Kings Of Rock

My complimentary copy of Kings Of Rock, the Gluecifer best of/rarities collection, finally arrived the other day. It was delivered by Odin himself, who took the form of my perpetually hungover Mexican landlord. I thanked the powerful Norse God by promising a blót in his honor, but he just rolled his eyes and walked away, muttering.

One of my goals when I decided to get into this writing thing for real was to someday pen the liner notes for some really awesome band’s greatest hits CD. That I achieved this goal so early in my career is sort of mind-boggling. I mean, this kind of thing is usually reserved for established “names,” right? Who am I? I’m not David Fricke or Kurt Loder or anybody. I’m the complete yutz who couldn’t even get a book about Star Wars published.*

I feared Kings Of Rock would completely fall through somehow, like the CD would get canceled or the members of Gluecifer wouldn’t like what I wrote and go with another scribe. I’d be the Pete Best of Norwegian rock band liner notes. That sad fact would drive me to become the hopeless alcoholic I always knew I could be. I’d die penniless, alone, and reeking of the cheapest liquors on the market. They’d toss my body into the East River and call it an art installation. It would be a sickening end to a sad life.

But lo, Kings Of Rock came to pass. There’s what I wrote four or five months ago, splashed across a few small glossy pages with a handful of photos for accent. They (Gluecifer & Epic/Sony) did an awesome job putting this set together. The black and gold color scheme is classy as hell. Truly regal.

The song selection? Ace. The twenty tunes on the first disc are without question the best twenty in the Gluecifer catalog. Not a damn clunker among them. The rarities disc is unfortunately a little bit shorter and omits a few true lost classics (no “Lard Ass Hagen?” WTF!!), but goddamn if the boys didn’t pull out some incredible shit I didn’t even know existed. “Plastic Hand” makes me want to wrestle an alligator while skydiving over Fort Knox with no parachute and a vial of nitroglycerin in my pocket. It’s just…that…good.

I’m flattered, honored, and extremely proud to be involved with Gluecifer’s Kings Of Rock. This is going to be the big brag until I get a book published or film some talking head crap for a goofy basic cable retrospective show. It sucks that this CD won’t be available outside Norway until the middle of Summer, but that should give you all the more reason to finally book that trip to Oslo you’ve been thinking about taking for some time now.

No? Oh, alright. I’ll just remind you when Kings Of Rock finally does land on the shores of all the countries not currently governed by Jens Stoltenberg. If you can’t wait that long, if you absolutely must have the Gluecifer greatest hits CD as soon as possible and you don’t have three grand to drop on a plane ticket, learn Norwegian and order it here.

Endless thanks to the guys in Gluecifer—Poon, Biff, Stu, Raldo, & Danny—for asking/allowing me to do this. You’ve saved me from decades of self-loathing and a Peppermint Schnapps-related death.

* I shall expand upon that hilarious and heartbreaking story another time.