Lost in the Grooves eventwith David Smay
Russ Forster, Jake Austen, James Porter, Gene Booth & Erin McKeanSaturday, December 4th, 7:30 PM
LOST IN THE GROOVES BOOK RELEASE PARTY!
Featuring: David Smay (Scram Magazine), Russ Forster (8-Track Mind), Jake Austen (Roctober), James Porter (Roctober), Gene Booth (Mantis), Erin McKean (Verbivore)
David Smay, the co-editor of the new book Lost in the Grooves – Scram’s Capricious Guide to Music You Missed (Routledge) joins the Chicago writers who contributed to this unique tome for an evening of music, video, reading, puppetry and free bubblegum. In celebration of this book, which acknowledges unjustly obscure recordings by famed and unknown musicians, rare videos by artists in the book (including David Alan Coe, the Chipmunks, Tony Joe White and the Who) will be screened. This will be followed by an Inside the Actor?s Studio-style interview of Mr. Smay by Ratso, the puppet host of local cable-access show Chic-A-Go-Go. Concluding the evening will be the writers reading their entries, followed by their own musical interpretations of their subject?s songs. Refreshments will include free bubblegum, recognizing Mr. Smay?s previous book on bubblegum music.
Lost in the Grooves – Scram’s Capricious Guide to Music You Missed (edited by Kim Cooper and David Smay with illustrations by Tom Neely) is required reading for all vinyl junkies and lovers of the obscure, wild, and weird. Contributors include Richard Meltzer, Rick Moody, Jim O?Rourke, Kelly Kuvo, Peter Bagge and the late Greg Shaw. Lost in the Grooves is a fascinating guide to the back alleys off the pop-music super highway, covering such gems as Peter Laughner’s “Take the Guitar Player for A Ride,” John Trubee’s “The Communists Are Coming to Kill Us,” Chad & Jeremy’s “Of Cabbages and King,” John Phillips’s “Wolf King of L.A.,” Swamp Dogg’s “Total Destruction to Your Mind,” Don Cole’s “The Outer Limits of Twang,” and Michel Magne’s “Moshe Mouse Crucifiction.” Pop music history is full of little-known musicians, whose work stands defiantly alone, too quirky, distinctive, or demented to appeal to a mass audience. This book explores the nooks and crannies of the pop-music world to unearth lost gems from should-have-been major artists (Nico, Judee Sill), lesser works by established icons (Marvin Gaye’s post-divorce kissoff album, “Here My Dear”; Prince’s post-Warner Bros. work of the’90s), or bands that simply don’t fit into neat categories (the Only Ones, Roky Erickson’s Aliens). The bands are divided into thematic sections, including bubblegum; folk-psych individualists; pop vocal bizarre; punk/new wave; outsider artists; obscurities from the stars; lo-fi/garage rock; roots Americana; and kiddie music. This book will delight any jukebox junkie or pop culture enthusiast.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Kim Cooper and David Smay are founders/coeditors of the fanzine, Scram, which is devoted to pop music obscurities. Scram was an editor’s choice in Factsheet 5 for “unusually great writing” and cited by LA Weekly as a best-of-LA publication. They are coeditors of Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth: The Dark History of Prepubescent Pop from the Banana Splits to Britney Spears.
Author Tidbits:?!
RUSS FORSTER has been involved in unjustly obscure music scenes since the mid-1980s, when he shocked audiences with his Hershey-syrup-branding band FUDGETUNNEL and put out the first Screeching Weasel LP on a tiny record label called UNDERDOG RECORDS. In the 1990s he made two music-related feature-length documentaries: So Wrong They?re Right and Tributary. His rantings and ravings have appeared in zines like Roctober, 8-Track Mind, Go Metric and Scram
Jake Austen edits Roctober; the journal of popular music?s dynamic obscurities, and (with wife Jacqueline) produces the children’s dance show Chic-A-Go-Go. His work has appeared in The Cartoon Music Book, Playboy, The Spice Girls Comicbook and Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth. His books include A Friendly Game of Poker and a forthcoming idiosyncratic history of rock on television.
Erin McKean is the Editor in Chief of US Dictionaries for Oxford University Press and the editor of the only magazine for word geeks, VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly. She is the author of Weird and Wonderful Words and More Weird and Wonderful Words. She lives in Chicago and cannot remember life before the iPod.
