Rock and Roll All Nite!
My reading last night at Book Soup on the Sunset Strip was…well, when the stalwart Book Soup staffers—who have, sorry, Brooklyn Heights, Tribeca, Soho and SoMa, really seen it all—finally shut the doors and let out a figurative holy shit!, it was clear we’d achieved a sliver of what my book is all about.
First off, we had an SRO crowd. I’d laid in a case of Paso Robles chardonnay in emulation of Andy Prieboy’s “Jazz Crowd” (”Is there any more white wine?/How the fuck should we know?…”) The far-more-attuned-to-the-zeitgeist Book Soup staff supplied Texas fifths of Jack and Smirnoff. (All that was lacking for a true R&R experience were some Slim Jims and a few grams of coke.) Final tally: before I’d even started reading the Jack was toast (though the bottle was pretty well gone at the start of the night); when it was all over, the crowd had sucked down, max, maybe four bottles of chardonnay. Next time, I’m stocking the bar with shooters of Jagermeister.
All of which might make my reading—my first, by the way—sound like backstage at a Blue Oyster Cult concert. But it was actually very pleasant. Those who could sit, did. During the Q and A, people politely raised their hands.
On the other hand, there was this dude who’d wandered in off the Strip dressed and coiffed precisely as Jimi Hendrix, circa 1967. He flashed the peace sign at me repeatedly as I read and generally unnerved the standees in the rear. He eventually weaved forward during the Q and A, loudly proclaimed my unmitigated greatness—for which I sincerely thanked him—and generally kept the proceedings on edge.
Nevertheless, he clearly had a supportive attitude toward our collective endeavor. Plus, he kept flashing that peace sign, which was nice to see in this age of anything but. Bottom line? I say: Dude, thanks for stopping by.
In the audience were fellow canyonites Joe, David, Stuart, Peter, and Mary of Almor, purveyor of the aforementioned chardonnay; also LAUREL CANYON interviewees Michael James Jackson and Jim Roup; the righteous authors Hilary de Vries, Lindsay Graves, Steve Pond and David Rensin; plus Jon Regardie of L.A.’s Downtown News, Emmy-winning casting director Susan Bluestein and singer-songwriter Alex Davis.
A gent in a Slash/T-Rex tophat representing L.A. record producer-legend Kim Fowley was in attendance; and rounding out an already diverse audience was none other than O’Dean, Motley Crue’s singer before Vince Neil.
As you can imagine it was quite an evening—thanks again to Book Soup for precision coordination and for not freaking out.