A Progress Report On Friday the 13th

Between a daily blog and an ongoing goal of finishing a book, I've been working on a number of things. I haven't posted an update on book and blog stuff in a little bit, and Friday the 13th seems the luckiest day to do that.



Since the last formal update on my book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) posted on November 20th, I've completed drafts of three more chapters. The completed drafts now total more than 100,000 words, with a current target of approximately 125,000 words. Maybe less. Maybe more. All of the supplemental chapters are done, and 95 of the 113 song chapters are done. What's really amazing is that the proposed Table of Contents has remained intact and unchanged in that time. Well, that's not like me at all, so perhaps it's a sign that I'm zeroing in on the final project. A song chapter I was about to remove because I didn't think I had anything to say about its subject wound up being the most recently-completed chapter instead. 18 chapters to go. No word yet on a potential publisher.



For the blog, I plan to return to a number of series that haven't seen new entries in a while. The series that's most overdue for a new chapter is He Buys Every Rock 'n' Roll Book On The Magazine Stands, my serial reminiscence of the rock 'n' roll magazines I read in my teens and twenties. Previous installments have covered Circus and Rolling Stone, Phonograph Record Magazine, and Bomp! Chapter Four will be dedicated to Creem magazine, but only its first paragraph has been written so far. I'm a slacker. I'm a slacker who somehow maintains a daily blog, but a slacker nonetheless. I hope to get back to this one in the near future.



A more immediate return is likely for My LP Appreciations. While I generally focus on single-song celebrations (both for The Greatest Record Ever Made! and its occasional junior partner The Other Side Of The Hit [B-Side Appreciation]), sometimes I wanna talk about my personal relationship with various long-players as well. My LP Appreciations is an umbrella category for several similar series: Love At First Spin, Groove Gratitude (A Gift Of Music), The Best Of Everything, Second-Hand Sound, and Rescued From The Budget Bin! I'm going to post a re-introduction and summary of these series, probably within the next week, and get back to writing one or another of 'em in the short term.



As a tangent to that, I'm also starting a new series called LP Cover Cavalcade. I've run a number of Comics And LP Cover Cavalcade posts in the past, collecting comic book and LP covers with a brief commentary on each, but mixed comics and rock 'n' roll posts tend to get lost in the shuffle. Sure, I think everyone should be a fan of both The Beatles and Batman, but live like ya wanna live. The first LP Cover Cavalcade will post either tomorrow or next week. Comic Book Cover Cavalcade seems likely to follow eventually.



Speaking of comics, although I haven't been in the mood to do any 100-Page FAKES! recently, that series will continue. My most recent Comic Book Retroview was October's look back at the 1966 Batman Signet paperback, and I have a bunch more comics I want to put under the ol' Comic Book Retroview spotlight.



Aside from the blog, I'm working on new short stories to submit to AHOY Comics. "The Last Ride Of The Copperhead Kid" was published last month in The Second Coming # 5, and "Guitars Vs. Rayguns," "The Picture Of Amontillado," and "The Copperhead Strikes!" have been bought and paid for, each awaiting a publication date. The folks at AHOY are considering the fate of my most recent submission, "Codename: Copperhead," and I've begun work on "Chaos At The Copperhead Club."

That's my report for this Friday the 13th. Wish me luck!

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Fans of pop music will want to check out Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, a new pop compilation benefiting SPARK! Syracuse, the home of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. TIR'N'RR Allstars--Steve Stoeckel, Bruce Gordon, Joel Tinnel, Stacy Carson, Eytan Mirsky, Teresa Cowles, Dan Pavelich, Irene Peña, Keith Klingensmith, and Rich Firestone--offer a fantastic new version of The Kinks' classic "Waterloo Sunset." That's supplemented by eleven more tracks (plus a hidden bonus track), including previously-unreleased gems from The Click Beetles, Eytan Mirsky, Pop Co-Op, Irene Peña, Michael Slawter (covering The Posies), and The Anderson Council (covering XTC), a new remix of "Infinite Soul" by The Grip Weeds, and familiar TIRnRR Fave Raves by Vegas With Randolph, Gretchen's Wheel, The Armoires, and Pacific Soul Ltd. Oh, and that mystery bonus track? It's exquisite. You need this. You're buying it from Futureman.

(And you can still get our 2017 compilation This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4, on CD from Kool Kat Musik and as a download from Futureman Records.)

Hey, Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 100 essays (and then some) about 100 tracks, plus two bonus instrumentals, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1).