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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.

August 3, 2018

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.

November 7, 2017

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.

October 23, 2017

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!

June 7, 2017

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.

April 30, 2017

No Recess!: The (Online) (Music) Magazine (Pic Unrelated)

A few very esteemed colleagues and I have started a new publication dedicated to the wonders of melody and measure, recorded and otherwise, called No Recess! (it’s a more concise Nirvana reference than We Hate Ourselves And Want To Die). I’m contributing on the weekly tip. My first three joints:

– a thing about ’90s grunge n’ roll band O-Matic

– a thing about the scoring of various Dracula films

– a thing about Paul Shaffer’s nutso solo albums

Don’t just read my junk, though, read every savory morsel of No Recess! because everyone writing for it is Actually Good™. Thanks for your interest and see you in the “well, they seemed funny when I was six” pages.

April 3, 2017

Random Photos Of Potential Interest From A.D. 2015-16

Part of a Star Wars display at the Mall of America Lego store in Bloomington, MN. There are some artistic liberties occurring here, which I encourage.

Incredibly sexual centerpiece at the Mall of America Peeps store. Should marshmallow be this arousing?

My best friend John owning it in the style of his birth city (the Bronx).

A very beautiful lake in Stockholm, Wisconsin.

I attended a wedding looking like this (and I wasn’t thrown out!).

Abandoned rubber chicken in the mailbox area of my Orlando apartment complex. Never got the full story on this sensational find.

Main entrance of Florida’s infamous Howey Mansion. I was granted exclusive access when I wrote a story about it for Orlando Weekly.

Angry mid ’90s Rolling Stone reader.

Orlando area toll plaza decorated for Halloween.

Record store regrets.

Street art spotted deep in Mexico.

Some of my roommate’s nonsense.

Some of my own nonsense.

March 7, 2017

I Finished Brave Punk World

The manuscript for Brave Punk World: The International Rock Underground From Alerta Roja to Z-Off was due in early January. I completed it last week. Two months seems like quite a delay when you’re working on anything, but no one would talk about Chinese Democracy in the tones that they do if it had only been sixty days late.

Three hundred and fifty-ish pages turned in, give or take. Enough pictures to keep things interesting (I hope). Of course I feel relief getting it wrapped up, but those waves are cut with streaks of “I forgot to discuss x or touch on y, and I shoulda expanded upon z.” Similar emotions materialized once my first book, This Music Leaves Stains, was in the can. Par for the course, I guess. Interestingly enough, several aspects of Stains that I view as lacking have yet to come up in critiques. Will the same hold true for this book ass book?

Got me. All I know is I worked my crank off on BPW, it’s pretty close to what I envisioned when I pitched the thing to Rowman & Littlefield, and I can’t wait for everyone to read it when it comes out in OCTOBER OF 2017.

Below, the cover.

In case you’ve been wondering, the book is divided into seven sections by region—Asia, U.S.S.R. & Eastern Bloc, Western Europe, Africa, Central & South America, North America, and Oceania.

More info later. As always, I thank you for your readership and support.

September 27, 2016

Q: Does Your Book On The Way Punk Rock Developed Outside The U.K. & U.S. Have A Title Yet & If So What Is That Title?

A: Yes. The title is Brave Punk World: The International Rock Underground From Alerta Roja to Z-Off. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you this thing will be published by Rowman & Littlefield in October of 2017. I’m sure!

Thank you for your continued interest and support. I’m working very hard to make this volume like really, really, really good. Many more words than my first book, many more pictures, not as many stories involving pro wrestlers from the sport’s second golden age, but don’t worry—donnybrooks and rigamaroles abound. I can’t wait for you to read it.

New Zealand’s Zero Elliot, who was arrested in 1978 for cussin’ during a gig with her band Suburban Reptiles. Photo by Murray Cammick.

September 19, 2016

It Actually Happened Again

Just them Lodi boys makin’ some noise at Riot Fest East. Photo by Alf Berg.

Second verse, same as the first: the Original Misfits got up there in Chicago and played the hits like Famous Monsters never happened. Remember when mere mention of this band would send Glenn Danzig into convulsions? Now he’s done two reunion gigs with them, his mood at both jovial. “I bet a lot of you have kids you take trick or treating,” he opined last night. “Scream your ass off if you take your kids trick or treating!”

I wan’t there. I wasn’t at Denver Riot Fest either. The reasons are myriad. I felt skepticism that any of this would really go down, or that it might veer into disaster if it did. The venue struck me as wrong; the Misfits in their glory days were always a club band, and while I’m happy they can command headlining festival slots in 2016, an engagement at Irving Plaza would have been more spiritually authentic. And, of course, this assembly is not really the original Misfits—it is Most of The Original Misfits Featuring Dave Lombardo. Jerry and Glenn must have had a Batman v Superman moment where they both realized they dislike all the actual Misfits drummers with the same passion.

Call me fussy, call me prissy, call me a freelance hillbilly with a snoot full of honeybees. Denver and Chicago aren’t exactly around the corner. Yes, I feel some regret, but I also wouldn’t be having this discussion if the reunion had been Glenn, Jerry, Doyle, and Arthur Googy at the Whiskey a Go Go. Solace is located in the fact that 2017 is the 40th anniversary of the Misfits’ founding. I’d bet my collection of bird skeletons that something auspicious along these lines will occur to commemorate four haunted decades.

If not, there’s always the YouTube. You know, I never saw the Misfits when Danzig was in the band between 1977 and 1983. I’m keeping a streak alive.