Runnin' With the Devil: A Backstage Pass to the Wild Times, Loud Rock, and the Down and Dirty Truth Behind the Making of Van Halen by Noel E. Monk with Joe Layden

If you are looking for a book that explains how or why Van Halen wrote their songs or goes into great detail about how they found each other, this book isn't it.  It mainly focuses on their touring time until David Lee Roth leaves the band.  Noel E. Monk first met Van Halen when he acted as their tour manager for their first tour promoting an EP of songs that were playing on the radio, including "Runnin' With the Devil", "Eruption", "Ice Cream Man", "You Really Got Me", and "Jamie's Cryin'" that would eventually become the album Van Halen with other songs added.  The year was 1978.  Noel will adhere that he knew the band was something special and on the cusp of making it huge.

Their band manager, Marshall Berle had been chosen for them by the record company and he was lousy. He was never there and he charged them for everything.  He once put on a lavish party for them and then stuck them with the gigantic check, which also included his flight out there for him and his wife and his hotel stay.  Berle also filmed the band constantly whenever he was around doing all sorts of things, including sexual acts.  The breaking point between the band and Berle came when he showed these tapes to the brass and the female secretaries back at Warner recording studios.

While on the road for that tour, the guys, especially David Lee Roth, who was the de facto leader of the band and loved to deal with the business end of things spent a great deal of time talking to Noel about things he should have been discussing with his manager, but Noel helped him out and gave him the information he needed.   So at the end of the tour, David came to him and said that he and the guys wanted Noel to by their manager.  Noel told him that he wanted the job but that first they should go to some of the heavy hitters first and see what they could do for them since he had no experience as a band manager especially for a band that was breaking big.

They did and they still wanted Noel.  However, their lawyer would insist that Noel sign a month to month contract instead of a multi-year contract which is standard in the industry.  The guys were naturally gunshy after their last manager and Noel felt pressure to do it this way and figured he could always talk them into a real contract later. This would never happen.  And in a way, this led to him having an ax to grind with this book because Van Halen did kinda screw him over if his version of events is to be believed.   On their first tour, each was paid $175 dollars a concert even though their songs were getting great airplay and people were packing in the concert halls to see them.  They were paid a bit more for the next concert tour but the album deal was lousy.  Noel manages to get them out of their crappy recording contract with Warner and negotiate a much better one making them lots more money.  It was also his idea to do their own merchandising which meant they would make a lot of money off of it rather than if they let someone else handle it and take a small percentage of the profits. 

This book is filled with plenty of backstage antics such as trashed hotel rooms beyond the usual trashing, and one night when David went nuts trashing a room and ended up in a straightjacket because the tour manager couldn't get control of David and he happened to have one on hand.  The many stunts they pulled on each other that in the beginning caused laughs but by the end of the 1984 tour was causing them to want to kill each other.

There were also plenty of girls backstage and plenty of doctors giving the boys' penicillin shots for STDs.  However, during the first tour when they were doing a leg of the tour in England with Black Sabbath, nearly the entire audience was male so there were few groupies to have sex with and they guys went without a lot, which made David unbearable to be around.  When they sold more records and became more popular the better class of girls came backstage.

Also, the biggest thing about Van Halen was the drinking and the drugs. Edward and Alex were alcoholics and Edward would become addicted to cocaine.  Alex was what you would call a functional alcoholic.  He might not remember what he played the night before but he never made a mistake in his playing of the drums. Likewise, Edward's playing was not affected by his abuses but he wasn't functional as Alex.  He was pretty much out of it.  David knew not to get totally wasted before a concert, though he did on a least one occasion and it was a disaster with him slurring his words and not being able to jump about on stage like he usually does. This was a double disaster as it was the US Festival and it was being filmed.  But for the most part, you could count on Van Halen giving you a kickass concert that was worth more than the cost of your ticket, according to Noel.

The person who doesn't get talked about much in this book is the bass player, Michael Anthony, but when he is the author makes a point to put down his playing but says that he sings better than David Lee Roth, only he lacks the front man abilities.  Michael is a sweet guy who is dating his high school sweetheart, so he doesn't really get into the groupies. He drinks, but he seems to have a control over it.  But his niceness is his downfall as the band will attack him knowing he won't fight back.  The one I feel who really get cheated, betrayed, and loses out here in this book is not Noel, but Michael Anthony.

One point that is made about this band often is that they are like children, mostly unruly children.  At the beginning of the book, they are innocent of the ways of the music world and the world at large.  Months before his wedding to Valerie Bertinelli, Edward gets hit with a paternity suit and Noel needs to find out if there's any truth to it. Ed is freaking out that he might have gotten this woman pregnant because he did spend time with her. But the only sexual acts performed were blow jobs and Ed wants to know if he could have gotten her pregnant.  He really has no idea.

This was an interesting book, though I don't know how much of it to believe. The reason it is only coming out now is that Noel sued them after he was fired and part of the deal was that he not write anything about the band for a certain period of time.  I guess that time has finally passed.  At the same time, some of this stuff is pretty easy to believe knowing what you know about the band.  David Lee Roth is an egomaniac and some of the vanity stuff about him is pretty easy to believe.  But you do have to keep in mind that Noel has an agenda and a biased point of view.  It did make for some interesting reading though.

Link to Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Runnin-Devil-Backstage-Behind-Making-ebook/dp/B01HM27IEO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520255271&sr=8-1&keywords=running+with+the+devil+book             

Saga: Vol 1 by Brian K. Vaughan (Writer), Fiona Staples (Artist), Fonografiks (Lettering and Design)

Landfall, the largest planet in the galaxy has been at war with its only moon, Wreath for as long as anyone can remember.  When the war started it was fought in the cities. "But because the destruction of one would only send the other spinning out of orbit, both sides began to outsource combat to foreign lands."  At home, there was finally peace and people either forgot or stopped caring about the war, while the rest of the galaxy was forced to choose a side.

The book opens up with the birth of the narrator, Hazel, born to Alana of Landfall and her husband Marko of Wreath who has magical abilities and has sworn to not draw his sword ever again.  Right after the birth of Hazel in a garage, they've borrowed there is a pounding on the door from Landfall officers looking for Alana.  At the same time, a contingent of Wreath arrive and the two groups shoot it out with only Alana, Marko, and Hazel surviving.  Before dying the man who rented them the garage and sold them out hands them a map of the Rocketship Forest, a kind of fairy tale place that might or might not exist.

As the three of them head out to follow the map they will find out that someone has sent Freelancers to kill them and bring the child in.  Also, Prince IV of Landfall who has just returned from an exhausting mission to his wife finds himself tasked with finding them, a job he does not relish.  This comic gets the series off with a bang and you immediately fall in love with the main characters.  The tough as nails Alana and the sweet now peaceful Marko who compliment each other nicely. The artwork is interesting with its soft lines and hues and depictions of characters with rams horns, fairy wings, and TV/monitor heads.   I really loved this book and can't wait to read the next one.

Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Saga-Vol-1-Brian-Vaughan-ebook/dp/B015XEABR4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520006807&sr=1-1&keywords=saga+vol+1

Girl Waits With Gun by Amy Stewart

One summer afternoon in 1914, three sisters Constance, Norma, and Fleurette Kopp are heading into town in their buggy when they are violently hit by Henry Kaufman and his cronies in his car.  Constance, a very tall woman, makes it quite clear that he will pay for the damages and takes down his license plate and his name and address.  It turns out that Kaufman is the owner of a silk mill and they run things in town.  Their brother Francis wants them to let him fix it and not have anything to do with Kaufman.  He also wants them to sell their farm and come live with him so he can take care of them. Which is a running theme of the book. People keep asking them if they don't have a man to look after them like they can't take care of themselves. 

Constance, however, intends to fix this herself and sends a letter detailing the damages to Kaufman. When she doesn't receive a response she sends another letter requesting the money and also telling him that she will be by to pick it up if he does not send it.  When he doesn't send it she goes to the factory and when he threatens her youngest sister by intimating he would kidnap her and sell her into white slavery she grabs the smaller man and slams him against the wall.  His cronies crowd around her and let her know she isn't safe there so she runs away.

This is just the beginning of the battle between the Kopp sisters and Kaufman.  He will drive by and threaten them and send bricks through the window with messages.  Constance ends up getting help from Sherrif Heath who gives both her and Norma guns, hence the title of the book.  He also provides men to guard the house when things become quite dangerous for them.

There's also the story of Lucy Banks a young mother who had a baby out of wedlock with Kaufman. When the silk factory went on strike last year she was forced to send her small child away to New York City to be seen to by others because she had no food to feed her child.  But her child did not come back after the strike ended and when she went to New York City to try to find him asking after the woman who was taking care of him no one had heard of her.  Constance becomes involved in helping Lucy to look for her child.

When you get to the end of this book you find out in the author's notes that the events in this book, with the exception of the story about Lucy Banks, was all true.  Stewart fictionalized something that really happened in New Jersey in 1914.  She even includes in the book actual pieces from newspapers of the day.  That just makes a really great book that much cooler.  Each sister's personality is so uniquely theirs.  Constance is the protective older sister who is seeking something more from life, Norma is the sensible, curmudgeon middle sister who has kept the family together, and Fleurette is the innocent, fanciful youngest sister who would get into lots of trouble if the other two didn't have her locked up in the middle of nowhere on a farm.  I really loved this book and seeing as Stewart decided to continue the stories of these women as a series I cannot wait to read the next book to find out what trouble the three sisters find themselves in next.

Quotes

Fleurette loves secrets because she enjoys telling people things they aren’t supposed to know. I prefer to tell people the things they are supposed to know.

-Amy Stewart (Girl Waits With Gun p 201)

If I could give something to Fleurette—if I could give her one silent gift from a mother she didn’t know she had—it would be this: the realization that we have to be a part of the world in which we live. We don’t scurry away when we’re in trouble, or when someone else is. We don’t run and hide.

-Amy Stewart (Girl Waits With Gun p 308)

*My book club was lucky enough to talk to Ms. Stewart via Skype during one of our meetings.  She shared with us where she got the idea to write this book.  While researching information on her book The Drunken Botanist which is about making liquor from plants, she learned about Haufman who was a gin runner.  Reading about Haufman uncovered the story of the Kopp sisters.  She had figured out some things about Fleurette on her own but had them confirmed as well as found out some other information from Fleurette's son. I found Ms. Stewart to be quite gracious and patient with my group and its questions. It was a very enjoyable experience.   `

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Waits-Kopp-Sisters-Novel-ebook/dp/B00QPHKR3M/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1519824237&sr=8-2&keywords=amy+stewart+books

    

Captain Marvel Earth's Mightiest Hero Vol 3 by Kelly Sue DeConnick (Writer), David Lopez (Artist), Marcio Tahara (Artist), Laura Braga (Artist), Lee Looughridge (Colorist), Nick Filardi (Colorist), and BC's Joe Caramagna (Letterer)

In the last book, Captain Marvel fought against Yon-Rogg the Kree who was behind everything that was happening to her.  She defeats him but loses her memory in the process.  New York City has given her the Statue of Liberty to live in and she does with Marina and her daughter Kit.  A new villain appeared on the scene: Grace Valentine.  She's super smart but Captain Marvel was able to capture her and put her in prison.  Also, the builders an alien race that had the intention of destroying our galaxy was stopped by a coalition of groups that may have been fighting each other but now turned their attention to the real threat.  The builders were defeated at great cost.

In this comic, we find out that Carol has been secretly seeing Rhodey.  He tells her that Tony Stark thinks there should be an Avenger in space touching base with the Guardians of the Galaxy, but looking out for threats to the earth and it should be a pilot.  As much as she will miss her family on earth, Carol needs to get away and figure things out for herself for a while.  So she signs up for the gig.

On earth, they have discovered a pod with a Nowlanian in it. They lost their planet during the battle with the builders and have had to move from one refugee camp to another and now they are on a planet that is poisoning them. The council is trying to get them to evacuate but they refuse to leave without their sick. They're also a bit suspicious about why the council needs them to evacuate so desperately. They want to stay and find a cure for the sickness.

Captain Marvel is charged with getting the pod back to Torfa and on the way there she runs into space pirates called Haffensye.  The Guardians of the Galaxy come by and help her with them.  Star Lord, the son of J'Son who is the ruler of Spartex tells her he cannot go with her to help with the mission since his presence would only exacerbate the situation.  So she goes to Torfa where negotiations have stalled.  When she and some of the natives go out to find what the Haffensye are up to they discover the truth behind everything.  Now they must make a decision: stay and fight for their planet and all of their people or save a few.

Captain Marvel and Rocket have an adventure when Rocket tells everyone that Captain Marvel's cat is a flerken, a rare egg-laying creature people will pay lots of money for.  He truly believes that her cat is a flerken even though she keeps insisting that it isn't.  Then Grace Valentine escapes from prison using rats with satellites on top of their heads.  They head straight for Carol's home.  A teleporter Carol runs into in space and helps out is carrying some messages for her and those messages tell her of what Valentine is up to.  What will Carol do if anything?

This comic was amazing.  The different stories were all so good. I loved the one with Rocket and the creature that came for the cat flerken.  Rocket and Captain Marvel do not get along and yell at each other a lot in a hilarious fashion.  The art is fabulous. The expressions they capture on her face from absolute rage to uncertainty as to what to do with a crying teenager to a devious smile cause a reaction in you.  I really enjoyed this book and can't wait to see what volume four has in store.

Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Captain-Marvel-Earths-Mightiest-Hero/dp/1302902687/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1519572459&sr=8-3-fkmr0&keywords=captain+marvel+earths+mightiest+hero+vol+4

Winter Soldier: The Complete Collection by Ed Brubaker (Writer), Butch Guice (Penciler, Inker), Michael Lark (Penciler), Stefano Gaudiano (Inker), Brian Thies (Inker), Tom Palmer (Inker), Bettie Breitweiser (Colorist), Jordie Bellaire (Colorist), Matthew Wilson (Colorist), Mitch Breitweiser (Colorist), and Joe Caramagna (Letterer)

Sin, the daughter of the Red Skull has released a Serpent who has a mystic hammer that empowers Sin transforming her into the herald Skadi.  The Serpent summons his worthy causing seven additional hammers to fall across the earth.  Odin plans on destroying the Earth in order to kill the Serpent, but Thor intervenes.  Tony Stark forges a set of weapons made of enchanted uru metal to help the Avengers and they manage to hold the enemy at bay long enough for Thor to defeat the Serpent and die in Odin's arms.  One of the casualties of the war was Bucky Barnes who was the current Captain America.

The book opens with Bucky being saved by a shot of something from Nick Fury.  But they don't want anyone knowing that he is alive. Only Fury, Black Widow, and Steve Rogers know that he is alive.  They hold a funeral for him with something like a body inside.  Bucky has work that needs to be done in the shadows and it will be better if no one knows he is alive.  Black Widow is going to help him.

Someone has woken up some KGB sleeper agents that Bucky trained years ago for what they are unsure of.  When an attempt on Vicor Von Doom's life is made outside the Embassy of Latveria and Bucky and Natasha battle a gorilla wielding a machine gun they suspect that the Red Ghost a Soviet scientist is part of the plot.  Bucky and Natasha go to the auction house where the sleeper agents activation codes were sold and find out that that wasn't the only thing that the Red Ghost bought. He also bought a Von Doom bot.

Now, who has it in for Latveria?  A crazy woman with cybernetic implants named Lucia Von Bardas. She was placed in control of Latveria after the old crooked ruler was removed and the government was cleaned out.  The problem was she was worse than he was. She was selling old Doom technology to bad guys hoping to keep S.H.E.I.L.D. too busy to notice what she was up to.   They figured it out, however, and took her down. On the way to taking her to a secure location she escaped.  She plans on using the Doom bot to start a World War.

One thing they discover is that one of the sleeper agents, Novokov, woke up twelve years earlier quite violently by an earthquake and likely didn't have his memories when he did.  A few months ago while reading a newspaper he saw the ad calling him in and went in to see his handler who explained things to him and what the new plan was, but he ends up killing him.

And he is just getting started. He realizes that Bucky was around this whole time and could have saved him by waking him up at any time but didn't.  So he wants to make him pay for this.  He kills someone Bucky cares about and then he kidnaps Black Widow and has the doctor who brainwashed her when she was in the Red Room brainwash her into thinking that she is a double agent and that she was working undercover at S.H.I.E.L.D. and he completely erases her memories of her relationship with Bucky.

Can Black Widow be saved?  Will Bucky survive this and capture Novokov?  This book will break your heart. I will not tell you, however, whether or not it will mend it again.  This was truly a fabulous book. I really loved it and cannot say enough good things about it. The art is amazing and drawn in a strict fashion that fits the book.   It is by far at the top of my list of favorite comics.  You really should read this one. 

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Winter-Soldier-Ed-Brubaker-Collection/dp/0785190651/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519391692&sr=1-1&keywords=the+winter+soldier+the+complete+collection

The Link Boy by Michael J. Martineck

I received this book as a pre-publication copy from the publisher. This in no way influenced my review. Set about a hundred years into the future, this interesting novel is set against a background where three corporations run things around the world. There are no more nations just these corporations. They decide what you will do with your life when you are thirteen based on your performance in school.  Teachers teach in the morning and at night.  The Catholic Church is another entity in the mix. They are quite powerful and do a lot of mediation work between the corporations.  The priests do not have to take a vow of celibacy, though some do. They have women priests, though it is still run by men. You are forced to exercise every day or face a fine and get in trouble with the corporations.  You also go and get a physical twice a year.  You also wear a link on your wrist that you get when you are born, though you can certainly change them as you grow older.  They provide you with access to the internet, books to read, information on the person you are talking to, and much, much, more.

This book is centered around three people: Detective Edwin McCallum, Father Demiana DeFalco, and teacher Neelesh Fhor.  McCallum gets a call to go to a house that is being invaded one night and interrupts a man who has just murdered a doctor. The mysterious figure fights with precision and uses a wire to cut his achilles tendon and get away.  This puts him off the case and on suspension until he is better. He goes home and paints and draws, something he is really good at, but he is also secretly looking into the case.

Father DeFalco is being asked to do a mediation, something she has never done before.  The mediation is between the India and Hong Kong corporation who have a problem with a nuclear reactor that belongs to Ambyr Consolidated.  The book is set where New York was which is covered by Ambyr Consolidated.  The reactor is located right on the Erie River and the other two corporations are worried that it will blow and ruin the water.  This argument has been going on for thirty years with no one getting anywhere.  DeFalco insists on going inside the plant and finds something that will surprise her as to what is really going on inside that plant.

Neelesh teaches thirteen-year-olds about the history of corporations.  He's still young enough to care that his kids learn in a fun way, but not too fun because that would go against the corporate policy.  When he tries to help a student he runs into great difficulty with the kid's father.  He has no life but visits his closelipped mother with her very nice job, every day to eat a meal with her.  His doctor pulled some strings and got him his teaching job.  His doctor is the one that was murdered and required him to run a battery of tests every year that his new doctor says are entirely unnecessary as he is healthy.

You will begin to wonder how these three threads of the story will come together, but never fear they do and in a very cool way.  McCallum will be the one to bring the three of them together.  I really loved the characters in this book. McCallum with his tough guy routine that is straight out of a 1930s mystery novel. He even has the trench coat. But he paints these beautiful pictures that he refuses to sell.  Then there's the priest, DeFalco who enjoys going to bars and listening to illegal music and drinking with her friends.  She also tries desperately not to cuss, which is so funny.  She's tough, intelligent, and smart-mouthed, which gets her into all kinds of trouble.  Neelesh is the teacher everyone should want, but no one appreciates.  He promises to himself to not lie to his students and kills himself trying to make a boring class interesting.  His teaching methods get him in trouble with the corporation of course even though he has the highest test scores. He also loves to go to the track and race his Saab.  There's this rebel with a cause streak in him. This book was the second book in the Freeworld series, though I can tell you that it doesn't affect the reading at all. I was not lost, but it does make me curious to read the first book, The Milman.  This was a truly enjoyable book and a look at where we could be headed.  And for those curious about the title like I was while reading the book wondering what it meant, it does get explained at the very end of the book.  I cannot recommend this book enough. 

Quotes

Irony. Demiana had always thought that irony, as opposed to cleanliness, was next to Godliness. God wasn’t exactly clean; he put more dirt in the world than just about anything else.  Irony? He must have made that for himself.

-Michael J. Martineck (The Link Boy p 236)

Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Link-Boy-Free-World-Novel-ebook/dp/B072BMVP2J/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519220145&sr=8-1&keywords=the+link+boy

From Here To Eternity: Traveling the World To Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty

 Caitlin Doughty's first book, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes [http://nicolewbrown.blogspot.com/2015/06/smoke-gets-in-your-eyes-and-other.html] dealt with her first job out of college working at a crematorium.  It seems as though she had found her calling because she went back to school to learn the funeral sciences.  Now she has her own nonprofit funeral home, Undertaking L.A.

In this book, she explores what people do with dead bodies.  For example, villages in the area of Toraja in Indonesia, the families mummify or if they can afford it embalm the bodies of the loved ones of their family and then keep them in the house for an indeterminate amount of time (it could be months or years) until the ceremony ma'nene is held and they get their own resting place. At this ma'nene animals are sacrificed in order that their soul can be released.  This doesn't mean that they don't bring them back out for celebrations and family get-togethers.

 In Japan, the crematory rate is 99.9%.  Until the current Emperor, the Emperors have all chosen a burial.  They do have places where you can place your bones.  In Japan, they see ashes as being unclean and they only keep the bones, which is done by the family at the crematorium by using chopsticks to place them in the urn.  At Ruriden columbarium they have slots for your bones with Buddhas in front that light up.  The entire place changes colors according to the season by the use of lights.

She also encountered a corpse hotel in Japan where different rooms are set up to your different tastes and needs. Some have showers, kitchens, and mats for people to sleep on which if you have out of town family members there for the funeral this would be a place to put them.  You can have the room for up to four days.  They will bring the corpse into the room whenever you want.  At American funerals, you barely get to spend any time with the beloved before they are buried. In Japan, you get to truly say goodbye.

Doughty explores some ways in America that people are trying as means of disposing of your corpse after death.  She also examines practices in Mexico dealing with Dios de los Muertos, in Spain where they keep the corpses behind glass and Bolivia where they have the belief in the natitas, the skulls of the dead who help others with problems they might have.  This book was utterly fascinating and incredibly interesting.  It will even give you ideas about what to do with your own body after its gone.  It did for me. This book was just as good as her last book.  I highly recommend it.

Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Here-Eternity-Traveling-World-Death/dp/0393249891/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519046849&sr=8-1&keywords=from+here+to+eternity+caitlin+doughty&dpID=51dk%252BlELWfL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch