IT – PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture

Books I Would Recommend …Part 2

I want to thank all of you readers this week. I have blogged way more than usual and I appreciate you reading. I will be taking a break after Monday until the 17th and then I’ll be back! I’ll see you all this weekend.

I’m not ranking these books… but I will kick it off with another Marx Brothers book. If you missed the first one it’s here.

Raised Eyebrows by Steve Stolliar. Stoliar, who was Groucho’s personal secretary and archivist while attending UCLA published this book in 1996. He was there in the seventies in Groucho’s house for the last three years of Groucho’s life. A who’s who of movie and rock stars visited. From Queen to Barbara Streisand to Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. So many came by and Stoliar doesn’t pull punches.

Sound Man by Glyn Johns – I read this book not knowing what to expect but I did know of Glyn Johns… so many of my albums had his name on it…A name that is known throughout the music industry as a great recording engineer, producer, and mixer. Glyn has worked with huge rock groups such as The Rolling Stones, Beatles, Who, Small Faces, Led Zeppelin, The Band, and more.

Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones by Paul Trynka – A biography about Brian Jones who founded the Rolling Stones written by Paul Trynka. This is more of a sympathetic look on Brian than other books I’ve read. Trynka digs deep with meticulous research. He tries to be fair and Brian isn’t always shown as the nicest guy in the world but he also isn’t always the person that Mick and Keith seem to remember when they actually remember him at all.

This book is not just a rehash of the best-known things about Jones and the Stones. Some instances that Stones fans know like the period where Keith ran off with Brian’s girlfriend Anita Pallenberg, we get more information on what happened. He researched Brian’s childhood and adult life thoroughly and you feel like you know the man before the book is over.

Moon The Loon or Full Moon – This book is for fans OR non fans alike. The book will have you physically burst out laughing at different parts of it. Keith left a trail of wrecked cars, wrecked drums, wrecked hotel rooms, wrecked nerves, wrecked bars, and many smiles.

Dougal doesn’t try to tell Moon’s life history. Full Moon highlights the tales of Mr. Keith John Moon…Patent British Exploding Drummer. It is a very quick read at around 250 pages. The audio version is approximately 9 hours long.

Butler worked for Moon for ten years and was right there during much of the craziness. He was behind the wheel of Moon’s AC Frua 428 as it flipped end-over-end through a field off Chertsey Lane after Moon decided to grab the shifter and downshift at around 120 mph.

In my next edition…I’ll include Tony Fletcher’s nearly 700 -page book on Keth Moon. It is fantastic.

IT by Stephen King – I always describe this book as a coming-of-age book that just so happens to have a psychotic alien shape-shifter clown. The book is brilliantly written. It takes place in a fictional town called Derry. After you read it…it doesn’t feel like a fictional town. You know every detail of the city and where everything is located. The films, 1990 and 2017, don’t even come close to this book.

I have re-read this book so many times and I find something new every time. I wanted to include a fiction book in this edition so here you go.

Miss O’Dell: Hard Days and Long Nights with The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton… by Chris O’Dell and Katherine Ketcham

I enjoyed this book immensely. It’s almost like a fantasy book. You are a fan and suddenly you get thrown into the world with The Beatles as friends and co-workers. You move from the Beatles to the Stones, CSNY, Bob Dylan and the list kept growing.

I will say this… as a Beatle fan, this book gave me insight that I never had before. Chris O’Dell happened to meet Derek Taylor (press officer of the Beatles) in Los Angeles in 1968…she worked for him for a few weeks in LA as a PA. He told her she should come over to London to check out the new company that The Beatles were starting called Apple. He didn’t promise her a job but she took a chance and sold her records and borrowed from her parents to go to London. She was like Alice down the rabbit hole, O’Dell stumbled upon a life even she could not have dreamed of.

…

IT the Novel

I’m not writing a summary of the book…a good one is here… Just how IT affects me.

Everything I was scared of in childhood comes back to me in this book…vividly. What if it was really a monster in the dark like I thought?

I did a post on the old tv mini-series and the new movie but the novel is a great piece of work. I have read it at least 7 times. I keep coming back to it and visiting Derry and the kids that grew up together. After reading the book you feel like you know these people…or you have known people like them while growing up. It makes you think of the friends you had at 10-11 that you have forgotten their name and some of the things you did with them.

When I’m reading it I’m transported to Derry in 1957-1958 and then ahead to 1984-85 and then back to the 50s. King is so detailed that you feel like you have been in that town and know the townsfolk, the streets, the stores and the dirty secrets. I always…always find things that I missed before because it is so massive.

It’s like learning about your town. The star of the book…isn’t Pennywise…it’s Derry. They are maybe one in the same but it holds the secrets of everyone in that town. The book is also about coming of age and the awkwardness that comes with it…for the kids and for the town.

Some things I feel while reading is:

Rage… The rage for Henry Bowers is something that the movie and the tv series does not halfway convey. He is the ultimate bully. Most of us had a form of a Henry Bowers to contend with…

Familiarity… the losers club is basically a bunch of misfits that blend together and all of them have talents that no one else outside of the group really notices but are used by the club. It’s a story you are familiar with and you may have been in a similar group as a kid.

Nostalgia… No, I wasn’t raised in the 50s or even close but the same things these kids were into as kids…rock and roll, curious about the opposite sex, exploring, still believing in magic… having no real responsibilities, the fun of being a kid and every day was new…is not era related.

I make it sound like a quaint little book about growing up… no… it is scary but what makes it scary for me is I can relate to most of the characters in the book…that makes it real. Stephen King is a master at that. He makes everything seem plausible.

Pennywise is one of the greatest monsters/evil entity ever. You get a vast variety of monsters that IT changes into also… if IT is not doing tha… it is busy influencing some of the weaker citizens of Derry.

The infamous sex “scene”… I’ve read reviewers talk it up like it is some cheap porn setup (I’m hearing the 70’s wah wah guitar in the background)…it’s not like that. It’s very innocent and they have no clue really on what to do. Was it a surprise when I read it? Yes…Was it erotic? NO it wasn’t at all… I didn’t know about it beforehand…I had to do a double take but I got King’s meaning. To find their way back out of the sewer they had to reunite and be adults and in a sense leave childhood behind…it was used as a bridge from childhood to being an adult. It was a different era (1980s) when he wrote this…he probably would not have written it the same way now.

Of course, all of this is just the way it affected me.

Get the book and read it…or reread it.

IT 1990 and IT 2017

The new trailer for IT Chapter 2 is out now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4_NFYeXVCU&ab_channel=HauntedBlood

I’ve never seen IT as a horror story…I’ve seen it as a coming of age story with scary twists. I really like the novel and I wanted to see something as close as possible to the book. The book is much better than either the movie or miniseries but that is usually how it is.

I went to see IT (2017) with very high hopes. I realized before I traveled to the theater that they could never meet my expectations. My hope (and far-fetched dream) was that they would have made an HBO series of the novel. It would have been fifteen to twenty hour-long episodes. I wanted so much for the novel to come to life on screen. That wasn’t going to happen in one movie but I will say that yes I enjoyed it.

I’m not one of those who dismiss the 1990 mini-series. They were working with a low budget and the constraints of television. I thought the children were perfectly cast. The first episode was superior to the second episode but the second had it’s moments…not counting the terrible spider or the ponytail on Richard Thomas. The one thing IT 1990 had over 2017 is overall creepiness. Maybe it was Tim Curry and the late 80s sound effects.

IT 2017 was much better looking and I liked Bill Skarsgård’s version of Pennywise. The way he toyed with Georgie was classic. They revealed way too much in the many trailers and sneak peeks. Most of the movie you knew what was coming next. My biggest problem is the kids really didn’t have time to bond. Also, the time change from the 1950’s to the 1980s…did Andrés Muschietti just think the audience today could not comprehend the 50’s? The reason I liked the 50’s backdrop is that kids were more innocent then and Pennywise in that era would be more of a shock.

It’s not really fair to judge the new IT until Chapter 2 comes out in September but Chapter 1 was enjoyable. I’m happy the story has been revived again.