The Plugged Nickel

The Plugged Nickel

Have you ever been to The Plugged Nickel
right between Slugs and The Bitter End
and if you ever lose your way down the alley
just peel your eyes and ears for the muted trumpets, my friend
well, rainfall and thunder comp a backbeat

Drinks are stiffer than The Bad Penny
café espresso is stronger than The Thin Dime
lost, wayward girls wear their hats and coats
dashing in from the fog and rain all the time

No, it’s not like The Screaming Bean
with its plucked dulcimers, autoharps and banjos
and they pass the straw hat around
cracked peanuts and sawdust litter the tired floor
make a detour to the shack with the abstract sounds

Well, the PA system crackles
and the lights shoot off sparks
half the customers think its entertaining
and the rest of them think it’s art

And the notes fall like raindrops
on a cobblestoned street
the notes drippety drop like hail stones
on a cobblestoned road
the bass booms like thunder
the cymbals flash like lightning

On a good night you can catch Miles
even better if you see Monk
but it’s snake eyes if you fall in
and catch a poet strung out on junk

Andy Seven Ltd. · The Plugged Nickel

Deck of Muses

Previously published in Horror Sleaze Trash Quarterly Spring 2026

There's a whiny voice shrieking from the jukebox
some high pitched wail
"If you leave me I'll just die"
in that case
i've died a thousand deaths

They leave you for a jerk with drugs
they leave you for a jerk with money

But, but butt butt...
i have no drugs
i have no money
i have no friends

What do i have
i've got edgar allen poe's muse
i've got annette peacock’s muse
i've got rahsaan roland kirk's muse

All that inspiration
comes with an expiration…date
catch the spark, catch a fire
Baby, before it’s too late

I've got a deck of muses
i've got a full house
chips stacked sky high on the table
i'll never fold

Got hit with a fevered need
I’ll launch a voluminous screed
I’ve got leonor fini’s muse
I’ve got stephen crane’s muse…
I’ll never fold

Andy Seven Ltd. · Deck of Muses

Prose and music Copyright 2026, Scuzzbuster Music (BMI). All rights reserved. Work is not royalty-free and not approved for AI usage.

Scorpio Rising poetry album OUT NOW

Spring is here, and a young man’s fancy turns to poetry, whether it be in the form of a chapbook or a full-blown poetry album, like my new release Scorpio Rising. Named after the Kenneth Anger film (as well as dedicated to his memory), Scorpio Rising is my third poetry release and is out now for your listening pleasure.

The themes on the album run the gamut from inner city ghetto stories (Killed For His Clothes, Skyscraper Soul, Sidewalk Camp) to the occult (Bottle Tree Garden, Smudge, Sun In Scorpio) to my favorite standby, noir (Drugs And The Woman, High Speed Chase, Cocktails Cigarettes Birth Control). Yes, the femmes fatales get their due…and then some.

My noir poems continue the thread started from my previously published noir novels, these tracks can even be heard as tiny noir plot outlines.

The occult poetry is influenced by my long-lived fascination with Hollywood jazz age gothic dalliances in cults, rituals, and fetish items. Many remaining art deco homes in Pasadena and the Hollywood Hills still court the legend of being haunted by spirits. Even The Angelus Temple, a Christian showplace for Aimee Semple McPherson is known for harboring its share of ghosts.

What distinguishes this release from the others is the introduction of the Irish bouzouki on several tracks, it being a folk instrument normally used as backup accompaniment to guitars, but here used as a lead instrument.

It’s an instrument with four sets of double strings like a mandolin and tuned to a G-D-A-D, not the accustomed G-D-A-E setting. Because of this tuning one gets a droney, exotic Eastern sound. I call the tuning Gee, Dad…hoho.

I also went for a bit of drum and bass/jungle music rhythm on Cockfight and to a lesser degree on High Speed Chase, charging up the BPMs (Beats Per Minute) into the 275-300 setting, giving both tracks a manic, frantic pace to match my prose.

Here is the track listing:
1. Dogs Keep Barking
2. Killed For His Clothes
3. Skyscraper Soul
4. Cockfight
5. Drugs And The Woman
6. Cocktails Cigarettes Birth Control
7. Smudge
8. The Butcher’s Beautiful Daughter
9. Sidewalk Camp
10. Bottle Tree Garden
11. Angel Feathers
12. Sun In Scorpio
13. High Speed Chase

As usual there’s the dichotomy between electronic and folk music tracks, and in neofolk style they even converge more than a few times. If you like Current 93 or Death In June then this will strike a familiar vibe.

I’m very proud of my new collection of sonnets – sonic sonnets, if you will. Scorpio Rising is highly accessible in CD, download or streaming formats. If you want the CD it can be bought at CD Baby, Discogs, Amazon, or you can DM me for a personal copy.

Downloads can be bought at Apple Music or Amazon Music, where they can also be streamed. If you’d rather hear streams you can check it out at You Tube, Spotify, Pandora, or Deezer, where you can also stream my previous albums, Minstrels Anonymous and Sea Level Drive.

Going Global

I have, for all intents and purposes, gone global. What does this mean? Well, I made a distribution deal where my poetry albums Minstrels Anonymous and Sea Level Drive can now be streamed all over the world on every streaming service imaginable: roll call, Spotify, Pandora, You Tube, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and even the dreaded Tik Tok, home of the anime nymphets. Don’t see them shaking it to Halloween Birthday, but I’ve been wrong before.

In addition, both hard media CDs are now issued on my imprint Jinx Records in lavish glossy Digipak editions, which can be bought either on Amazon, CD Baby or on eBay. Copies can also be purchased at a reduced price if you DM me and pay via Paypal or Venmo funds. What this means is that neither record will be streamed on SoundCloud or available for purchase via Bandcamp.

In other news I’m hard at work on the next album, tentatively scheduled for November release. I’ve also pondered the possibility of doing a few spoken word shows. Needless to say, records will be available there. And sooner or later, probably later, I will finally complete my new novel. Dammit.

Talking To Myself In Public

At the height of my band’s popularity many fanzines wanted us in their latest issue but were too lazy to interview me. They always asked me to interview myself, which was a novelty the first time around, but repeated requests for me to interview myself became very dull soon thereafter. Not only did it expose a true lack of interest in what I was doing, but it always felt as if I was simply talking to myself.

So allow me to talk to myself a little bit more, but this time the subject is yours truly. Not the band I literally built from the ground up – no help, no partners – a band I created alone and dragged all the way up from the depths to The Roxy Theater and The Hollywood Palladium. Not bad. I’ve created and reinvented myself time and time again.

Since I’ve made an art form of talking to myself in public I’ve decided to mention a few details about me. Some people will believe what I’m about to say and others (fools) will think I’m merely telling tales.

Playing in other people's bands never got me much attention, and one of the great ironies was I got a record deal simply for looking cool. The head of Sympathy For The Record Industry saw me walking down Melrose Avenue, and offered me a record deal without having heard a single note of music from me, and didn’t really want to. Talk about your Lana Turner discoveries.

Four years later my group broke up, my choice, which made me a pariah on the scene. That was fine, because playing music never made me any money. In fact, at the height of my popularity I lived out of my car because I pumped what little money I had into my band. The same people who ostracized me for breaking my band up thought it was funny I was living on the streets while I was headlining some terrible Hollywood dump. Assholes.

But the next step, and there’s always a next step, was working for local government, and I always found myself in the Executive Office of the LA County Fire Department, Department of Children & Family Services, and finally the LA County Board of Supervisors (my last hurrah). During that time I worked for a varied list of city councilmen, mayors, law enforcement officials, and prominent judges. I won several citations and awards for my service to local government.

But municipal service can be as boring as playing sax behind tuneless punk singers, so I joined forces with my ex designing wardrobe for movies, television, theatre, metal bands and even video games, like Twisted Metal (some video games take live action green screen footage and incorporate it into the game, so we'd fabricate and style the costumes worn for the footage). We’d guzzle endless pots of coffee and stay up for several nights cutting fabric, sewing outfits, distressing and dyeing, whatever the job called for. I did most of the shopping and learned who the good fabric stores were and which ones to stay away from.

In between sewing jobs I began writing serials for my blog, Out Demons Out. The serials then transmogrified into novels. All my novels, except Hot Wire My Heart started out as serials in my blog. My novels, six so far with a seventh on the way, are all available on every eBook outlet – Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo Canada, and they can even be taken out like library books at hoopla.com.

But it all began to get real when I took on a weekend delivery job, when I drove around on a drizzly afternoon, listening to The Beatles’ “Got To Get You Into My Life”. The dispatcher told me to head on over to Stella MacCartney’s boutique, a lovely baroque building with vines of ivy crawling all over the entrance.

I came in for the pick-up and the salesgirl told me to take this to Olivia Harrison’s house. Holy shit. I’m going to George Harrison’s house. It was all too much, delivering to George’s widow from Paul’s daughter. All I’m going to say about George’s house is that the walls are VERY high – can you blame him? – and it’s very Spanish styled. When the housemaid came out to pick up Olivia’s dress she halted at the sight of me for a moment, smiled and then handed me a crisp twenty dollar bill. When I die that’s all I’m going to remember.