And NOW for a Commercial Break...
Because books and live events are not going to sell themselves. I don't think.
Interviewers always want to know, most recently this past week when they called from Portugal to ask about BUNUEL, a live upcoming show at Amplifest in Porto, and the Killers Like Us record we released earlier on this year: “where do you find the time?”
This question invariably bamboozles me since the fact of the matter is, much like actors, successful or not, if your field of endeavor is creative, you will spend most of your time unemployed. That is, doing “work” you are not paid for nor paid back for. And if you’re lucky enough to be paid, it will not be commensurate to how much what you produced is worth, so you’re always deficit spending.
Unless…well unless you maximize productivity.
“Frankly, it is my belief that most ‘creatives’ are just lazy.” The speaker was “The Worst Boss I Ever Had” and I responded like he had said “eggs have feet”. Or better yet, “snakes make good engineers.” His comment, in my mind, showed very little understanding of creatives, snakes OR eggs, so I was talking to a crazy man and just smiled, eyeing the exit.
The key though, and this cuts to the heart of the interviewer’s question, how are you maximizing all of the opportunities that come your way? My response here, though not to him, since it took me some time to think through, was easy: I say “YES” to everything.
[P]rior to that, starting with my birth, every horrible, beautiful thing that ever happened to me, all with a practiced and unfailingly honest retelling without regards to feelings or good taste?
“YES!”
While agreeing to do everything, if we’re talking sex and drugs and rock and roll, might lead to trouble, you will miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take, to use an overused sports maxim for a sport I know nothing about.
So: yes, yes, yes, yes, only if there’s a video with it, yes, yes, yes.
However, there was one consistent NO. And it was to a fella, name of Adam Parfrey. He had wanted me to write for him. Something. Anything really. But there was a catch: no fiction.
I’m not sure why Adam, son of great character actor Woody Parfrey (think Planet of the Apes, the original), wanted this, but I suspect it started when he read my interview with Anton LaVey, he of the Church of Satan. LaVey had wearied of interviews and stopped doing them since they had only tended to contact him around Halloween. However, he responded to my call because our mailing address was, and still is, at Stanford. So, maybe, kinda, sorta, he might get a non-predictable shake in the media.
LaVey later had wanted to do more than the interview, it had gone so well, and so we were poised to do more with him when he pulled out of our no-contract deal to do a book with an unnamed LA publisher. It was Adam and his company Feral House, and I loved him for this since it was clear to me that he had done a much better job with it than I ever would have. Though it was not necessary at all, he name checked me in the Apocalypse Culture book and we had been connected ever since.
Connected? He hired me to write about a support group for human survivors of sexual assault via bestiality, an assignment that I had to ultimately decline, for every available reason. And Feral House had me write the foreword for a book on Screaming’ Jay Hawkins, but Parfrey’s big ask was for a memoir.
“No.”
“No? Why?” He was genuinely confused about why a man whose deal has sometimes included standing on stage naked would draw the line at the literary equivalent of standing on a stage naked.
“Well, I think if you tell a memoir you need to tell the g-ddamned truth. The TRUTH,” I said.
“And?”
“The truth hurts.”
Where am I now? At the first time, make that “first” time, that I know, that I was cuckolded. Ugh.
Moreover, as I thought of it, no kid wants to read even a single word about what their father has done with his penis, no matter how welcome this penis was when he did it, and so how can you tell a sex, drugs and rock and roll story and leave that out if you have kids? And I’ve got four.
Adam shrugged, it felt like, but after his death the now-head of Feral, Christina Ward, picked it up and had a ready answer: “What you’ve done with your penis is really the least of it.”
Ouch. But OK.
“If you just went up to when you started OXBOW that would probably be enough.”
So the associations with Allen Ginsberg, Ian MacKaye, Lydia Lunch, Henry Rollins, Jello Biafra, Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, Greg Ginn, Andy Warhol, along with the mobsters, pedophiles, junkies and killers of men who also wanted to kill me?
“Yeah, yeah, yeah….”
And prior to that, starting with my birth, every horrible, beautiful thing that ever happened to me, all with a practiced and unfailingly honest retelling without regards to feelings or good taste?
“YES!”
Well, if you put it like that…A Walk Across Dirty Water, And Straight Into Murderer’s Row: A Memoir made a whole hell of a lot of sense. It will be out in the late Spring 2023. Probably to coincide with the Ipecac release of OXBOW’s newest record, Love’s Holiday. I’m in the midst of writing it now. Late nights and early mornings mostly. Where am I now? At the first time, make that “first” time, that I know, that I was cuckolded. Ugh. Well, I promised the truth and so the truth I will deliver.
So THAT is the event spoken of in the subhead above?
Not exactly.
That came by way of my daily employ as Assistant Vice President at the curiously named WONGDOODY. In a fast as fuck pick up after the collapse of OZY, the kind folks there hired me with one, singular KPI: make us famous. While there have been articles in AdWeek, the LA Times, Campaign, and AdAge, so that I could hear “yes” more often than I was hearing “no” trying to place pieces, I started doing this thing I was calling The Live Five.
If you’ve read THIS substack for long enough you might recognize this as Five Easy Pieces, repackaged, but whatever.
The conceit is so simple and travels so well it made sense to do: five questions, five answers, that’s it.
But then an unexpected series of events: they hire the hotshot Grace Francis as my boss, and Grace is not only all about bringing your full self to work, so I no longer have to hide what I do outside of work, but Grace wants to up level The Live Five.
Because?
Because why NOT? So this will get its own deal under the rubric End of Nowhere, and will launch with a party in London, which you’ve already missed, and one in New York. Which you won’t if you live in New York, you’ll be in town October 6, 2022, and you’re smart enough to want to see coolness unfold all around you.
There’s a catch though, and it’s “the list”. There’s one and if you want to go, you must be on it. If you want to be on it, email me [eugenestanleyrobinson@gmail.com] and if there’s room, you’re in.
Why “if there’s room”? Because we have an attendance cap and if we exceed, though we’ve succeeded, this comes with a fee and out of my budget (now that I have such things). But I’d love to see you and add a fourth dimension to this now very flat one.
And who knows? Getting into the second memoir might be just what the doctor, and the lawyers, will order. For both of us. See you soon!