Praise for the Freak Scene Dream Trilogy, including "Untitled" "Oral prose. School of Twain and Salinger. It's improvised, and its immediate and delayed echoes, its ellipses, its obsessions, make music." LARRY BECKETT, author of "Morning Glory" and "Paul Bunyan" "Michael Goldberg's sharply drawn characters, vivid musical nods, and keen eye for detail transport us back to the post-countercultural mid-1970s when sex and drugs and rock & roll were a way of life. In this third installment of the Freak Scene Dream Trilogy, antihero Writerman takes us along for the rollercoaster ride - angel dust, anyone? - while he tries to make sense of a life littered with broken hearts. A page-turner." HOLLY GEORGE-WARREN, author of "A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton" "Relive the 1970s - the music, the dope, the clothes, the books, the confused and restless sexual politics - in all their filthy glory." MARIA BUSTILLOS, author of "Dorkismo: the Macho of the Dork" and "Act Like a Gentleman, Think Like a Woman." "Michael Goldberg is comparable to Kerouac in a 21st century way, someone trying to use that language and energy and find a new way of doing it." MARK MORDUE, author of "Dastgah: Diary of a Head Trip" "Goldberg presents us with a beautiful evocation of the Seventies where the music wasn't just the soundtrack to our lives but the auteur of them. Writerman, our hero, drinks and drugs and dances to the nightingale tune while birds fly high by the light of the moon. Oh, oh, oh, oh Writerman!" LARRY RATSO SLOMAN, author of "On the Road with Bob Dylan" "Radioactive as Godzilla. RICHARD MELTZER, author of "The Aesthetics of Rock" "Penned in a staccato amphetamine grammar, its narrative is fractured and deranged, often unsettling but frequently compelling, an unsparing portrait of the teen condition: assured then despairing, would-be sex god then impotent has-been, an only child battling the wills of his domineering father and interfering mom in the anonymous, suburban fringes of Marin County." SIMON WARNER, author of "Text and Drugs and Rock'n'Roll: The Beats and Rock Culture" "So who is this protagonist anyway? Holden Caulfield meets Lord Buckley?" PAUL KRASSNER, author of "Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture" "'True Love Scars' reads like a fever dream from the dying days of the Summer of Love. Keyed to a soundtrack of love and apocalypse, Writerman pitches headlong into a haze of drugs, sex and confusion in search of what no high can bring: his own redemption. Read it and be transformed." ALINA SIMONE, author of "Note to Self" and "You Must Go and Win" "True Love Scars is deeply dialed in to rock's dichotomy of enlightening powers versus stonered party time." GREG M. SCHWARTZ, PopMatters "Michael Goldberg reminds us of the difficulties of remaining true to our own visions amidst the powerful exigencies of young adulthood." JOLIE HOLLAND, recording artist, whose albums include Catalpa, Escondida and The Living and the Dead
About the Author: So what do you wanna know? When I was a kid, rock 'n' roll and literature made life worth living. Or rather, it was literature that rocked my world-"Treasure Island," "Crime and Punishment," the Hardy Boys books, the Oz books, all those sexy 007 novels-until I turned 12, and then rock 'n' roll-The Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, The Yardbirds-blew my mind. Well girls trumped both, but that's another story. I started writing stories in sixth grade and by high school I was certain that writing was my vocation. And I did have one of those "Almost Famous" moments, writing Creem editor Lester Bangs and getting an encouraging letter back asking me to send him some record reviews (which he didn't use). Fast-forward to 1975, and I was in the thick of the punk scene, interviewing Patti Smith and The Ramones and the Talking Heads for stories that ran in the Berkeley Barb and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. I had some close calls. The Clash nearly threw me out of a San Francisco recording studio, the Sex Pistols tried to break my tape recorder, and Frank Zappa said if I was one of his fans he was in big trouble. The life of a rock journalist. Things did work out, and I spent 10 crazy years talking to everyone from George Harrison and George Clinton to Brian Wilson and Stevie Wonder for Rolling Stone where I was an Associate Editor and a Senior Writer. My writing has also appeared in Wired, Esquire, Vibe, Details, Downbeat, NME and many more. In 1994 I'd founded Addicted To Noise (ATN), the highly influential music web site. Newsweek magazine called me an "Internet visionary." I joined forces with SonicNet in 1997. I was a senior vice-president and editor in chief at SonicNet from March 1997 through May 2000. In 1997, Addicted To Noise won a Webby award for best music site, and a Yahoo Internet Life! award. While I was at SonicNet the site won Webby awards for best music site in 1998 and 1999, and Yahoo Internet Life! awards for three years running as best music site in 1998, 1999 and 2000. "Untitled" is the third book of the Freak Scene Dream Trilogy. The first two books are "True Love Scars" and "The Flowers Lied." I write a music column, The Drama You've Been Craving, for the Australian version of Addicted To Noise. Two of my essays will be in "Kerouac On Record," a book to be published by Bloomsbury in February 2018. And I publish the video-and-audio-intense culture blog, Days of the Crazy-Wild at www.daysofthecrazy-wild.com. Any other questions?