HOT WIRE MY HEART Punk Noir Potboiler OUT NOW!

Hot Wire My Heart is now available for your entertainment and continues my string of punk noir novels, which include Every Good Boy Dies First and Every Bitch For Himself. It’s a punk take on Sweet Smell of Success, a whirlwind ride through the 1978 San Francisco punk scene through the eyes of gossip columnist Dante Sterno. He dishes out all the dirty gossip on all the local punk heroes and heroines for Ripoff Magazine, a cheap local zine.

Dante’s pursuit for more and more dirt on popular rockers in the scene becomes more and more shameless and scurrilous as the book goes on, and it finally reaches a point where his dirty scoops catch up with him. To ensure his survival he hires the services of car thief and protection thug Big Jason Gulliver, back again from Every Bitch For Himself (which chronologically follows this novel).

Big Jason provides some much-needed protection but unfortunately raises the ire of a prominent politician, who in turn contracts rival car thieves and gunmen to liquidate Jason. In between the action there’s lots of sex, violence and hardcore punk. There’s even room for a roller derby match in between all the skull cracking.

The character of Big Jason was based on a real punker I knew, a tough, amoral thug – Irish, of course – a cross between Lawrence Tierney and Matt Dillon. He really did protect people, sometimes for money but mostly for the thrill of kicking assholes around. A man like that is instant gold for noir; a thug who’s capable of making any kind of trouble is as noir as it gets.

Hot Wire My Heart, named after a Crime song, was a chance for me to reminisce about the old days of San Francisco punk, a scene that many of us Southern California punks would trek up the coast periodically to enjoy. San Francisco punk was more art damaged than LA punk, beneficial because it resulted in less aping the London scene, which LA sometimes indulged a bit much.

Bands like The Avengers, The Offs, Crime, UXA and The Sleepers made art on their own terms. Since the average punk audience back then was so small there wasn’t a lot of money to be made, resulting in no need for compromise and creating the most original and exciting punk of that era. I hope Hot Wire My Heart recaptures some of the energy of those electrifying San Franciscan nights.

Hot Wire My Heart retails for only $3.99 and can be bought at these eBook retailers:

Amazon Kindle:
https://www.amazon.com/Hot-Wire-Heart-Andy-Seven-ebook/dp/B09CRVJHL1/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=hot+wire+my+heart&qid=1629249084&s=digital-text&sr=1-3

Apple Books:
https://books.apple.com/us/book/hot-wire-my-heart/id1581407105

Barnes & Noble Nook:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hot-wire-my-heart-andy-seven/1140023225?ean=9781098399412

Kobo (Canada):
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/hot-wire-my-heart

Scribd:
https://www.scribd.com/book/520407943/Hot-Wire-My-Heart

BookBaby Bookstore:
https://store.bookbaby.com/book/Hot-Wire-My-Heart&b=p_fr-ho-bl

Happy Birthday Grace Slick

For this year's annual tribute to Scorpio birthdays I'd like to talk about the brilliant tornado that is Grace Slick, just turned 74 years old on October 30th this past week. A fearless, foolish, frequently outrageous artist always willing to take risks and in the process influence tens of thousands of female rock singers during and after her fame, she is a rock icon like no other.

There has never been a female artist as irrepressible as Grace Slick prior to her arrival on the music scene. In the mid-Sixties female artists were delicate, controlled, and easily led; but with genius, beauty and style Grace Slick arrived and changed the way women performed and appeared in the public eye. Artists like Patti Smith, Courtney Love and an endless conveyor belt of Diva of the Weeks owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude.

Grace's first band was in 1964 with her husband Jerry Slick (her name was originally Grace Wing) and his brother Darby named The Great Society. In 1966 they recorded what was to be her most memorable songs, "Somebody To Love" and "White Rabbit". One year later she left the band to replace Signe Anderson in Jefferson Airplane. With her pin-up model looks and intense beatnik style the Jefferson Airplane acquired a distinctive image to compliment their excellent musicianship.

Grace Slick's intense vocals in Jefferson Airplane were virtually unheard of in rock music up to that point and were the most intense female vocals heard at the time. Beginning with "Surrealistic Pillow" Grace forged a new sound in rock, combining beat poetry with vocals that effortlessly blended jazz ala Carmen McRae with then-popular folk rock melodiousness.

While Paul Kantner and Marty Balin wrote excellent folk tunes and Jorma Kaukonen wrote tough blues songs, a Grace Slick song promised a sophisticated, jazzy melody with a powder keg of lyrics about to explode. Her songs were works to be reckoned with.

Whether it was singing about a boy with arrested development in "Lather" or a filthy, polluted planet on "Eskimo Blue Day", no other female vocalist tore away at pompous masculine pride with feminist rage as she did with songs like "Two Heads", "Greasy Heart" or "Hey Frederick". And just as you're about to dismiss her as a bull-busting bitch she slips in a song as cool and surrealistic as "reJoyce", a gorgeous jazz piece based on the writings of James Joyce. Very, very bohemian.

Grace kept up with her male peers like Jim Morrison in the outrage department, too: performing in blackface on The Smothers Brothers Show, naming her publicly born-out-of-wedlock daughter "god", flashing her breasts onstage so many times it became shock-less, acts simultaneously outrageous and feminist setting new standards.

She can be forgiven her many excesses, alcoholism, fighting with countless boyfriends and policemen, and the crass, milquetoast New Wave band Starship whom boiled down their name from Kantner's original combo "Jefferson Starship". She can even be forgiven for making certain remarks that were bound to offend just about anyone with a pair of ears, but like all outlaws she probably wouldn't give a shit, anyway. That's punk as fuck.

Nice behavior or not, there's the records, some of the most unforgettable I've ever heard. It's amazing that nearly forty five years after the release of her records Grace Slick's lyrics and vocals can still send chills through me. And look beautiful doing it, too.

Suggested Reading:

Somebody To Love? A Rock and Roll Memoir
Grace Slick (with Andrea Cragan)
Warner Books

The Jefferson Airplane and the San Francisco Sound
Ralph J. Gleason
Ballantine Books

Even Angels Crash And Burn

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Welcome to San Francisco

Nobody hits the streets of San Francisco expecting to knock 'em dead. If anything, if you go there it's to run away from somewhere else, and she was taking flight from French Canada, a chilly graveyard of smug and prim "rebels". She had dark skin of indeterminate race and platinum blonde hair. It shook up hipsters who swore they couldn't be shook up.

The locals didn't know what to make of her, but the drag queens did. They took her under their wing like the Seven Dwarves of Babylon: there was Miss Glamour Thing who had Tourette's Syndrome, "c'mere nigger bitch, get your pussy over here I'll show you how to sew a dress, whore". Sister Fred, who worshipped Boy George - "ker-azy about the Boy", he whined through his nose, and Jill Hershey Bar, inheritor of millions, at 300+ pounds and lover of scat, hence the title. The Girl once gave Miss Hershey Bar some dog shit for his birthday and he was so excited he broke out in tears.

Although she never had sex at all she was constantly in the employ of various sex industries - credit card checker for a 1-800 Phone Sex line or a custodian at a North Beach strip club. It paid for guitar strings, a fuzz-wah pedal, and rehearsal studio time. It was one night she got into the Nightbreak on Haight St. to see the Four Horsemen play. Sitting on the edge of the stage as the Four Horsemen played were two sluts with fried blonde hair kicking their legs up and down to the beat. They looked really smug like they were Sex In A Can. "How much more stupid can these bitches look?" she thought.

After a few beers she went to the ladies room. A minute later one of the fried blonde strumpets came in, too. The Girl turned around and sneered at her and said, "Plan on giving any diseases to the band after the show?"
"Fuck you, bitch", Fried Blondie yelled, and threw a punch at her. She ducked and missed the punch. She dived at her and ripped out clumps of the Fried Blonde's hair.
"I'll kill you!" the ugly stripper shrieked. The Girl tore the stripper's top off, and then got her on the ground using her wrestling medal-winning skills to good use.
"Let go of me!!" the stripper whined. The Girl then tried shoving the stripper's head into the toilet bowl. The stripper's friend came in to help her.
By this point there was such a commotion coming from the Ladies Room, the Girl's friends came in with beer pitchers and beat the strippers upside their heads with them.
The bouncers raced in and broke up the fight, kicking everyone out of the bathroom.

After the band's set, the lead singer of the Four Horsemen approached the Girl at the bar.
"Hey", he said, "I'm sorry about those girls. They followed us, I don't know who they are".
"Oh, that's okay", she said. He focused on a chip she wore around her neck.
"Cool", he remarked. "I'm in the program, too. How many days do you have?" He turned the chip around to read the inscription.
The inscription said, "GOOD FOR ONE DRINK".
He disgustedly pushed it back at her. But not so disgusted that he didn't give her his phone number in Hollywood before storming off.

Months later, she had a job cleaning at The Century Theatre. Two strippers came into the dressing room and froze when they saw her. It was the girls from the Nightbreak. As she was leaving, one of the strippers stopped her.
"I know you", she said. "I know you from somewhere. You look really familiar".
"Yeah", the Girl said, "You look really familiar to me, too".
"Do I know you from Hollywood?" she smiled, getting excited. "Did you ever go to the Scream?"
"Yeah, maybe. Have you ever been to White Trash A Go-Go?"
"No, no, no. Maybe the Seventh Veil", the fried stripper pondered, jogging her imited memory banks. She honestly couldn't place her from that explosive evening at the Nightbreak.
A week went by and the two strippers did their act, never recognizing the Girl. After their "engagement" was over at the club they left the Girl a large tip, and they just couldn't remember that night.

The Girl continued making clothes with the Seven Dwarves of Babylon and it worked out fine.