Praise for the Freak Scene Dream Trilogy, including The Flowers Lied
There was a time when (rock) music was the living pulse of a generation… That is the era of the Freak Scene Dream Trilogy, an ambitious and ultimately successful attempt at recasting the coming-of-age-in-the-wake-of-the-sixties-experience in innovative but authentic language, Kerouac in the 21st century. DENNIS MCNALLY, author of A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead and Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, The Beat Generation & America
If Lester Bangs had ever published a novel it might have read something like this frothing debut by longtime music journalist Michael Goldberg… Readers from any musical era will come away with a deeper appreciation of how nostalgia can shape our lives, for better and for worse. COLIN FLEMING, Rolling Stone Goldberg presents us with a beautiful evocation of the Seventies where the music wasn’t just the soundtrack to our lives but the auteur of them. Writerman, our hero, drinks and drugs and dances to the nightingale tune while birds fly high by the light of the moon. Oh, oh, oh, oh Writerman! LARRY RATSO SLOMAN, author of On the Road with Bob Dylan
Michael Goldberg is comparable to Kerouac in a 21st century way, someone trying to use that language and energy and find a new way of doing it. MARK MORDUE, author of Dastgah: Diary of a Head Trip
Penned in a staccato amphetamine grammar, its narrative is fractured and deranged, often unsettling but frequently compelling, an unsparing portrait of the teen condition: assured then despairing, would-be sex god then impotent has-been, an only child battling the wills of his domineering father and interfering mom in the anonymous, suburban fringes of Marin County. SIMON WARNER, author of Text and Drugs and Rock'n'Roll: The Beats and Rock Culture
Aspiring rock journalist Michael Stein (aka Writerman) returns in the second installment of Goldberg’s Freak Scene Dream Trilogy, picking up the narrative where he left off and fumbling his way across the countercultural landscape of the early Seventies like some less jaded, wannabe-hippie version of Holden Caulfield… Among the more memorable scenes: a hamfisted attempt to get his rock journalism published in the college newspaper, even more awkward attempts to get laid (that include at least one success, with his best friend’s girlfriend, no less, in a gondola at the top of a Ferris wheel), getting thrown out of a Neil Young concert by one of Bill Graham’s goons, navigating a surreal Halloween party while peaking on LSD, and kibitzing with a popular Lester Bangs-esque rock-crit. Along the way we get cameos from Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Captain Beefheart, the New York Dolls, Slim Harpo, James Brown, John Fowles, Sartre, Dostoyevsky and Godard. Settle in, crack open a bottle and/or spark a doob, and get ready for an emotional rollercoaster ride. Oh, and don’t touch the Thorens. FRED MILLS, editor, Blurt magazine So who is this protagonist anyway? Holden Caulfield meets Lord Buckley? PAUL KRASSNER, author of Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture
‘True Love Scars’ reads like a fever dream from the dying days of the Summer of Love. Keyed to a soundtrack of love and apocalypse, Writerman pitches headlong into a haze of drugs, sex and confusion in search of what no high can bring: his own redemption. Read it and be transformed. ALINA SIMONE, author of Note to Self and You Must Go and Win
Radioactive as Godzilla. RICHARD MELTZER, author of The Aesthetics of Rock
True Love Scars is deeply dialed in to rock’s dichotomy of enlightening powers versus stonered party time. GREG M. SCHWARTZ, PopMatters Michael Goldberg reminds us of the difficulties of remaining true to our own visions amidst the powerful exigencies of young adulthood. JOLIE HOLLAND, recording artist, whose albums include Catalpa, Escondida and The Living and the