illusions on a Double Dimple" for the first time in at least 30 years. When it came out in 1974, we all thought it was an instant classic, even though the band sounded like an ELP clone. I liked their follow-up, too: "Spartacus"(1975), but then Triumvirat slowly dropped off my radar, and if you had asked me ten years ago what I thought of "Dimple", I'd probably have said it wouldn't be as good as I remembered (because of the ELP clone-thing), but do you know what? Having just re-listened, I think it is a good album. It does hold up 50 years later (holy smoke, a freaking half-century), and the reason is that it just plain sounds good. Is it worthy of being called an all-timer? Perhaps not. But it holds up, and the group's leader, keyboard player Jurgen Fritz, wrote the music when he was 20 years old. I liked "Double Dimple" enough to revisit "Spartacus", and it, too, stands the test of time, and is good enough to be considered a minor classic. It's funny how perceptions change, then change back to the original impression. I loved Triumvirat when they came out, then by the end of the '70s I thought they were passe, and they faded from mind for almost 50 years, and now they're back again and I need to buy their CDs. Do they sound like ELP? Indeed they do, every time the guy plays organ, and even in the overall sense. But as with Starcastle and Yes, it doesn't matter because it's just great music, and if you ever liked Triumvirat yourself, you will be in for a nice surprise if you give these two albums a re-listen. As for myself, I am gonna check out "Pompeii" next. I don't remember it from it's release date of 1976, perhaps I'd quit on Triumvirat by then, but Wiki tells me they had Curt Cress on drums by that time, and - again - if you are a hard-core progressive rock fan, you know him as the amazing drummer from Passport, the German jazz-rock troupe featuring the legendary Klaus Doldinger on saxophone. Passport had some cool-looking albums covers that you may also remember. Curt Cress was in his early 20s on all those records, including when he played with Triumvirat. 

I had a bit of a spending frenzy over the weekend, buying concert tickets for Alice Cooper and Judas Priest, and even Sammy Hagar if you can believe it. Grim and I are going because it's Sammy's tribute to Van Halen, with Joe Satriani on guitar. I have to be careful because it's easy to get thrown off track by thoughts of Summer activity, and I need to stay in Writer's Mode, since I have another book that is 2/3rds complete and I have to jump right back into it, to have it published in 2025. You can't write and also have fun, haha. When you write, writing is your fun. You have you keep your story in your head at all times, otherwise you're just fooling around. That's how it is for me, anyway, and it took me a long time to achieve this level of focus. So, while I will enjoy myself this Summer, at concerts and at Disneyland and in my daily routine, I will maintain a nose-to-the grindstone attitude with respect to my goals, no matter where I am. 

Musically speaking, I'm on a roll at the moment. Other recent albums include "Wonderworld" by Uriah Heep, "Nexus" by Argent, and "Rajaz" by Camel. I've been listening to the later Camel albums lately, in honor of Pat, who crossed the threshhold almost exactly a year ago. Camel was one of his favorite bands, and mine too, but he stuck with them after Peter Bardens left and I didn't. I mean, I bought "I Can See Your House From Here"(1979), and even "Nude" in 1981. But then the 80s happened, and it was Metal Time, and hard rock, with Van Halen, and Rainbow and Rush. Gone were the days of bands like Camel, for me, at least, but not for Pat. He kept listening, and now I see why. They made some brilliant records with the later lineups, even as late as 1999. If you've ever been a Camel fan, check out their next-to-last album, "Rajaz", recorded in 1999. I heard it for the first time last night, and while it doesn't sound like classic-era Camel, it retains the Latimer half of that sound. I think it was Peter Bardens who made them rock, and when they jammed on the longer tunes in the early 1970s, like "Lady Fantasy", that is the Camel we all remember. When Bardens left, and Andy Latimer had full control, he made more melancholy sounding records: slow, sad and bluesy, but without sacrificing that symphonic Camel signature. He was always the vocalist anyway, and because he had a distinctive voice, it is the link between eras for the band. His mornful vocals are the constant thread running through the classic and later eras. And of course, so is his guitar. Few players have ever been as expressive. Listen to his playing (and extended solos) on "Rajaz" and then run out and buy the album. You can find a few copies on discogs. com, though they're a bit pricey.

I think of Pat a lot because he was a close friend for half-a-century, and also because he was the only person I knew who was a progressive music fanatic like myself. Our other friends liked a few bands here and there, but Pat and I were a combined Encyclopedia of Prog, and we listened regularly. In later years, I think I even carried the torch somewhat, when he veered off into Ryan Adams territory. But it was Pat who led the way back in 1973, and it was Pat who introduced me to all the great prog bands, including Camel. He was also a huge Uriah Heep fan, and as you know, I now regard them among the Mount Rushmore of hard rock, up there with Deep Purple and Black Sabbath.

As for Argent, mentioned above, I did not follow them, but I always remembered their album "Nexus" because of the song "The Coming of Kohoutek", about a comet by that name that passed through the sky in 1973. The song was short, mostly an organ solo (and in retrospect not that great), but it was such a cool title, and the rest of the album was excellent. One of the clerks at College played it (Jon, I think), and I never forgot it. Over the years, I learned that keyboardist Rod Argent had been in The Zombies and wrote legendary songs like "She's Not There", and "Time of the Season", and in Argent the band he had a big hit with "God Gave Rock n' Roll to You". Their guitarist Russ Ballard became a songwriter-for-hire, and wrote some great tunes for Rainbow, including "Since You've Been Gone" and "I Surrender".... 

I don't have a Montgomery Clift movie this week, but I did watch "Imitation of Life"(1934) over the weekend. It was one of my Mom's favorite movies (which is how I heard of it), and it stars Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers as two widows trying to make ends meet during the Depression. Both have troubled young daughters who give the story its melodrama. As the movie opens, Beavers knocks on Colbert's door, looking for a job. She is black and works as a housekeeper. Colbert tells her she has no money for herself, let alone to hire a maid. Beavers then says she'll work for room and board, just to have a roof over her head. Claudette agrees, and the two women become friends and allies. It turns out that Louise is a great cook with a secret family recipe for pancakes. Everyone who stops by the house likes them, so Colbert, with her business sense, suggests they open a cafe and they do, in a storefront. It's an instant success, and regular customer Ned Sparks suggests they market the pancake mix in stores. As a side note, Sparks was a genius comic who surely influenced later generations, including people like Jim Carrey and the SNL casts. He is reason alone to see the movie. And his suggestion is a good one; the pancake mix takes off (selling like hotcakes, haha) and soon the two women are rich, living in a mansion. Colbert tells Louise she has enough money to buy her own mansion now, but Louise doesn't want to break up the team. Claudette is the only family she has, because now ten years have passed and her daughter has grown into a rebellious teen who "doesn't want to be black". And that's what the movie is all about, the idea of "passing for white" among light-skinned black people in the early 20th century. The actress Fredi Washington, who plays Beavers' daughter as an 18-year-old, is incredible, but the role is a heartbreaker because she's ashamed to be seen with her mother, even though Louise is now wealthy and beloved as a sort of Aunt Jemimah celebrity. And Claudette's teenage daughter (Rochelle Hudson) has her own issues, falling in love with her mother's fiancee, causing more heartbreak.

All four of the main actresses are excellent, but it's Louise Beavers' movie. Everyone has heard of Hattie McDaniel but not this lady, who should've gotten a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal. I don't want to get on my soapbox, but it irks me when guys like Spike Lee decry these roles of the past, and when products and trademarks like Aunt Jemimah and Uncle Ben are cancelled. If anything, they are business role models for anyone of any color, and to achieve what they did so long ago is amazing. More importantly, they are positive role models, much more so than folks like P. Diddy or Cardi B. My Mom had me buy this DVD twenty years ago and we watched the movie together a couple times. She always made it a point to note the performance of Louise Beavers (a fellow Cincinnatian). It's a great film and there are two versions, both on the same DVD.The second one is a 1954 reconfiguration of the original, starring Lana Turner and Juanita Moore in the lead roles. The remake was directed by Douglas Sirk and is also tremendous, but watch the original first. 

And that's basically all I know for tonight. I've been involved in the technical aspect of book creation for over two months now, so it will be fun to get back to good old first-draft writing, where you can just wing it and let the words have free reign, before you have to polish them into sentences, paragraphs and chapters. 

At least I know know how to format a book and upload the files now. In the process I learned Google Docs (simple) and Microsoft Word (fairly simple but less user friendly) and even designing on Canva and uploading files to Lulu (difficult but doable) and all of it will be much easier on the next go-round. I even learned how to request permission to re-print copyrighted material and was granted that permission, so here I go on completing Book #2, which should prove interesting, given the subject matter. Stay tuned.