Far be it for me to disparage anybody from going out there and making a little coin from their past glories, so I won’t. I’ll only point out that rockers relationship with the radio is not nearly as positive as the BBs like to make it.

The Kinks, “Around the Dial”

One time, radio was used not only to shill for advertisers, but also to break out new acts. A DJ would create the set list, which led, of course, to the record companies attempting to influence them, from free records to payola. In fact, America’s teenager, Dick Clark, was caught in a payola scandal early in his career and survived it better than Alan Freed, the man credited with helping whelp rock and roll.

Over time, the power to determine what would be played moved up the chain of command, to the radio station, and then to the station’s owners. Now, DJs are a thing of the past, except at college stations. And all we’re left with is the Kinks’ looking “Around the Dial” for their favorite DJ “who always played the best records / who never followed any trends.”

Rush, “The Spirit of Radio”

This version is from their Rotterdam tour in 2007, which for some reason features a man in a chicken suit basting roast chickens. But even they have to admit this: “One likes to believe in the freedom of music, / But glittering prizes and endless compromises / Shatter the illusion of integrity.”

Queen, “Radio Ga Ga”

Queen’s “Radio Ga Ga” (the title of which was appropriated by a certain Lady), became a touchstone for the group when they performed it live at Live Aid in 1985. This was the ultimate charity concert. Major stars performed on stages in London and New York (and Phil Collins, then at the height of his solo career, played at both, hopping the Concorde supersonic jet to do so).

But Queen’s performance was especially memorable, not only for Freddy Mercury’s stage presence, but for the sight of 79,000 people clapping in unison, their hands held high, during the chorus. Mass demonstrations led by a messianic figure is frightening, but in this context, it’s hella exhilarating.

It may have not been ”20 Minutes that Changed Music” but it was still a great performance.

Bruce Springsteen, “Radio Nowhere”

For someone who sang “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)” it should be no surprise that the Boss would follow that with “Radio Nowhere.”

The Clash, “This Is Radio Clash”

Rock’s penchant for rebellion found its expression by The Clash’s “This Is Radio Clash,” which a critic called the first British hip hop song. The version below was the first public performance, on Tom Snyder’s “Tomorrow” show. (To keep this post manageable, I won’t go into the details of this awesome show, else we’ll be here all day.)

Elvis Costello, “Radio, Radio”

Elvis Costello gets himself banned from "Saturday Night Live". Big whoop.

As a result, Costello was banned from “SNL” for 12 years, which shows you just what assholes Columbia Records and Loren Michaels can be, because in his protest, Costello creates more publicity for himself and the show than he would have if he behaved like a good boy, and “SNL” gained an undeserved reputation as an edgy “must see” show that it has since happily pissed away.

Vimeo has Elvis’ “Radio Radio” performance. If you want to depress yourself, watch Elvis repeat the stunt when the Beastie Boys played on “SNL’s” 25th anniversary show. Believe me, this is not half as energetic and cool as the original.

BONUS: Culture eats its own. St. Vincent did a “reverse Costello” on Conan O’Brian, which worked since it landed the group a spot on this post, and Weird Al Yankovic pulled this out of his bag of tricks during a concert when his performance of “White and Nerdy” ran into technical troubles.

The Ramones, “Do You Remember Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio?”

What do you get when you mix the Ramones with the Wall of Sound style? We need change and we need it fast before rock becomes just a thing of the past cause lately it all sounds the same to me. In the end, most of the Ramones are dead, and so is most of rock.

(This live version from the Old Grey Whistle Testis more in the Ramones style)

Dire Straits, “Money for Nothing”

This all-star version was performed with Sting, Elton John and Eric Clapton at the Prince’s Trust Concert in 1986.

Wall of Voodoo, “Mexican Radio”

This has nothing to do with the subject at hand, but it’s a bizarre video

Do you remember rock and roll radio? originally appeared on Bill Peschel on May 10, 2012.

This is a tale of two books: one I saw in the Books-A-Million and the other I just picked up at the library. Both are part of series in which there are multiple authors or books, and yet how they were treated were diametrically opposed.

The library book was “The Disunited States of America” by Harry Turtledove, published in 2006 by Tor Books. My wife picked it up because of the title. She reads a lot of dystopian fiction, and I’m playing with a novel idea about the future of the United States (hint: it doesn’t end well), so Harry’s book was right in our wheelhouse (look for that phrase to become hated in about another year — I’ve been hearing it a lot lately).

Don't get me started about the cover. You really don't want me to start talking about the cover.

“Disunited” is the fourth book in the Harry’s “Crosstime Traffic” series. He has a lot of series, which is what you can do when you spend your time writing books instead of blogposts.

How can you tell? By this line at the bottom of the cover:

Excited about the series, yet?

That’s it. Now, granted, that’s a start, but it shouldn’t have ended there. The copy on the inside flap discusses this book, but not any of the others.

What to find out what the other titles are? Here’s the “Other books by the author” page:

They have “Disunited” listed, so I guess books 1-3 are above them, right?

(“Conan of Venarium“>Conan of Venarium” is not part of the series, but maybe Harry should consider putting the Cimmerian in an alternative history United States. “Conan of Cleveland”? “Conan of Venice Beach?” I’d pay to read that. Anyway…)

This is the type of book page if you’re a literary writer who doesn’t muck about in series or genre fiction. Good thing he used “Darkness” in six of the titles, else you wouldn’t get the hint that that’s a different series as well. And are the Turteltaub books part of a series, too? Sort of. “Justinian” stands alone, but the other three are part of another series.

In other words, Tor didn’t do Harry any favors in promoting this series.

Which brings me to “Star Wars.”

As you know, there are a few novels out there that extend and deepen George Lucas’ universe. What I didn’t realize was just how many freaking books there were out there.

How did I find out? I saw it in the book.

Every "Star Wars" novel, right back to "Splinter in a Mind's Eye" organized by chronology.

Here’s a closeup of the third page, so you can tell how it was organized:

And not a single Jar-Jar nor Ewok title in sight.

Now, I don’t read Star Wars’ novels, but if I did, this would get me excited. I’d lock into a particular time period and go down the list. Heck, I’d probably Xerox the list and keep it at hand, like I do for Stephen King and Agatha Christie (I don’t have to do that for Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett, because, well, I have all of theirs).

And that, my friends, is what showmanship is about. A little more information, prettily designed, help give the author a presence in the reader’s mind, a little “whoa, I never expected that,” to encourage the reader to check out the rest of the books in the series.

Now, I don’t mean to rag on Tor Books. They were just doing what every other publisher is doing. LucasBooks is an imprint of Del Rey Books, a division of Ballantine, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this idea didn’t come from someone on the Lucas side of the fence.

But publishers can’t afford to be hidebound, not when authors have alternatives, such as publishing their books themselves. Now that authors can afford to reject publishers’ advances, publishers have responded by promoting their marketing skills. Now they’ll have to prove it, and from the look of things, their record of promoting John Locke and Amanda Hocking have been mixed.

What authors could learn from Star Wars and Tor Books originally appeared on Bill Peschel on April 26, 2012.

Take this page from the April 16 book review page of Time magazine. Author Charlotte Rogan can be pretty proud of the rave review of her novel “The Lifeboat.” Maybe even to the point of framing it.

Too bad Time didn’t have a copy editor check the page before sending it to press.

The box to the right of the cover contains information about the book cover’s file name, a bar code and the percentage scale, and I’m pretty sure that’s something Time’s readers didn’t need to know.

Worse, the boxes appear at the bottom of the page, obscuring the book covers to four more brief reviews.

When a reader sees an error like this, it raises the question of how many other errors are in the magazine, problems that can be more serious than not checking a page to make sure all the elements are in place.

In the news business, you only have one chance to do it right. Your reputation depends on it, and cutting back one staffer too many might be a short-term gain, but it can hurt you in the long run.

(Thanks to Charles Apple, whose “Why X Needs A Copy Editor” posts inspired this one.)

How Time magazine sinks a seafaring book review originally appeared on Bill Peschel on April 19, 2012.

Springtime in Hershey

Have a happy day!

A touch of spring in Hershey originally appeared on Bill Peschel on April 13, 2012.

Wrong Samuel Butler

“Some were composed of shining horns,
More precious than the unicorn’s.
Some were of wax, where ev’ry vein,
And smallest fibre were made plain”

? Butler described how the mob met to consider their fate. One man argued for their preservation, suggesting ?

“Methinks unjustly we complain,
If ladies rather chuse to handle
Our wax in dildo than in candle.”

After all, he argued,

“For, neighbours, is’t not all one, whether
In dildoes or shoes they wear our leather?”

Another man took an opportunity to take a poke at France and pointed out:

“For soldiers, maim’d by chance of war,
We artificial limbs prepare;
Why then should we bear so much spite
To lechers maim’d in am’rous fight?”
That what the French send for relief,
We thus condemn as witch or thief?
By dildoe, Monsieur there intends
For his French pox to make amends;”

But then someone pointed out that, against dildoes, man (ahem) can’t measure up:

“Curst be the wretch, who found these arts
Of losing us to women’s hearts;
For will they not henceforth refuse one
When they have all that they had use on?”

Alas, the council was convinced, and

“Priapus thus, in box opprest,
Burnt like a phoenix in her nest;
But with this fatal difference dies,
No dildoes from the ashes rise.”

“Dildoides” was a popular poem, and its presence provided the solution to a mystery behind the popularity of a two-volume set of collected pieces called the “Works of the Earls of Rochester and Roscommon,” published 40 years after “Dildoides” appeared.

The Works had presented a puzzle to antiquarians, who wondered why it went through more than 20 editions throughout the 18th century. Then someone took the trouble to page through them, and found, in the back, that an enterprising printer had tucked in several poems on a subject vastly different from the rest of the “Works.”

In addition to “Dildoides,” was found “The Discovery,” in which a man hiding in a lady’s bedroom watches her pull out her “Tool,/ Much like to that with which Men Women rule” and “Apply’d where I’m asham’d to tell,/ And acted what I could have done as well.”

With helpful illustrations if you didn't know how to read.

Samuel Butler rises to the occasion (1672) originally appeared on Bill Peschel on April 13, 2012.

I’ve been thinking about some principles I want to pass on to my kids. Because I want to leave something behind that’s portable, flavorful and pungent, other than my ashes.

One of those maxims is to create something. Every day if possible.

And this is where it begins.

The kick in the pants we need to get things started, from ZeFrank originally appeared on Bill Peschel on April 12, 2012.

Charles Manson: 1969 and 2011

One aspect of those murders could have been created by a writer calculated to set off the paranoia alarms: that the victims were randomly chosen. Five people (and an unborn child) were killed at 10050 Cielo Drive, Beverly Hills, because Charles Manson sent Tex Watson there and “totally destroy everyone in [it], as gruesome as you can,” because he had a beef with the home’s previous residence. The next night, the LaBianca’s were murdered because they lived next door to a house the Family had visited the previous year.

Totally random. And fate cuts both ways. While many people claimed they could have been at Cielo Drive, here are the stories that I’ve been able to confirm, written for “Writers Gone Wild” and “Hollywood Gone Wild.”

Chance Saves Jerzy Kosinski (1969)

Jerzy Kosinski

Kosinski was flying from Paris to Los Angeles. It was an exhausting flight, but he was looking forward to relaxing at the home of a fellow Polish émigré. When his plane stopped for a layover at New York’s JFK Airport, his luggage was taken off accidentally. He was told that he had to go through Customs to get them back. By the time the mess was sorted out, the plane took off without him.

Kosinski spent the night in New York, and learned the next day that his friends in the home in Benedict Canyon, owned by Roman Polanski, had been murdered by the followers of Charles Manson. Polanski was in Paris making a movie, but his wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered.

Also killed was Voytek Frykowski, a young man from Poland who Kosinki not only knew, but eight months before, had introduced to Abigail Folger. Voytek had fallen in love with the 25-year-old heiress to the Folger coffee fortune, and they had driven across the country, ending up at the Cielo Drive house. But their relationship was ending, and she had been working up the courage to leave him.

Eight years later, Kosinski wrote about the Manson murders in “Blind Date.” He did it “because it is a good reminder of how unpredictable our lives really are. And how Cielo Drive, in Los Angeles, where they all died, typifies our collective predicament. Movie stars, representing Hollywood! Voytek, representing the hopeful immigrant; Abigail Folger, one of the great heiresses of American life; Jay Sebring, who came from the industry of beauty; and, of course, the peaceful house, the ultimate luxury, the ultimate removal from society. And yet there you have it ? Blind Date.”

(From “Hollywood Gone Wild”)

Helter Shelter

It was the party to miss in 1969. During the height of the Summer of Love, actress Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of Roman Polanski, and four others were brutally murdered at her home in the Hollywood hills by followers of Charles Manson. The murders sent shock waves through Hollywood and many claimed that fate kept them from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. So many, in fact, that one wag observed that if they had all showed up, there wouldn’t have been any room in the house to commit the murders.
But there were four who really could been at 11150 Cielo Drive that hot August night:

Jacqueline Susann and Rex Reed

Steve McQueen and Robert Vaughn from "Bullit"

Charles Manson and Me originally appeared on Bill Peschel on April 12, 2012.

First, there’s “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” a documentary about an 85-year-old sushi master, who devoted his life to making perfect raw fish foods. It seems to be about mastering a craft, about dedication, about focusing, all things I have trouble with.

Here’s the trailer and a clip from the movie:

Next, I must confess that I’ve never liked Sean Penn. I don’t like his politics, I don’t like his cozying up to socialist dictators, I don’t like his behavior, period.

But then he channels Robert Smith of the Cure, mixes in a Talking Heads song, a Nazi past that I associate with “Everything is Illuminated”, and I want to see “This Must Be The Place.”

Simon Pegg is one of my favorite actor-writers, and although he only acted in “A Fantastic Fear of Everything,” it has that writers-caught-up-in-weirdness vibe that reminds me of “Stranger Than Fiction.” (A wonderful film).

And, since I just dropped a story about Jack Kerouac, “On the Road” and Kristen Stewart, here’s the trailer for that little movie:

So what are you looking forward to? Avengers?

Movies I’d like to see: Jiro, Sean Penn, Simon Pegg originally appeared on Bill Peschel on April 10, 2012.

"On the Road" is finally being made into a movie, starring Kristen Stewart's breasts.

After World War II, the literary world waited for the next Hemingway-Fitzgerald generation to appear. With television putting authors into a brighter spotlight, the media world had changed since the 1920s. Ernest never had to answer questions for the rest of his life about the Lost Generation, and a wildly drunk F. Scott never slurred his political beliefs on television.

Kerouac did both.

The rise of “On the Road” began with an unexpected rave from The New York Times. Its regular reviewer, Orville Prescott, would have panned the novel, but he was on vacation. It was his substitute, who was sympathetic to them, who declared “Road” an “authentic work of art” and Kerouac the “principal avatar” of the “beat generation.”

Reporters and reviewers began paying attention to the book. Hollywood smelled a hit movie and an offer of $100,000 for the movie rights was floated, but rejected in hopes of a better offer. Rumors surfaced that Brando himself was interested in playing Dean Moriarty, the charismatic cocksman based on Neal Cassady.

Then the backlash hit. The rights were sold for $25,000, but the company went bankrupt and the movie was never made. Middlebrow critics attacked the book. Moriarty was called a “T-shirt Ahab of the automobile.” Kerouac’s hipsters were on “a road . . . that leads nowhere.” Even in San Francisco, the newspaper’s gossip columnist called the Beats “pathetic, self-pitying, degenerate bums.”

Kerouac, meanwhile, found himself overwhelmed by the parties and interviews, and the parade of predatory women who saw him as Moriarty, rather than, more accurately, the passive narrator, Sal Paradise. “I don’t know who I am any more,” he wailed.

Kerouac wrote 24 more books, but he was tagged as a Beat writer. He died in 1969 at 47 from the effects of alcoholism, but he had reached a dead-end with “On the Road.”

It didn't help that William S. Burroughs fought Kerouac over who coined "the Beats" first.

Jack Kerouac Gets Run Over (1957) originally appeared on Bill Peschel on April 10, 2012.

Setting out the mystic dyes while in back the ritual bath is prepared for the ovoid sacrifices.

But over the years, the camera has served as my visual diary, because I spend enough time writing as it is. Besides, how can I describe what the kids did when I can show it?

I wish I could create stuff like this, just for the fun of creating.

Also, I’m from the “shoot a lot of pictures and see what comes out” school, which means I can see the picture below and see in my children something of their future, as well as what I think I gave them. It can be as specific as the flow of their hair, or the bulbous Peschel nose, but it can also be a sedate way of looking at the world, only with the anxiety strained out (I hope).

After we cleaned up, Lily wanted to dye her tongue. I let her; I’m that kind of dad. So long as it doesn’t result in an amputation or a tattoo, I’ll let them try anything, since experience is the best teacher (except for tattoos. We told them they’ll have to join the Navy for that).

So, Lily wanted to see what she looked like in the mirror, and I took some shots, ending with this one. There are very few pictures of me with my kids, so I have to hope that, after I’m gone, they’ll look at the scrapbooks and realize I was there all along, framing their lives.

Pay no attention to that man behind the camera originally appeared on Bill Peschel on April 9, 2012.