Pink Floyd

At What Point Did You Go Full Independent?

I’ve never self-published before. I’m old enough (50) to remember when readers at large frowned upon self-publishing. You’re not good enough for the Big Leagues. Why should I bother reading your crap?

Fortunately, that stigma, while not entirely gone, has been taken down a few pegs. Some of the most popular books (Legends & Lattes, Dungeon Crawler Carl, The Martian, We Are Legion [We Are Bob]) were all first self-published and are now massively successful. There are several other examples I could name.

So, it’s not that they’re not ready for the Big Leagues. They had to prove they were. And boy did they.

Many other authors got followers through independence, built a fan base, and were later picked up by the Big Five. It’s possible.

But when do you pull the trigger? At what point do you convince yourself that it’s you and nobody else?

I’m not there yet, but I am open to it. And I’d love to hear about when people reached their breaking points and hit publish on their own.

Is there anybody out there? (Say it like Roger Waters did from Pink Floyd’s The Wall.)

AC/DC and Pink Floyd to release albums this year!

OK, so, how the hell does AC/DC or Pink Floyd have anything to do with horror?

Easy. AC/DC’s album Who Made Who served as the soundtrack for Stephen King’s movie, Maximum Overdrive. King’s a big AC/DC fan and even directed Maximum Overdrive, which, well, might go down in history as the best movie ever directed by Stephen King. Um, let’s move on. Stephen King writes horror, likes AC/DC, hence, the horror connection.

And since I would gladly burn my feet on hot coals at a Tony Robbins convention just to see the band plug in their amps, you might consider me a die-hard fan, too.

This leads me to doing the Snoopy Dance over the news that AC/DC has finished recording its latest studio album, which likely means a fall release! This will be a bittersweet album for reasons AC/DC fans know well. Founding member and rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young won’t appear on the album because he’s recovering from a serious illness (widely believed to be a stroke). So the band enlisted Young nephew Stevie Young to fill in for him. Stevie substituted for Malcolm during the late 1980s Blow Up Your Video tour so that Uncle Malcolm could go to rehab for alcohol abuse. Fans will gladly accept Stevie wielding a Gretsch in his uncle’s stead. And chances are Malcolm had some input in writing the tunes, so he’ll be involved with the album in some respect.

And, oh, by the way, Pink Floyd is getting in on the act, too! I’m not a huge Pink Floyd fan, but my sister is, and this should make her happy: the English psychedelic (whatever you want to call them) rockers will release their first studio album in 20 years! It’s titled The Endless River. Now, even though keyboardist Richard Wright sadly succumbed to cancer a few years back at age 65, the band was able to take some recordings it did during its Division Bell tour and spruce it up with Nick Mason’s drums and, more importantly, David Gilmour’s guitar (and I’m assuming, voice). Band founder, bassist and lead grump Roger Waters had zero to do with this album.

It’s fair to say both Pink Floyd and AC/DC fans will listen to these albums with a fair amount of wistfulness, knowing that key members couldn’t be involved due to illness, death, and being pissed off for 35 years. Such is life, and while we have some left in us, it’ll be nice to rock out or do whatever you do to Pink Floyd as 2014 winds down.