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A Few Important Points

— I deleted my substack after it came to light that the company was giving money to anti-trans voices; eventually I will repost much of that content here as I attempt to relaunch jg2land; only recently have I accepted the fact that throughout the history of my freelance career this blog has been the only truly reliable structure

— my latest book A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever will be published by Lyons Press in the Fall of 2022; I think it’s going to be the best thing I’ve ever done and I hope you will agree

— they changed the interface on the wordpress post editor and I don’t know how to make that image of Muncher smaller but honestly every image of Muncher should be the size of a highway billboard

A Few Important Points

— I blog here now: jamesgreenejr.substack.com

— my latest book A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever will be published late next year by Lyons Press

— I keep talking about how much I’ve learned working on A Convenient Parallel Dimension and to that degree I’ve removed some articles from this blog that contained factual errors about our very famous ghost smashers

— I love you all

Drippings With Goo

I considered myself a pretty serious student of Ghostbusters before I started work on this book and now I can’t believe how much I’m learning. There’s still a year of labor to be done but I think the end result will really be something special. My fingers are crossed that all the ghost heads will agree.

By the way, I’m still trying to get to Manhattan to complete a leg of research. If you’d like to help, check out my GoFundMe. Donate enough scratch and you’ll receive a signed copy of this yet-to-be-titled volume when it’s complete. Thanks for even considering; there are more worthy causes for sure.

My zine Idiot Time is on hiatus for the moment while I focus on the book. If you’re thirsty for new writings, I’ve started penning the occasional article for Hard Noise. It’s a nonfiction offshoot of The Hard Times. Here’s one I wrote about the Reagan Youth song in Airheads. Here’s an interview I did with a former Dead Kennedy. And this one’s about Wendy O. Williams and Kiss.

I’m getting married in December. My heart is full of love and I can’t wait to be a wife guy. For my bachelor party I will go to a deli and eat a sandwich.

Until the next update, stay fresh, stay funky.

These Things Are Real

Well, here’s some news.

Lyons Press has contracted me to write a book about the long, storied history of the Ghostbusters films. All of ’em — the old ones, the new ones, the ones they never even made. It probably won’t be published until 2021. Friends of the blog know I tried to get this off the ground a few years ago. The fact that it’s a reality now…well, my back teeth are swimming in excitement. I can’t wait for everyone to read it.

Speaking of junk you can read, I do a zine now about bizarre tv. It’s called Idiot Time and you can subscribe for the low low price of just two dollars a month at patreon.com/idiot_time. Seven issues so far. The most recent is a tribute to Ted Knight. Hi, guy.

Also, I live in Texas now. The grocery stores are enormous.

Come Inside And Read You Can’t Come Inside

“I bet you have a lot of great stories about writing that Misfits book,” people occasionally remark, and they’re right.

Here now are those stories, collected in one easy-to-look at PDF. Who was nice / cool to me while I was making This Music Leaves Stains? Who wasn’t? What was the book tour like? Also, selected pieces of Misfits lore deleted from Stains that you might not be overly familiar with. Please, come inside and read You Can’t Come Inside.

If you want to absorb this thing for free, be my guest. If you want to give me money for it, wow, that’d be fucking cool. Think up an amount and Paypal or Venmo jgreenejr at gmail dot com.

Click the cover image or click this –> You Can’t Come Inside

The photograph on page 42 was taken by Rob Farren, whose name was accidentally omitted from the credits. James Greene, Jr. regrets this error. James Greene, Jr. also regrets the typos on pages 6 and 14.

Thanks for indulging me. I love you all.

OMG, It’s The Brave Punk World 2017 Promo Event Schedule

Come see me read from, answer questions about, and sign copies of my latest book, Brave Punk World: The International Rock Underground From Alerta Roja to Z-Off, at the following venues. No, the cat will not be there.

11/16 – Quimby’s Bookstore (Brooklyn, NY) 8PM
11/24 – Books at Park Place (St. Petersburg, FL) 6PM
12/09 – Shakespeare & Co (Missoula, MT) 1PM

This is it, folks. No other live dates this year (no one else would have me!), so please come if you can. I honestly genuinely wanna interact with you all.

Like The Kraken Before It, Brave Punk World Is Released

My new book, Brave Punk World: The International Rock Underground From Alerta Roja to Z-Off, is now officially out, released as of October 15, 2017. It’s 350-ish pages exploring the history and development of punk rock music in regions outside the United Kingdom & United States, regions such as Asia, the U.S.S.R., Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Africa, Central America, South America, North America, and Oceania. Don’t worry, there are pictures.

This book is a labor of love I spent the past couple of years laborin’ on almost every minute of every day and I’m very excited for it to be out and potentially in your hands. So go get it at Amazon or Rowman dot com. Or some other place, if you find it there. Barnes & Noble? Barnes & Barnes?

Good news if you live in New York City or the surrounding area: at 8 P.M. on November 16, Quimby’s Bookstore in Brooklyn will be hosting yours truly for a Brave Punk World reading and signing. You will also be able to ask me questions, questions which I will answer. A real Q&A!

More promo events to be announced soon, I hope, in places not unlike New York City (and maybe a few very unlike New York City). Yeah, I know I said I wouldn’t be doing live public appearances for this book, but guess what? Things changed! So stay tuned!

ALSO, if you contributed to the Brave Punk World research fund last year on a rewards level (one or more autographed books), your rewards are coming to you in the next two to four weeks. Thank you so much for your patience and thanks to every single person who donated, rewards level or not.

Hey, big fat thanks to everyone who did anything to support or encourage this book and my writing in general. Wouldn’t be here without youse.

Happy reading!

Unsolicited Dougie Jonesin’ On “Twin Peaks: The Return”

SPOILER ALERT: there might be spoilers in this.

– the nightmare never really ends, time is anything it wants to be, reality may be actively working against you; these are the sentiments I take away from season three of “Twin Peaks,” an eighteen hour tapestry that’s as frustrating as it is arresting and interesting; if you agree life is more about the journey than the destination, hop in, because we might end up at the DMV

– ask me why the original “Twin Peaks” strikes a chord with so many viewers and I’ll theorize it lies in the even braiding of various fascinating strands: the inherent kitsch of Anytown, U.S.A., the seamy underbelly of Anytown, U.S.A., the Pacific Northwest’s foggy weirdness, a police procedural, and a bevy of legitimately intriguing townies; “Peaks ’17” skews that balance as scores of principle characters and their stories are pushed aside for jaunts with new cast members, lengthy views into unsettling paranormal screen savers, or bizarre non-moments; the art to be found in the sequence where Robert Forster makes a 15 minute Skype call in real time is the lack of art

– David Lynch is critic-proof, of course; perhaps the only way his fans would cry foul is if he’d done anything conventional for the new “Twin Peaks”; that said, the decision to bury our hero, Agent Dale Cooper, in a doppelgänger story line wherein he is not himself at all for the majority of the season while relegating our other beloved icon Audrey Horne to a handful of similarly out-of-character sequences comes across in some ways as cruel (especially if this is in fact the last “Peaks” ever, as Lynch has suggested); it feels like maybe we’re being punished for enjoying these people too much

– don’t worry, we spent plenty of time with Lucy and Andy; you’ll be happy to know they’ve somehow become even stupider

– the game is afoot from the first episode, after a character declares that very unpopular “Peaks” staple James Hurley has “always been cool”; David Lynch has seen your “fuck James Hurley” memes

– when fans say “Twin Peaks: The Return” is unlike anything on television, they’re correct; it trusts its audience implicitly, assuming from them a specific brand of loyalty and intelligence; also, many of the aforementioned journeys into unexplained realms are uniquely hypnotic; the program may vex you but it’s rarely boring to look at, even when a guy is just sweeping a floor

– the remark has been made that, thanks to his role in this, Jim is now the Belushi with the more revered body of work; this is only because season three of “Twin Peaks” is longer than all of John Belushi’s films combined

– the final two episodes introduce a few wonderful and brilliantly conclusive ideas, only to pull them back and present something else; Lynch is as Lynch does, and that itself may be the true point of this coffee soaked exercise

– there are some wigs in this thing, hoo boy; Spirit Halloween shoulda been thanked in the credits; to be fair, I don’t know how to make a wig (I also don’t know how to make prestige television)

– at eighteen hours you’d think they would have found room to throw in Bill Pullman wailin’ on a saxophone but no such luck; at least we get (the) Nine Inch Nails and Edward Louis Vedder Severson

Everything You Want To Know About Brave Punk World But Are Too Afraid Or Lazy To Ask

My second book, Brave Punk World: The International Rock Underground From Alerta Roja to Z-Off, is about to go to press and is scheduled to be released mid-October. Here now, an info dump covering pertinent deets.

What’s the elevator pitch?

Punk rock may have started in the United Kingdom and United States, but it certainly didn’t stay in either country. The genre flew around the globe like a contagion, touching off simultaneous movements in nearly every market imaginable. Performing punk rock in many of these places wasn’t just rebellious, it was legitimately dangerous, thanks to regimes both oppressive and brutal. Brave Punk World immerses readers in these foreign scenes, describing the lifestyles and art of passionate, hard-charging groups who remain relative secret to the punk majority but who are just as crucial as the Ramones or the Sex Pistols. Punk diehards and travel enthusiasts with a taste for chaos will enjoy the country-by-country cultural explorations and wild stories offered within these pages.

How long is it?

Listings on the Internet say 324 pages but the most recent manuscript draft I was given to proofread says 365. So somewhere in that area.

Are there pictures?

Yes. Enough to keep you flippin’ (I think).

Is every punk band from every country in the world covered?

Of course not, a book that robust and in depth would probably be six times as long. Though I did my absolute best attempting to outline the birth of punk across Asia, the U.S.S.R. & Eastern Bloc, Western Europe, Africa, Central & South America, North America, and Oceania, some regions and countries are absent because they proved too difficult for me to accurately and fairly convey, or I ran out of time, or both.

Name some of the bands you talk about in this thing.

The Saints, the Stalin, W.I.T.C.H., Black Power, Los Violadores, the Buttocks, Tits, Dirt Shit, Dead Nittels, Proud Scum, Free Sex Shop, Anal Babes, Ebba Grön, Dangerous Rhythm, Third World Chaos, George Imbecile & The Idiots, Brutal Verschimmelt, the Comes, Ghoul, Lip Cream, Ulster, Los Estómagos, Los Prisioneros, Size, the Dishrags, Solución Mortal, Fifth Column, Teenage Head, National Wake, Hubble Bubble, J.M.K.E., Kuzle. That really is quite a small sampling of the galaxy included.

You actually talk to any of these bands?

Yeah, some of ’em.

You go to any foreign countries for your research?

Yes, I went to Mexico, Norway, Japan, and Brazil (though that last one didn’t work out very well). A few years prior to the conception of Brave Punk World, when I was just some drip curious about other lands, I spent small portions of time in Germany, France, and Canada (high points were usually the hours spent in record shops or conversations with new friends about punk rock).

Oh, that’s right, you had crowd funding for your research last year. If I contributed to that on a rewards level, when will I get my book(s)?

The second they’re off the press! Figuratively, of course. I will not be at the pressing place. I don’t even know where it is. As soon as I get my hands on ’em, I send ’em to you.

Where can I pre-order Brave Punk World?

Click right here. Use the promo code RLFANDF30 to save 30% off.

Will you tour for it?

If the book is optioned to be a trade paperback, yes. Currently Brave Punk World is only scheduled for hardcover release; as such, it will be marketed toward libraries and colleges and probably won’t appear at your local book retailer. The opposite will be true if the book becomes a trade paperback. Then this thing’ll be all over the place, and I will have reason to traverse this great land of ours so I may promote my work in person at every Uncle Timmy’s Book Hole and READIN’ TOWN that will have me.

What factors play into the hardcover being optioned for paperback?

If the hardcover sells a metric shit ton. So if you’d really like me to come to your town and nervously read out of Brave Punk World at some point in 2018 or 2019, buy the hardcover (or convince someone else to, or both).

Will you do anything to promote the hardcover release?

Yes. Specifically, interviews with whatever media outlets come calling and appearances at whatever institutions of higher learning will have me.

What’s the advanced word? Is this book actually any good?

Rolf Yngve Uggen, a.k.a. Raldo Useless, guitarist for groups like the Lust-O-Rama and Gluecifer, read the thing and said, “I absolutely inhaled this book! Greene’s writing is filled with enthusiastic taste and warmth and fascinating tales of anti-establishment action.” What more encouragement do you need?

Here’s The Brave Punk World Pre-Order (& Other Info) Post

The hardback edition of my new book, Brave Punk World: The International Rock Underground From Alerta Roja to Z-Off, is now available for pre-order. CLICK RIGHT HERE to access the magical pre-order page and use the secret wizard’s code RLFANDF30 to get 30% off list price.

Brave Punk World (due for release this October) explores the evolution of punk rock outside the United Kingdom and United States, tracking how the genre took shape in regions like Asia, the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Bloc, Western Europe, Africa, Central and South America, North America (yes, there are countries other than the United States in North America!), and Oceania. It’s over 320 pages long and even offers fifteen pictures. You know how many pictures are in The Grapes of Wrath? Zero!

Is every single band from every single country covered in Brave Punk World? Of course not. That book would be six times as long. Unfortunately neither I nor the publisher could commit to that. Despite this handicap, advanced word is positive. Rolf Yngve Uggen, star rocker of Lust-O-Rama and Astroburger, signed off on the following pull quote: “I absolutely inhaled this book! [The] writing is filled with enthusiastic taste and warmth and fascinating tales of anti-establishment action.”

Yes, my friends, hot buttered anti-establishment action. There’s also sex, drugs, rock n’ roll, murder, suicide, robots, bluejeans, bowling, saran wrap, and one “CHiPs” reference. Larry Wilcox, I wish I knew how to quit you.

So there you have it. Pre-order Brave Punk World. Or don’t. It’s your life.