Review: Zombies Have Issues

Zombies Have Issues by Greg Stones
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A whimsical and entertaining survey of the the perils and joys of the zombie life.

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Review: We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec Anonymous

We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec Anonymous by Parmy Olson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California

Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California by Frances Dinkelspiel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



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Review: A Fast Ride Out of Here: Confessions of Rock's Most Dangerous Man

A Fast Ride Out of Here: Confessions of Rock's Most Dangerous Man by Pete Way
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Maybe I am missing something or it is just not for me, but while an avid music enthusiast, I never became a UFO fan. I did go to an arena concert in Detroit, Michigan in the 1980s. I was there for someone else (Ozzy? Maiden?) and didn't know for Waysted but distinctly remember "Women In Chains" song being played but no concert setlist matches that... Maybe that song was played over the PA and not performed live?

Way explains his plans with Waysted:

I decided to call the band Waysted. What it boiled down to was that I wanted to make a grittier, harder kind of rock music than I had been doing with UFO and to get out there and play again.

Well, this book didn't clear up that part of my memory while it does underscore the variations of memory as many Way colleagues, family, and contacts offer their own version of event, often contradicting Way's.

Way's extensive drug experiences in the retelling involve some name-dropping

Rick sold coke to Marlon Brandon, a who’s who of other ‘A’ list Hollywood stars and most of the top music executives in the city.

...

Drugs, of course, were a by-product of being on the road, but I also saw first-hand just how detrimental they could be. I came across many people of undoubted talent, but it was obvious they had been fucked up by cocaine, or else heroin. Touring Obsession, we did quite a few shows with Aerosmith, who were the biggest band in America at the time. I expected them to be a devastating live band, but they were so out of it by then that songs would virtually grind to a halt and the crowd would go quiet. That happened at every show.

Way's substance abuse as with other becomes isolating.

I don’t believe I ever wrecked a hotel room myself. But then, you don’t when you’ve got drugs in the room. Hotel security guards were generally off-duty cops, so the last thing I’d want would be to alert them to anything untoward. For the same reason, I kept my music reasonably quiet. Anything so there wouldn’t be a knock on the door in the middle of the night when I’d got half an ounce of coke on the bedside table. Fans would also sleep on the floor outside of our rooms. That started to get a bit daunting – stepping out of the room and having people literally lying in wait for you. After several months of that, there was nothing I craved more than a bit of peace and quiet. By the end of the Lights Out tour, I had also started to use heroin. As I said, I’d tried it when I was thirteen, but I took to it much slower than to cocaine. It was reintroduced to me by a dealer – but it could as well have been by anybody around us at that time – to be used as part of a speedball with cocaine. To be honest, by then I would try anything that was put in front of me. But the way it was explained, it made perfect sense to me to take heroin like that. Coke allowed me to talk all night and appear interesting, but the trouble was that I would be wired for hours at a time. The heroin in a speedball took the edge off the cocaine high and allowed me to come down.

Calling out Joe Elliott of Def Leppard for being a cheapskate is namedropping that is itself contradicted.

Joe Elliott: I’m sure Pete has said that I always forgot my credit card; wouldn’t expect anything less. The truth is that I didn’t have any money when the two of us first got together, and by 1984 when our Pyromania album had taken off, he’d be round at my house emptying the bar. He is a pathological liar, but in the funniest sense. I’ve often told him as much. Ultimately, I’m a huge Pete Way fan, but like most people he’s flawed and massively so.

I didn't know of Way's production work for Twisted Sister and the Cockney Rejects.

I also got a second offer to produce a new album for a London punk band, the Cockney Rejects. It was the Rejects’ fourth record and they wanted to move towards more of a hard-rock sound, which of course was fine by me. However, the title of the album, The Wild Ones, turned out to be all too apt, since the Rejects were like nothing so much as a gang of football hooligans. When the four of them weren’t drinking, they were fine – pussycats, really. But if anyone so much as looked at one or the other of them after they’d sunk a few beers, all hell would break loose. They would all want to start a fight, and the Rejects’ idea of diplomacy was to hit first and ask questions later. I found being around them very testing. If we went to the pub together, there would be a lot of, ‘Here, that geezer over there’s a cunt’, and, ‘Oi, what the fuck is he staring at?’ I could do no wrong in their eyes and we managed to make a decent-enough album, but I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to stop them from smacking other people at a moment’s notice.

There is the tale of the deterioration of Fastway and brief touring with his party-partner Ozzy

‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke: Next thing I knew, Pete had popped up in Ozzy’s band and Sharon-fucking-Osbourne had poached him from me. She had known Pete was in a right state over the business with Chrysalis and behaved like a total cunt. And then what happened? She and Ozzy went and shat all over Pete. He was supposed to do the whole world tour, but they kicked him into touch after just a handful of British shows. Apparently, Tommy Aldridge told them he wouldn’t play with Pete. It was a crying shame, because Pete and I had a great thing going together, we really did, and I missed him. The trouble with Pete is that he’s his own worst enemy. He never called me after walking out on Fastway, not even once out of courtesy. I know that he’s let other people down and suffered because of it, but he broke my heart. I get torn up from thinking about it even now. Four, five years later, I ran into him again on the road outside his house. It was good to see him after all that time and he invited me in for a cup of tea. I asked him: ‘Now, what the fuck did you do that for, piss off without so much as a by your leave?’ He couldn’t give me an honest answer even then. That’s Pete for you. We were good mates and he pulled a disappearing act like that on me.

There are also personal life details, such as Way's marriages. One was an unfortunately convenient marriage to a doctor with access to drugs.

The other substance we began to use was the anesthetic that Michael Jackson was on when he died – Propofol. It’s a white, creamy, quite thick liquid used in hospitals for surgical operations. Joanna had access to a ready supply of it, because she would use it when she performed liposuction.

A quote to end on a high note pulled from one of those praising way professionally and personally.

Mike Clink: With most of the bands that I work with there’s always one person who makes a big impression on me and ends up being a lifelong friend, not just a business relationship. That’s who Pete is for me. To meet him is to fall in love with him. I love his sense of humour and he’s vulnerable too. The persona that people see is sex, drugs and rock and roll, but there’s more to him than that. There’s a whole other side which is genuinely warm, funny and caring. He’s also extremely talented. Whenever I do a session these days and mention that I’m working with Pete again, I’m still surprised at how many individuals have been influenced by him. Nikki Sixx told me the reason that he plays his particular style of Gibson bass is because of Pete...

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Review: Red November: Inside the Secret U.S.-Soviet Submarine War

Red November: Inside the Secret U.S.-Soviet Submarine War by W. Craig Reed
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is an overview of secret sub actions during the Cold War interleaved with military fiction in creating fictive, imagined conversations and motivations. I can do without the fiction. For one thing, the author has the worst metaphors, such as a face like a "dirty dishrag" or something and other things that would be better left out. But, assuming I am correctly drawing out the nonfiction history, a few things are fascinating, if true:

* multiple Cuba missile crisis subs came near to launching nuke "purple-tipped" torpedoes

* The U.S. Navy radio specialist John Anthony Walker Jr. spy ring gave the USSR the key codes to combine with equipment taken from the USS Pueblo. This allowed them to know conclusively something that made them vengeful, possibly around realities of a collision of USS Swordfish with K-129. (Here, that Soviet sub deemed intentional and not rogue.)

* In 1981, USS Drum collided with the Victor III-class submarine K-324 while attempting to photograph the odd pod on the back. The event was covered up by the Reagan Administration and never made public, though it nearly cost the lives of the sailors on USS Drum. The collision occurred in Peter the Great Bay, not far from Vladivostok. The incident was declassified and disclosed by the Clinton Administration in February 1993. This is one of multiple incidents described around tapping of Soviet navy undersea cables.

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Review: Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile

Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile by Ramor Ryan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



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Review: The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star

The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star by Nikki Sixx
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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