hozac books

When Can I Fly? The Sleepers, Tuxedomoon & Beyond
By Michael Belfer
 Foreword by Jon Savage
Hozac Books 

I'm not that into art rock or prog rock, or Devo or the Residents, or any shit like that, right? I'm a Dead Boys guy, not a Pere Ubu guy, you know what I mean? Man oh man, though, once you get about 20 pages into this book by San Francisco punk scene pioneer Michael Belfer (guitarist with The Sleepers and Tuxedomoon) it reads like a crazy fuckin' movie. What a wild freakin' life this dude had! WHOA!

If you read my columns and rants on a semi regular basis, you are probably already hip to my ongoing theory that there ain't many good bands no more in part because controlled media consolidation pummels us all day with time-waster buy shit/puppet celebrity fakes we never asked for, and partly, because there is such a shortage of affordable real estate spaces available to rehearse in, since the banking scum jacked up all the rents everywhere under Obamaand Holder who actually even went to work for 'em after failing to prosecute anybody for the mass mortgage scams, and the landlords who used to rent working class homes to working class people flipped all their rentals into Airbnb’s and act like they're doing you some big fuckin' favor for painting their front porch steps purple, adding a hot tub and a Buddha statue to the yard and charging you $300 a night. These old punk bands paid like $300 a month, ya know?

Punk Under The Sun: Punk & New Wave in South Florida 
By Joey Seeman and Chris Potash
Hozac Books

I was never really drawn to Florida like so many of my ex-friends and former peers, I always called it "Ohio South" cause you know it's all the same insufferable tv brainwashed right wingers from Ohio who seem to migrate there.

Never liked Marilyn Manson or Disneyland all that much, or even Jimmy Buffet yeehaw beach culture, but weirdly a lot of musicians from all my favorite Murkkkan bands have Floridian roots.

Probably my fave band besides Generation X,Pretenders, and Beasts Of Bourbon was basically born there before relocating to Hollywood: a band called the Coma-Tones, who were, according to my famous old amigo the Sleazegrinder: "Like Jim Morrison singing for Guns N Roses". The vocalist Gio was approximately as excellent as Texacala Jones or early Tex Perkins, the guitar player Jimmy James went on to play for Junkyard and the Hangmen, and he's featured in the book. 

WICKED GAME – The True Story of Guitarist James Calvin Wilsey
by Michael Goldberg
(Hozac Books)

Spooky, soulful, nitro-twang genius, James Calvin Wilsey, Chris Isaak'sbeautiful guitarist, who conjured up all those memorable Ennio Morricone spaghetti western, eerie “Twin Peaks” vibes, was born in the Midwest but did not stay there long. His dad was one of those real old time, no nonsense, hard knocks, military aggressors.

I had a lot of close friends who played guitars in my middle school early garage bands, who had fathers like that. Ex-military, real macho, gonna make a manly man outta ya, big game hunter, type o guys. So yeah, being from smalltown Kentucky, my grandfolks family who raised me, were all old veterans and I was not like my cousins. I was never gonna be a 4-H show cattle, play sports, go to war for college money, type of person.

Then, we moved to a town whose only industry was building tanks in Ohio. man, that was a disaster for a little kid like me who could not catch a fucking football. My grandma had gotten me into Elvis from like, birth, almost. I used to wear a pink Presley concert ticket from the Rupp Areana show he never played because he died around in my middle school fedora during my "Pretty In Pink" years.

For me, it all started with Elvis. From there, I inherited an aunt's Monkeesrecords and started seeing their show reruns on WXIX TV. My mother was a school teacher who tried to get me piano lessons, drums in the school band, a folk guitar that got stolen at Baptist reform school, but I sucked as a player. When I discovered Jim Morrison and Iggy Pop, I kinda decided I should be a loudmouthed frontman because I had all this feeling inside me, I wanted to express about the conflict I had with the sports and military culture I grew up in.

THE DAMNED

PAT TODD AND THE RANKOUTSIDERS

REV. PAUL S. CUNNINGHAM

Rev. Paul S. Cunningham's YouTube channel

BILLY MOTHERFUCKING IDOL & STEVE STEVENS
I just love those guys with all my little black heart, exactly what I set out to do with my own little rebel rock amigo,s before they got seduced by the dark side of the force! They still write killer songs from the heart and can rock with anyone. Hope to meet 'em before I die!

BOOTSEY X & THE LOVEMASTERS

THE CULT

THE GOLDEN RAT
I was pen pals with Hiroshi The Golden Arm way back in his Remains days, he is the Johnny Thunders Of Japan. The World Famous Mister Ratboy has been one of my guiding lights since we first met at a Thunders benefit when I was about 21. I love the guy. He taught me a lot.

HANGMEN
Bryan Small and Jimmy James from the Comatones are like, the coolest motherfuckers in the world. Comatones are my #1 soul brothers.

MIKE MONROE
So Lordsy, little bit goth, little bit new wave, right up my alley!

HOZAC BOOKS & RECORDS
This label or publishing imprint is a juggernaut of non stop cool as fuck rock 'n' roll action. Book after book, record after record, few people are delivering this much dynomite goodness in this ever darkening age.From Jeff Drake of The Joneses autobiography to Bebe Buell and James Calvin Wilsey books. i loved their essential history of Floridian underground music scene,"Punk Under the Sun". Every little thing they do is da nazz!

HoZac Books – HoZac Records

GUERILLA TEENS
The highlight of my own personal, long dead rock ‘n’ roll misadventures was when one of my many set-to-sel-destruct-before-our-fifteen-minutes, suicide and glam rock punk gangs opened for The Humpers on their "Positively Sick On Fourth Street" tour, way back in the day. They taught us lowlife hoodlums a thing or two about how to rock the shit out of a namby pamby poseur college bar. You know Scott “Deluxe” Drake from a long procession of badass punkroll bands like Suicide Kings and Vice Principals. His latest, the Guerilla Teens finds him in his second or third angry youth, he is as punk rock as it gets, and a fearless frontman, like few others.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
,,,is an amazing artist and my favorite contemporary writer, she comes from Australia - like so many of my favorite things like the Divinyls and Cosmic Psychos and Rowland S. Howard and Beasts Of Bourbon. An absolute treasure, poet, truth teller and flat out soulful, motherfucking public intellectual. FREE ASSANGE!

Caitlin Johnstone - YouTube

Assange Exposes The Empire’s True Face: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix – Caitlin Johnstone

GENE LOVES JEZEBEL
As a notorious local yokel new wave fag fronting some glammish garage bands in the long gone ‘80s, I took boatloads of shit from dumb redenck assholes for being way into Gene Loves Jezebel, Prince, the Cure, and Flesh for Lulu. They are still absolutely holy, in my book.

MY FAVE MODERN NEW WAVE SINGER
Laur, from Veglam, is so talented and I love all his bands! 

Bandcamp

Facebook

RICHARD DUGUAY
Most talented rocknroll motherfucker in decades. If you like Lou Reed, Thunders, Bowie, the Dolls, old Alice, or even Jim Morrison, this dude is the black cat. heroic! He's so good at everything! When I reunite the band and my ship comes in, I'ma get him to produce me. 

BLACK BOMBERS
Featuring ex-members of The Godfathers, Gunfire Dance and Dave Kusworth's bands! They kick a lot of ass.

ROLLING STONES
England's Newset Hitmakers! One of my most cherished old collaborators turned me on to this!

THE LOVELESS
Marc Almond, another childhood role model, joins forces with my guitar hero, Neal X from Sigue Sputnik. One of my best hairdays was in 1988 when a chick named Mickey McCarcken sent a limo to pick me and my old guitarist up to attend her graduation at one of the many high schools I was expelled from, primarily for "chronic dresscode violations" and where they pressed charges against me for, get this: "Malicious Destruction Of County Property Felony 4"...for drawing new wave logos in my history book and challenging the wrestlling coach's racist whitewash settler colonial narratives. He used to put me in the classroom closet as an expample to the squarse. Fuck you, Mister Heimer.

Oh yeah, the hair! I achieved maximum Neal X like glory with a blow drier and a whole can of Aqua Net that day, and got to sit in the bleachers with the love of my new wave youth, who was there to see the trendy soccer kid she had ditched me for while I was in juvenile detention. The Loveless are like Spiders From Mars in an age of Fascism, censorship, and genocide. i love 'em to tears.

SHANE MACGOWAN FOREVER