Three Things #4: My Chapbook is Out Now
Yes, it’s another newsletter from me, Robert van Vliet.
Listen, you need to understand: you will keep getting these things as long as you stay subscribed. That’s how this works. It’s not my fault if you can’t figure out how to make it stop. Way at the bottom. See it there? “Unsubscribe”? Click that and you’re free.
No? Still with us?
Let’s get right to it, then, shall we?
1. This Folded Path Now Available!
Yes, that’s right: my chapbook, This Folded Path, has just been announced at above/ground press.
You can order it, for five bucks plus shipping, from the publisher by following any of these directions:
To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at robmclennan.blogspot.com
Browse the website, maybe order a fistful of chapbooks. They’re cheap, and there’s something there for every occasion.
But but but!
I will, at some point in the very near future, have copies of my own, and you will be able to order a copy directly from me, for the low low price of five dollars (shipping included). And I might even sign it for you if you’d like. Wotta deal!
Details to follow in a future dispatch.
2. Book Launch?
Some of you might be curious to know whether there will be anything resembling book launch of some sort.
Yes!
But when? Where? How? Will it be in-person? Virtual? Details, once again, to follow. (Or, as my Magic 8 Ball would say: Reply hazy, try again.)
I didn't really have anything else for you. You could stop reading now and still have a rich, fulfilling life. But in order to stay true to the name of this newsletter, here is a third thing, for what it’s worth.
3. We Used to Breathe Fire Together
In each newsletter, I have striven to include something with a local emphasis, and this one is no different. In fact, this is so hyper-local, I can practically smell the wicker and cardboard in the store-room of the Pier 1 on Robert Street where I wielded a boxcutter all summer; it’s like I’m still holding the TDK-90 with Applehead Man and Empty Hearts in my hand.
Why? Because the affable Jimmy Buffett died recently.
This, like Proust’s madeleine, reminded me that the best version of Margaritaville is, of course, by The Widgets.
You can find the song on their 1986 album, Empty Hearts — if you can actually find their 1986 album, Empty Hearts, anywhere. (If you could track down a copy and listen to their cover of Margaritaville, the title of this section would make sense. No, I will not explain the reference. No, you cannot borrow my LP.)
In a decade when the Twin Cities produced, oh let’s see, Prince, The Replacements, Hüsker Dü, Babes in Toyland, The Suburbs, The Jayhawks, Soul Asylum, The Time, The Revolution, Trip Shakespeare, and probably some others I’ll feel like a fool for forgetting, I still think one of my favorite local bands was, honestly, The Widgets.
Here they are in 2016 for some kind of reunion show, performing Apathetic Life (with Trip Shakespeare’s John Munson on bass).
Singer Aaron Seymour’s stage presence reminds me of the shift manager at seemingly every shitty temp job I had in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
The laconic U of M dropout who drives a Datsun hatchback the color of duck tape (or... is entirely encased in duck tape?); who’s always bringing in rare vinyl imports of Sonic Youth and Captain Beefheart, and won’t shut up about the Minutemen; who shows us all the best places (e.g. back stairwell, roof, etc) to hide from “The Man”; who can, in fact, say “The Man” so ironically that he actually sounds sincere; who tells long, meandering stories about his teen years in the ’70s, growing up in an outstate town that was basically a gas station, two traffic lights, and three bars on a county highway, stories that sound like the plot of an R-rated episode of The Dukes of Hazzard, with way too many details about his drug use and the girls he was dating.
Then you discover that his dad is a VP or something at Honeywell or The Mining, and his mom’s, like, a State Senator, and he grew up on a ninety-acre estate in White Bear Lake, with real goddamn horses and a carriage house like in the movie Sabrina, and that almost nothing he’s ever told you is true (except maybe the drugs) — but you don’t care because you know this just means he probably won’t mind when you never return the Andy Partridge bootlegs he lent you…
Until next time!