*A Collection of
Antiquarian Curios & Relics*
"Music is everybody's
business. It's only the publishers
who think people
own it . . ."
--John Lennon
Hey boys and ghouls, you're
listening to classic rock W4. Bippity-bobbity-boo, it's Biff Buster
yakking at you from my secret location deep in the bowels of the Michigan
Capitol building. Coming up, we'll be motorin' on a 30 minute free ride,
but first, Terry McMillan and The Who have something you really want to
know: Who
Asked You? (9780670785698)
27.95:
"Who asked
you? Ooo ooo ooo ooo
I woke up on a
L.A. roadway
The policemen
knew my name
They said,
"Rodney, you can sleep at home tonight
If you can get
up and walk away . . ."
Long time fans of the Biff Buster
Show know that I have a little Biff Busterette at home, and boy, does she love
herself some Sandra Boynton. When I get home, we start with Snuggle
Puppy (9780761130673) 6.95 and move onto The Going to Bed Book (9781442454095)
7.99 and then Doggies (9780671493189) 5.99 etc. etc. So you can
imagine my excitement when I received a copy of Frog Trouble (9780761171768)
16.95 with a CD of Sandra's songs performed by some of music's biggest
stars. They tend to have a C&W bent. "We've got both
kinds of music: Country & Western." I'm talking Alison
Kraus, Mark Lanegan from The Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age, and
the Fountains of Wayne. What in the heck ever happened to Fountains of
Wayne? And then there's Dwight Yoakam. You may recall that Mr.
Yoakam is the director, producer, and star of one of the greatest movies ever
made, South of Heaven, West of Hell. It's so bad, it's
good. Well, let's give his I've Got a Dog a spin:
"Well, he
won't win a prize for being dog-pretty
at a fancy show
in the big city.
He's a mix of
hound and I-don't-know-what.
A hundred
percent pure Junkyard Mutt . . ."
Me too Dwight, me too.
We'll close out this commercial-free block with an obscure gem from John Cale,
he of The Velvet Underground from an earlier epoch and Pulitzer Prize winner A.
Scott Berg's presidential biography (Mr.) Wilson (9780399159213) 40.00:
"And every
time I hear your music,
You're still thousand of miles away . . ."
Odds
& Sods
Ya know, I like
to bust on James Patterson as much as the next bookseller. He's big; he
can take it. But then he comes along and does something that totally
screws it up. If you've read any of the industry rags in the past few
days, you've heard that he has established a million dollar fund to help out
struggling independent bookstores. He's putting his money where his mouth
is, and I can't help but respect that. Thanks, James, and keep it up . .
.
Maybe I should
have gushed more the first time around, but I absolutely loved The Day the
Crayons Quit (9780399255373) 17.99 by Drew Daywalt. I said this was
going to be huge before it was cool and Penguin is reprinting. Order up .
. .
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