400 of these things! And the hits just keep on comin'!
As Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) bops on past its 400th post, let's look around, back, and forward.
My review of The Monkees' fabulous 2016 album Good Times! remains, by far, the most-viewed post from Boppin' # 1-399. The Monkees have been popular here; each of my top five most-viewed posts were specifically about The Monkees, and the sixth most-viewed was also related to The Monkees, written in the wake of disappointment when they were snubbed yet again by The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. The remainder of the all-time Boppin' Top 10 concerned Big Star, Batman, The Monkees again, and Main Street Records in Brockport, New York. So, with seven of my all-time Top 10 connected to Micky, Davy, Peter, and Michael, it's pretty clear what a majority of visitors to this blog want to see: More Of The Monkees!
I have two new Monkees posts forthcoming. The first of these will only be available to those who support this blog on Patreon. For as little as $2 a month, patrons of Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) receive one exclusive bonus post each month; the subscriber-only posts will not be published publicly for at least one month after distribution to patrons, and probably not even quite that soon. My December exclusive on The Ramones is not currently slated for public showing at all, my January bonus on The Kinks will not be seen on the blog until at least late spring, and my February post on The Monkees will be private until at least late summer. And that February private post should be a good one, as my Virtual Ticket Stub Gallery will recall the time This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio co-host Dana Bonn and I saw The Monkees--Micky, Peter, Michael--in concert in Buffalo in 2012. Both of us regard that show as one of the best concerts we were ever privileged to see. Patrons can read all about it in February.
My ongoing series The Greatest Record Ever Made will also be getting to a specific Monkees record some time in the near future. TGREMs are a lot of fun to write, so expect many more of those, including platters that matter from Wilson Pickett, KISS, The Ramones, Chuck Berry, and a cast of several.
I'm a bit surprised (and pleased) by the popularity of my Batman's Degrees Of Separation series, so that will continue at some point. The Everlasting First, the A-Z reminiscences of my first exposures to some specific singers and superheroes, will also resume; they're time-consuming, but I like doing them, so expect the two-part K Is For KID ETERNITY and THE KINKS sometime in February. Probably. I had intended to return to my de facto autobiography, Singers, Superheroes, And Songs On The Radio, picking up the story where we left off (September 1970); I'm not sure when that will resume, since I'm mulling over whether or not I should try to turn the whole thing into a book instead. Pipe dream for now, but from small things, mama...! There will continue to be tangents to that subject on this blog. Honestly, all of the Virtual Ticket Stub Gallery and The Everlasting First pieces are part of that larger series of autobiographical posts. Same can be said for The Monkees Bring The Summer: A Girl I Knew Somewhere, my Teenage Wasteland piece on music I listened to in my teens, The Road To GOLDMINE, and I've Got The Music In Me (And That's Where It's Gonna Stay): all pieces of me and my life, put into pretty words for your reading pleasure. Those give me the most satisfaction in writing, so those will certainly continue here.
The Notebook Notions, a series based on the notebooks I filled with half-baked, quarter-baked, raw, and freshly-killed ideas when I was a fledgling young would-be writer, will also come back. Next up in that series will likely be Hornet Enterprises, my teen scheme to create a worldwide publishing empire based on superhero pulp fiction and naked women. I just found a bunch of the original, lost notebooks, so I'll be scouring them for blog inspirations. If I find my two college journals, I just might reprise whole sections of them here. Yeah, even some of the embarrassing sections--the demands of a daily blog force you to shed your shame pretty early in the game. Gonna be diggin' out some more old artwork, too. Comicbook Retroviews will look at DC 100-Page Super-Spectaculars, and--who knows?--I might even go back and finish my abandoned Goldmine piece on Nuggets and the reappraisal of '60s garage punk rock 'n' roll.
What else? I don't know! That's half the fun. Each day is a blank screen to be filled. I continue to treat this blog as if it had a vast audience, and I honor the commitment to post at least one piece every single day. I've exhausted my digital archives, so just about everything you see on the blog in 2017 will either be new, or at least something old I liked enough to [gulp] re-type. Ugh! We'll be talking about the 40th anniversary of The Flashcubes, the return of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio to terrestrial airwaves, Suzi Quatro, Vampirella, and a bunch of other things I haven't even thought about yet. I've given you 400 posts in just over a year. And I'm just gettin' started.
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