IOWA CENTER FOR THE BOOK author bio

Comments from the author about writing:  I have self-published three novels in my retro-styled and G-rated Eddie Atomic space adventure series: 2009's Shake, Rattle & Rocket!, 2012's Ghost Saucers In the Sky!, and 2016's Stratosphere Boogieman. All feature "two-fisted scientist" Eddie Atomic, genius glamour-girl robot Kioko, youthful, plucky pilot Spunky, and wise veteran advisor Commander Augustus McGuffin.

I wrote a regular Pin Up America column, "In the Spotlight," for about two years. For some six years before that, I was the CD Review Editor for Rockabilly Magazine.

My freelance music articles and reviews have appeared in Goldmine, No Depression, Blue Suede News, Rock & Rap Confidential, and others. 

National/international political essay credits include Daily Caller, Counterpunch, American Thinker, Dissident Voice, the Huffington Post, and USA Today. 

I've also written numerous newspaper opinion pieces on political topics, with credits including the Des Moines Register, Waterloo Courier, Marshalltown Times-Republican, Iowa City Press Citizen, and Cedar Falls Times.

Too, I served as Iowa Coordinator for Ralph Nader's 2004 independent campaign, a position that included writing duties. I also served as the Iowa Green Party Media Coordinator from 2000 - 2004. 

And in 2016, I wrote several Iowa newspaper think-pieces promoting the Donald Trump campaign.

Book Types: Fiction

Audience Types: All Ages

Genre: Science Fiction, Humor

Are you willing to do programs for schools, libraries, or other groups? No

Mailing Address: 

322 E. Louise Street,  Waterloo, Iowa 50703

E-mail Address:   larson.dc@yahoo.com

Author's Web site: http://www.facebook.com/dclarson/ and http://www.retroriffbooks.blogspot.com/

County:  Black Hawk

Books By This Author

• Shake, Rattle & Rocket! Self-published, 2009.

• Ghost Saucers In the Sky! Self-published 2012.
• Stratosphere Boogieman 2016

Hillary vs Elvis 2016
Does Clinton believe Presley to have been a "deplorable?"

Singer Mary J. Blige's musical successes were commercial and era-bound in nature; she neither turned new creative soil nor was particularly interesting in her revisiting of cliches.

She did, though, slur her artistic superior. In 1997, Blige lied bold-facedly about the late Elvis Presley, deriding him without foundation as "racist."

The otherwise irrelevant Blige is a minor player in current political news. She is making quite the loud spectacle of herself on behalf of Hillary Clinton. 

In a simply tilted video interview spot soon to run online, Blige sings questions to Clinton. The candidate wears a pained, 'why in the hell did I agree to this?' expression, the same one she sported during her recent Between Two Ferns appearance. 

My guess is that some millennial vote-hunting campaign functionary was later disciplined roundly.

But Hillary's opportunistic embrace of Elvis-hater Blige neatly illustrates a larger reality about her campaign, as well as of an evolving foul and nonsensical cultural trend. In this addled movement, everything established, successful, reasonable, and traditional is to be reviled and plowed under. 

There is no distinction recognized between positives and negatives. By virtue of vintage, all are equally opprobrious. 

To have enjoyed previous cultural cache, goes the fury-brained half-thinking, is to be (pick one or more) racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, etc. And, hence, the despised enemy to be strangled by the marching, sign-hefting forces of goodness.

In this undisciplined era of anarchic tumult, Hillary Clinton has made manifest her sympathy: Out with the old, and in with the new. Elvis would be counted as an 'irredeemable deplorable,' by her rancid arithmetic. 

(Never mind that they don't get much older than she; not unlike celebrity backers Cher and Madonna, Hillary seeks to reinvent herself for the incoming generation of ticket buyers.)

Given her amoral calculating, it is logical -- albeit still thoroughly despicable -- that Clinton cast her lot with rampaging, violent, and destructive street thugs over law officers representing decent and orderly American society. 

At this point, a stipulation cries out to be acknowledged. No candidate can reasonably be assumed to share every belief of their backers. 

A major misjudgement was made by news media commentators challenging Donald Trump to publicly distance himself from stray unsavory supporters. Such outsiders had without invitation sought greater visibility by attaching themselves to his more popular and spotlighted effort.

It was unreasonable to demand that Trump acknowledge them as legitimately worth attention. But as we've seen in this election season, reasonableness is most clearly not a mainstream media ambition.

There is a considerable difference, though, between that and the Hillary/Blige case: The Democratic candidate chose her association with the Elvis-smearing singer of long-since-gone renown.

Hillary does not necessarily share Blige's deceitful, noxious prejudice. But by uncritically availing herself of the faded pop luminary's aid and comfort -- and, in a very real larger sense, with the bedraggled, anarchic assassins of all-that-came-before -- she certainly is positing this metaphorical choice:

You can stand with either Elvis Presley or Hillary Clinton. Can't be both.


end

Livends
"Of Demons" 
(self)

In a moon-stabbed Lone Star cemetery, bony claw-hands thrust upward from shovel-turned soil; it crumbles all around as the fingers writhe and grasp at icy air. 

Four fearsome figures rise.

These growlingly morbid, hyper, helter-skeleton tracks were recorded in 2008 for Hairball 8/Psychobilly US. That label -- sinister sanctuary also to Demented Are Go and the Koffin Kats -- collapsed prior to the Livends disc release. 

So, the band members themselves have now released it. And their maleficent mission thus continues...


Recommended "We Are the Night," "Faces Of Death," "When Ghouls Come Seeking," "At Dawn They Rise," "Nightriders," "Night Of the Bats," "Murder At High Moon"

Video "We Are the Night"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h6d4us2fHE

https://www.facebook.com/Livends-Official-197088293642504/about/?entry_point=page_nav_about_item&tab=page_info
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/livends4
https://livendstx.bandcamp.com/releases

Johnny Legend
"I Itch" (Bluelight)

Tales of elective hardships and obstreporous sub-cultural postures, intoned against ominous and stormy crack-up zone rockabilly, are expected (and eminently dug) from an icon whose thunder road untraveled included storied stops in such underground scenes as horror films, pro-wrestling, porn, and, of course, rock and roll. (Indeed, Legend's work at Ronnie Weiser's 70s/80s Rollin' Rock deserves particular recognition. Are you hep to it?) Top accolade this time belongs to Legend's dramatic revivication of the haunting, folk-heroic theme from 1963 Disney miniseries "The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh." And I'd thought I was alone in remembering it.

Recommended "Scarecrow," "I Itch (Like a Sonuvabitch) "I'm Loaded," "Mexican Love," "My Baby Ditched Me," "3-D Daddy"

Video "Scarecrow" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxg3NuYmd0o

http://www.rockabillyhall.com/johnnylegend1.html
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/johnnylegend

The Quakes
"Live By the Sword" 
(Paul Roman/Orrex)

Characteristic of Paul Roman's adroit songcraft, forbidding tension lurks in ripped flashes, its sinister eyes slitted. But more often, buoyant, head-aloft optimism speed-marches on inexorable mission. Also characteristically, the Quakes throw out some of the brawniest and most insistent rockabilly on offer. Making it all the more arrestingly piquant is natural fellowship of psycho, punk, and new wave manners. I see the gauging arrow has spun off of the Cool Meter.

Recommended "Silent Type," "Under the Radar," "Fuck You"

Video "Fuck You" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4bcIvFsdRA

http://thequakes.com/
https://www.facebook.com/TheQuakes/?fref=ts
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/thequakes
https://itunes.apple.com/fm/artist/the-quakes/id77857803
https://www.amazon.com/Live-By-The-Sword-Mini-CD/dp/B01DODCYGM/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1471000112&sr=1-1&keywords=the+quakes+live+by+the+sword

Igor and the Red Elvises
"Bacon" 
(Shooba Dooba Records)

Those smart enough to buy this will find themselves in a kaleidoscopic technicolor ticker tape-showered bacchanalian scene where rock and roll, funk, polka, surf, reggae, disco, and folk clap hands, throw back laughing heads, and jitter bop into hysterical fracture. Equal dollops cleverness and roll-about hilarity. A distinctive Eastern European vibe informs each dance step through an uproarious exercise literally unlike any other, though, at moments, redolent of antecedent popular cultural muses.


Recommended "Smell the Bacon," "Best Looking Girl," "Everybody Polka," "Tika Song," "Beer, Babes, and BBQ," "Monster From Mars"

Video: "Bacon" (live) 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9sD4kLh7ic&list=PLOPIcKRiTMqUD4g6ZXxd8a0mjD7XAb4jC&index=6

http://www.redelvises.com/
https://www.facebook.com/igorandredelvises/
https://www.amazon.com/Bacon-Igor-Red-Elvises/dp/B00LX668BU

Sandbox Bullies
"Cadillac Smile" (Loaded Bomb Records)

Read through six rawboned arrangements, jaw-jutted rockabilly detonates in all directions, knocking flat moonage malcontents as if they were pomaded tenpins elated at the full-bore aggression.

Recommended "Cadillac Smile," "Gimme," "Train"

Video "Cadillac Smile"
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-O3Zer-aB8

https://www.facebook.com/SANDBOXBULLIESsince1998/
http://loadedbombrecords.com/sandbox-bullies
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/sandboxbullies12

Kenyon Lockry

"Family Man" (self)

An easygoing buddy you didn't know you had has got a CD out. With gentlemanly, sunbeam-strobed home-folk bounce, Kenyon shares his world and the cherished ones populating it. An unhurried, loose-limbed family album of universal import.

Recommended "Ramblin'," "We Got a Good Thing," "Finger Lickin' Good Cookin'"," "Minutes Pass," "Lil' Kenyon," "Sweet Lil' Nora June," "Let Your Worries Blow Away In the Wind"

Video "Ramblin'" 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6OI6k-hyfw

http://www.kenyonlockry.com/

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/kenyonlockry2

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/family-man/id1080481924

Dex Romweber
"Carrboro" (Bloodshot)

All about in Dex's works float ghosts lugubrious, stricken, and, at sudden moments, jaunty and piano-rolling. His is a booming voice summoning desperately contemplative, assertive flawed humanity. All of which strides and soars in confident confederation with authoritative guitar appropriately echoing into greater grasp.

Recommended "Nightride," "Taking My Baby Away," "Smile," "Midnight At Vic's," "Trouble of the World," "I Don't Know"

Video "Trouble of the World" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzMgVViLeuA
https://www.facebook.com/dex.romweber?fref=ts
https://www.bloodshotrecords.com/album/carrboro

The Meteors
"The Power of Three" (Mutant Rock)

It was never seriously disputed. "Only the Meteors Are Pure Psychobilly." Contumelious. Brutal. Supremely indifferent to opprobrium. They are at smirking, stomping ease being malignant. And just as they were the primeval sinister brute creations, so too will they always be the only ones indispensible. 

Recommended "Rockin' At the House of Strange," "Psycho," "Do the Blood Feast Twist," "On the Devil's side," "The Curse of the Hunger For Crawling Things," "Look Behind You," "The New Primitives," "We Will Rise"

Video "We Will Rise" (taster) 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seEiFR3KZLw

http://yendor71.com/
https://www.facebook.com/themeteorsofficial/
http://www.shop.outofvogue.de/mutant-rock-records/

13 Cats
"In the Beginning, Vol. 1 & 2" 
(13 Cats/Revel Yell)

A felicitously aberrant rascal mission whose storied big beat-ministers hailed from glory-scribed walks the Rockats, Stray Cats, and Polecats, 13 Cats may have been just too cool for this world; their flame burned briefly, but oh, so brightly. Danny B. Harvey, Tim Polecat, Smutty Smith, and Slim Jim Phantom crafted stunningly novel admixtures of literate, fantastic, scarlet lyricism and burly roots musics jetted up into tomorrow. They rocked headfirst into a tilted and technicolored taboo delirium dear to maddened cobblestone acolytes. And, though they ultimately went different ways, and discovered fresh joys, we have this stormy portrait of the momentary wonder that was.

Recommended "Flesh For Andy Warhol" (demo), "Hell Bop" (live radio broadcast), "Teddy Boy Kung Fu Weapon" (1996 debut show), "Chanting For Cadillacs" (demo), "Rockaholic Baby," "Snap, Crackle, and Hiss" (1996 debut show)

Live in Vegas video 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWQbMggzEXs

https://www.facebook.com/the13Cats/home
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/in-the-beginning-vol.-1-2/id1141229941
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/13cats22

The Palomars

"Jail House Bop" / "Brassy Dame" / "Space Age Chevy" (self)

The joint was jumpin'. Limber, grinning dance athletes in hipster glad rags bopped and swung atop weathered hardwood, as a dependable barkeep toweled a mug and surveyed the wall-to-wall fun.

Onstage, a three-man combo gave out with as winning, cleanly defined, and easygoing a sound backdrop as might be desired. Crack-pop snare, knowingly negotiated doghouse, steel-string swerves, impeccable guitar articulations, affably drawled narrations -- everything in its place, and a place for everything.

http://www.thepalomars.net/home

https://www.facebook.com/thepalomars/timeline

http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/ThePalomars

VIDEO "Brassy Dame" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV2A2068zG8

The Rocketz

"California Hell" (Splatterhouse Wreckords)

It's not easily done, relentlessly firing potent punk torpedoes with twanged, sway-backed 'billy charge inlaid. But Tony Slash et al make it sound deceptively simple. They're that adept at their stormful, beat-down, dirty business. Way too good to pass by, much too on-point to contest. Drop the needle, brothers and sisters, and dip hips in the taboo fracture dimension.

Recommended "Before the Night," "Stand Tall and Proud," "Bob's a Zombie," "Transylvania Express," "Curtain of Lies, "I'm Coming Home," "Pretty Fucked Up"

http://therocketzrock.com/

https://www.facebook.com/therocketz/

http://splatterhousewreckords.com/store/products/category/cds-and-vinyl/

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/therocketz1

http://www.amazon.com/California-Hell-Rocketz/dp/B00WOA8K06/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1454322194&sr=1-1&keywords=rocketz

VIDEO: "Before the Night" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF0G09wCyV0

The Von Rebels

"Killing Machine" (Falsetto)

Some bands master eardrum-crunching, chorded wickedness; others, determined, fleet-footed trajectory. That the Von Rebels deftly excel at both is but part of their attraction. They proffer, too, the cool, blade-edged air that marks all significant, danger zone propositions.

Recommended "Kicking Out the Devil," "Borrowed Time," "Going Postal," "Killing Machine," "Kill It," "C'mon"

https://www.facebook.com/thevonrebels/

http://thevonrebelsstore.bigcartel.com/

https://www.facebook.com/FalsettoMusic/

VIDEO "Kicking Out the Devil" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR4H4OXM_zo

Popa Chubby

"Big, Bad and Beautiful - live" (Cleopatra)

The sound is massive, nervy, loud, and proud. Uptempo Blues with more than enough high-steppin' Rock'n'Roll energy to electrify entire midnight cities. Given the wide-open roar of these two inflammatory discs, a Popa Chubby gig seems a non-stop party with no meaningful boundary separating stomping players from head-thrown-back, juice-laced audience.

But don't take my word for Popa Chubby's significance.

Somewhere in the eventual beyond -- misty, supernatural real estate mere earthbound sorts might call night woods, an uncharted plane jointly maintained by upper and lower eternal auspices -- a liquory convocation of passed Blues masters recognizable and obscure slouched around a shared interest:

"This Popa kid picked up on our influence," one legendary master intoned.

A Chicago firebrand from way back agreed. "Yeah. And our techniques, too!"

"Hell, he sounds like one of us!" 

Several of the gathered juke hall big wheels nodded wise assent.

"Not exactly like one of us," said a stormy fret-man. "'Cause he has his own way of sayin' things! And that keeps it all movin'!"

Recommended "One Leg At a Time," "69 Dollars," "Same Old Blues," "Take Me Back To Amsterdam," "Caffeine and Nicotine," ""

http://www.popachubby.com/

http://cleorecs.com/store/?s=Popa+Chubby&post_type=product

VIDEO "One Leg At a Time" Popa Chubby - One leg at a time (official video)

Gutter Demons

"Unfinished Business" 
(Falsetto)

One is immediately taken by the love/hate bond these mohawked Great White North 

monster-men undeniably have with their weaponized instruments. For, just as they are judicious in coaxing from them bold, amphetamine sounds of entrancing nature, so too do they seize, batter, and abuse them with nostrils-flared, jaws-clenched, muscles a-ripple ferocity that splinters all decent. Psychobilly without apologies.

Recommended "Hellride," "Gutter Kings," "After Dark," "Invaders," "Phantom Creep," "Bloodfeast"

http://www.thegutterdemons.com/

https://www.facebook.com/thegutterdemons/timeline

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/unfinished-business/id1046663307

https://www.facebook.com/FalsettoMusic/

VIDEO "Hellride" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03Xpn6YM0HU

Raygun Cowboys

"Heads Are Gonna Roll" (Stomp)

It is very much to these Edmonton jukers' credit that they can at once slam rockabilly reeling and sudden-swerve punk into congenial union while establishing dramatic shared cause between gritty, chunk-a-smack onslaught and eerily beguiling horns. There is, too, a mature depth involved that merits remark -- though it never eclipses the headlong action. 

Recommended "Heads Are Gonna Roll," "Don't Know Why," "Until Next Time," "Bitter Shame," "Nothin' Left To Lose," "In These Walls," "You Were The One"

http://www.rayguncowboys.com/#!

https://www.facebook.com/raygun.cowboys?fref=ts

http://www.stomprecords.com/bands/96/raygun-cowboys/

VIDEO "Heads Are Gonna Roll" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFrojKISanw