At long last, we’re finally concluding our two-parter on Pamela Des Barres’ epochal memoir I’m with the Band! In this episode, we get in some more digs at our nemesis Jimmy Page, with some bonus potshots at Don Johnson, and continue to gush about how nice it is to read a book where you don’t end up hating the protagonist by the end. The Book Club will be taking October off, but we’ll reconvene in November for a reader-selected book TBD–if you haven’t already suggested something, get your votes in now!
This month’s Headbangers Book Club Official Selection is a special one, as it’s the first book we’ve read that’s not a total sausage party! Pamela Des Barres may not have been a rock star in her own right (unless you count her brief stint in the Zappa-sponsored girl group the GTO’s), but her memoir I’m with the Band is a vital counterpoint to the male-dominated hijinks of ’60s and ’70s rock; plus there’s a couple of real questionable relationships with preteen boys, so it fits right in with our previous selection in even more ways than expected! We’ll be back in a few weeks with Part 2. Thanks for listening!
For the inaugural episode of the new and improved Headbangers Book Club, we decided to go big with not one, but two books on Led Zeppelin: four entitled manbabies and borderline sociopaths who just so happened to write (or, in some cases, steal) some of the greatest rock music of all time. Join us as we discuss the Great Dane incident, shitting incidents (plural), and all the other depravities in this 120 Days of Sodom for the hesher set. Please share your thoughts with us on Twitter, Instagram, or drop us an email; and remember to join us for our next book, 18 and Life on Skid Row by Sebastian Bach! We’ll be reading the first half of the book by Friday, March 11.
The end of our year-long immersion in the filmography of Mike Myers is in sight; but hoo boy, is this final stretch a test of endurance. Our penultimate film is 2008’s The Love Guru: the movie that finally put Mike’s career out of its misery after The Cat in the Hat roughed it up and left it for dead. Join us as we discuss the unfathomable depths to which Ben Kingsley sinks in his performance, and repeatedly refer to Romany Malco as “Romany Falco.” But really, who cares? Nothing matters! God is dead, long live Pitka!
For the very tiny subset of Dystopian Dance Party listeners who are also children and huge Mike MyersCat in the Hatfans (i.e., literally just Zach’s son), here’s a family-friendly version of our most recent podcast. As an added bonus, by just bleeping out the curse words, we put exactly the same amount of effort into making this appropriate for kids as Brian Grazer and Bo Welch put into the actual movie! SON OF A BI…
After eight months, we’ve finally reached the film that started this whole ridiculous project in the first place… and now, jokes on us, we still have to watch three more Shrek movies. Join us as we discuss The Cat in the Hat, the infamous film that ended live-action adaptations of Dr. Seuss books and Mike Myers‘ career as a movie star, all in one fell swoop. We’re so ex-ciii-ted!
The bad news is, we’re a day late for Month 4 of our year-long deep dive into the cinematic oeuvre of Mike Myers; but the good news is, the movie we’re discussing may just be the best of the bunch. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery holds up surprisingly well, and feels in retrospect like Myers’ peak as a singular creative voice. It’s all downhill from here, folks! We’ll be back later in January for what will likely be a much more sobering look at the 1999 sequel, The Spy Who Shagged Me; in the meantime, though, this is our happening, baby, and it freaks us out!
We’re now a quarter of the way through our year-long deep dive into the cinematic oeuvre of Mike Myers, and would you believe it, the movie is actually pretty darn good: Wayne’s World 2 may not be quite on the same level as its predecessor, but it’s funnier and more memorable than a sequel to a Saturday Night Live spinoff movie has any right to be. Join us as we discuss our favorite and least favorite scenes, the only circumstances under which we would be interested in seeing a Wayne’s World 3, and whether Wayne and Garth are actually ageless, dimension-hopping demigods. Let us know your thoughts in the comments–we’ll be back next month for Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.
September is kind of our unofficial Marc Bolan month at Dystopian Dance Party; so for this installment of our Dystopian Book Club podcast series, we thought we’d read the excellent 2006 biography Bolan: The Rise and Fall of a 20th Century Superstar by music journalist Mark Paytress. This one goes a little bit long (sorry ’bout that), but there’s plenty of music to keep you entertained!
