Hello and Happy New Year!

On this first day of 2023, we have a symbolic blank page on which to write our hopes, fears, prayers, and creative energies. All of these create our experience of this new year. Today, I hope that you celebrate possibilities and empower yourself to attract them. This is that “manifesting” buzzword you hear so much in spiritual circles.

For me, it’s been another year of neglecting regular blog entries, but let’s get real: We all have too much to read and spend too much time anyway! I only want to write if I have something worthwhile to say to you. If you want the micro-blogging stuff, check out my Twitter @jgordonbramer.

I am astounded to say that 2022 is over. And I’ve done some things! Manifesting is real! The highlights are:

• A book contract and finalizing the manuscript for Tarot Life Lessons (formerly The Tarot Diaries) with Destiny Books, a subsidiary of Inner Traditions (and a publishing home to the tarot genius Alejandro Jodorowsky! So honored to share his label!). Release date should be announced VERY SOON. The cover is beautiful!
• A book contract for The Magician’s Girl: the history and mysticism of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, with Inner Traditions. The title could change, and it may be on another imprint of Inner Traditions–I’ll hear soon.
• In May 2022, I became the proud owner of Sylvia Plath’s (hand-carved by her) Hermetic Caduceus with provenance papers. Additionally, I’ve acquired a November 1952 photograph of Sylvia, autographed by her mother Aurelia to friend Richard Larschan and his wife, as well as a copy of the very rare “Last Encounters” memoir of Plath by neighbor Trevor Thomas, inscribed and signed by the author.  Many thanks to Richard Larschan for all of these things, but most of all, for his friendship!
• At the end of June, I lost my dear friend, literary mentor, writing teacher, surrogate father, and friend of Plath and Hughes’, Zulfikar Ghose. I’m not over it yet. I began writing him a memoriam, but nothing can do him justice. We shall see if I ever finish it.
• I toured Sylvia Plath’s childhood home in Wellesley, Massachusetts with the Larschans; I had a blast traipsing across Cape Cod with my friend Margaret following Plath and Hughes’ footsteps (if you’re going to the Cape, stay at Margaret’s beautiful historic Bursley Manor); and I had some time visiting family in both the Boston area and Ocean City, Maryland.
• I watched one of my besties and his wife, Garrett and Stacy Enloe, put out the coolest book ever about Mississippi Nights, of which I was honored to help with and even more honored to be in (along with Tom). I’m in for Night Times magazine, which started as a Mississippi Nights publication, and Tom is in the book with his old band Radio Iodine. Our 30-year-old pictures are in it too! Garrett and his work have reunited me with so many dear friends from the St. Louis scene and I’m so proud that his efforts have made it a best-seller in St. Louis this Christmas season.
• I fully immersed myself in a return to music and saw some great shows: The Cult with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club; Jack White; The Who; Jane’s Addiction and Smashing Pumpkins; Gin Blossoms; Local H; the Eagles—and those were just my favorites, there were others!
• Finally, I am going to have my own radio show on NewsTalkSTL 101.9 and 94.1 FM! I am still figuring out some of the details: studio time, who my producer will be, sponsorships and advertisers, etc. As soon as I have a start date, I will post it here. But I can tell you it is called Mystic Fix and the show will focus on mind-body-spirit topics–everything from yoga to Qabalah to the paranormal. Should be a lot of fun! If you have a business that wants to help support this program (and of course, get lots of publicity on STL’s fastest growing station) PLUS it’ll be podcast so all those outside of the area can hear at their leisure and ads will last in perpetuity–give me a holler and we will talk!

OK. Back to manifesting! Hope you have a fab 2023! xo

The post The End of An Exciting Year; The Beginning of Even More appeared first on Julia Gordon-Bramer.

Two weekends ago, I attended the Wilco show, with the Local H/Soul Asylum/Urge show the next night, and decided I still hadn’t had enough of Local H so we drove the four hours to see a one hour show in Kansas City, and then went four hours back home (worth it!).

This past Thursday, I was invited to preview the Missouri History Museum’s grand opening of the St. Louis Sound exhibit. I was excited. Andrew Wanko, the public historian, had come to my home about a year and a half earlier, and I had personally given him every copy of Night Times from 1995-1998 (when we were in print; it carried online after that for about five or six years). We had a good conversation about the scene as I knew it then: the vital nightclubs, the most important bands. Andrew is very young and was not alive to know the scene at all, and it was pretty obvious he was going to have to lean on us elders to point the way. I even sent him a copy of my unpublished memoir, Night Times, which, with newborn twins on the way and a toddler at home, I am very sure he did not read a word of. Ha ha.

So… the exhibit. We gathered in the auditorium, masked and socially distanced, for the opening remarks. Andrew quoted some Bob Reuter lyrics about St. Louis being “the truest.” No one seemed to know the song Andrew referenced, but that’s cool… Reuter isn’t exactly a household word beyond the crew at KDHX where he was a DJ. I knew Bob casually and he was always friendly to me when I would see him around the City Museum, where I did PR for their circus, or at Duff’s when he occasionally dropped in for a poetry reading. I was horrified to learn of his death falling down an elevator shaft in 2013. I knew that Bob Reuter’s name was on the bill for St. Louis Sound, ranking him as big as Scott Joplin, Josephine Baker, and Nelly. That seemed pretty absurd. Reuter’s music was not really known beyond the KDHX staff and the small clubs he played with his band, Alley Ghost. Yes, he rocked it. But come on… he was not a musical gamechanger. He was a scenester and a multi-talented person, yes. He was not someone who made St. Louis music history, and I think if he were alive right now, he would probably agree.

I was pretty pleased with the Mississippi Nights exhibit, which had contributions from my good friends, Garrett Enloe (who is soon publishing a book on Mississippi Nights) and Andy Mayberry (former general manager), as well as owner Rich Frame. It was cool to see the old sign again, the banner, the original bar, Andy’s 1980s satin jacket, and the poster with so many touring bands that included my husband Tom’s band, Radio Iodine. We got a picture:

I mulled around the exhibit, checking out the cool old artifacts, such as Josephine Baker’s dress (so tiny!), Johnnie Johnson’s piano, and more. I enjoyed the interactive exhibits and especially the map of where all the music landmarks were. I was kind of shocked to see this huge standing wall devoted to a punk rock group of girls called The Welders that no one had ever heard of (they had one record). It was curious the kind of space and attention these very small acts were getting here, and I had yet to see anything on the 1990s, which was St. Louis’ second musical heyday after the sixties, with swarms of local acts getting signed to major labels. But I would keep looking…

I’m not going to kid you, I was also excited to see Night Times in there somewhere, even if it was just one cover, and so when I came to a wall called “Fanzines,” my heart collapsed a little bit into itself. There was only one fanzine on the display, JetLag, by KDHX’rs Steve Pick and John the Mailman.

Now, let me tell you, I have nothing against KDHX. I have been a regular financial contributor, I have guested on some of their shows and used to co-host with John the Mailman once a month on the JetLag Radio Hour, late Saturday nights at KDHX’s first location, an old converted bakery on Magnolia Street. I was even asked to interview in 1995 or so to be their station manager. But the thing I do know is that some (not all) of the gang at KDHX are a little too cool for school, and anything that is regarded as popular with the masses is not going to fly there. They like only the fringe and underground stuff. I like that stuff too, but I think there is room for everything.

Back in the 90s, Steve Pick and others had put me and Night Times down. We never had any words face to face. In fact, I don’t think I have actually even met him in person, but he let it be known online and elsewhere that we were too pop and mainstream for their indie-supremacist natures. Surely, I thought, there would be no more rivalry after nearly three decades. But there I was on Thursday in 2021, confronting the facts, this was a KDHX exhibit, with KDHX artists and personalities, and Steve Pick clearly had aligned it with his recently-published book of St. Louis’ music history, presented with a slant (which is fine for a book, but not for a museum), exaggerating the importance of some and annihilating the importance of others. I looked on Pick’s Facebook page and he admitted that yes, he had “a hand in a few exhibits,” and claimed his fanzine spoke for all the fanzines. Well, I sure as hell don’t think he’d think Night Times could substitute a switch for JetLag, or Noisy Paper, or Motion Sickness, or Spotlight, or PlaybackSTL, or Yellow Pills, or Silver Tray, or the Riverfront Times music section (which was the local music Bible), for that matter. The zine scene in St. Louis was as unique as its creators, and an important part of St. Louis modern music. JetLag, in true indie fashion, was made on a copier and had a reach of all of Pick’s best friends and favorite customers at Vintage Vinyl. Speaking for myself, Bob Baker at Spotlight, and Laura Hamlett of PlaybackSTL, we put out monthly professionally printed and distributed publications for years that cost us plenty of our own money in tight advertising months. Hamlett even second-mortgaged her home. Night Times had a reach of 20,000 a month, and Spotlight and PlaybackSTL had at least that many. We had big teams of writers, photographers, and designers. We had advertisers and subscribers. Yet, JetLag supposedly represents us. Sure it does… I gotta say, I’m pretty disgusted.

But it’s not about me, and it could be argued that this exhibit is not about music publications. I get that. Here’s where I get even more disgusted: The acts that we most remember from the 1990s… the acts whose audiences are alive to remember them… those bands got shafted big time in this exhibit. The Missouri History Museum would have thousands more attendees to this exhibit if they’d paid attention to the 1990s. We had SO MANY national recording acts that far surpassed the popularity of Reuter or the Welders! Where were The Eyes/Pale Divine? KINGOFTHEHILL? The Urge? Gravity Kills? Stir? Devon Allman? Sheryl Crow? Radio Iodine? Michael McDonald? Bob Kuban? Head East? Mama’s Pride? Pete and Jim Mayer? Anacrusis? Pavlov’s Dog?*

The History Museum missed so many opportunities in St. Louis Sound. Like on the display for the Guns ‘N Roses riot, where they could have mentioned that our great local axeman, Richard Fortus, went on to join them (he also played guitar for the Psychedelic Furs, Love Spit Love, Thin Lizzy, Nine Inch Nails, and so many others). They left out the punk and metal scene entirely, except for covering Ultraman (again, friends of KDHX). They never mentioned Kristeen Young, who continues to tour internationally with the biggest acts, or acts we remember fondly such as Robynn Ragland, and Jessica Butler and the Skalars.

We have smaller, fun musical contributions, too. Like Ellen Foley, who you’ll remember as the female powerhouse in Meatloaf’s 1977 hit, “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights.” A number of the bands I mentioned above got on MTV. They could have talked about the wild popularity of Pink Floyd tribute band, El Monstero, which sells out the largest amphitheaters. Then there were acts such as Big Fun, Fragile Porcelain Mice, Sinister Dane and The Sheiks who sold out Mississippi Nights regularly for years.

NONE of these huge artists were even mentioned. I left the exhibit sad and feeling slighted, but knowing that Night Times was not the only casualty here, not by a long shot. This was not a space problem: they could have easily used that giant wall for The Welders to cover the entire 90s with some posters, cassettes and CDs of the bands I’ve mentioned above. They could have put Night Times, Noisy Paper, Motion Sickness and Playback up next to JetLag in the same space. Reuter could have shared his space with some of the names I’ve mentioned above. They could have tucked The Welders in somewhere more space-appropriate with a quick mention. I don’t blame Andrew Wanko for not knowing, but I do wish he had checked some other sources beyond Steve Pick to give, to quote Bob Reuter in Andrew’s opening statement, “the truest” depiction of St. Louis music. It ain’t by a long shot.

*Some of these bands, like Radio Iodine, were listed with national and international acts on the Mississippi Nights poster but did not have any exhibits to say who they were or that they came from St. Louis.

The post (Some of ) St. Louis Sound, Excised and Modified appeared first on Julia Gordon-Bramer.

Kris says that if and when I get the Night Times memoir published, they would love to do a book release there at the central library branch. Meanwhile, my friend Ginger has been reading the memoir and sending me so many positive notes about it. It all gives me hope that ten years of writing won’t go to waste and it will soon be time for Night Times.

I may have other publications to contribute to the library’s archive, as I have had my hand in many writer’s organizations and I sat on the board of the St. Louis Poetry Center, the St. Louis Writer’s Guild, River Styx, and The Writer’s Voice over the years. I have created many newsletters, ads, etc. for all of these organizations–and kept all of that stuff too. I have also hosted many famous writers in St. Louis (Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Gloria Steinem, to name a few) and written little memoir pieces about my time with them.

If that wasn’t enough, Kris is interested in my Plath work and I will be giving the library copies of my three Plath books for their reference. Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath is now out of print and will be in the rare books section.

Kris has a contact at the St. Louis History Museum who may be interested in my years of research for the St. Louis Century of Music Project, which I had to put away due to overwhelm. The scope of the project was just too big for one person to manage–unfunded. And where did I stop? Did I include classical music? Jazz and Blues? Big Band and Swing? Session musicians? Rap? Venues–which have a fascinating history and could be a book all their own as there were speakeasies and brothels right on Clark Street playing the best Jazz and Swing of the day. I have interviews on cassette tapes with old musicians who have now long passed on. I felt that I had failed them and carried a lot of shame and sadness that this project didn’t happen after so much effort, including radio and television appearances. So this would redeem a lot of hard work.

I have some public appearances coming up that I wanted to note:

On May 18th and 19th, stop by and see me in Alton, Illinois’ historic and haunted Mineral Springs Hotel for It’s Raining Zen’s Psychic and Crystal Fair. These events are always a huge success–I think this will be the fourth time I have participated–and you will experience every kind of spiritual and holistic therapy known. Get your auras checked, your aromatherapy, your essential oils, your sound healing, your akashic records read, oracle guidance, every kind of crystal, and of course, tarot cards by yours truly (and others). There are psychics, mediums, intuitives, ghost-busters, music, bellydancing and it is all so much fun!

On Wednesday, May 29th at 5:00 pm I will be guesting on the Dave Glover Show, 97.1 FM once again, and this time I should be taking calls from listeners and reading their tarot cards. I say “this time” because I promoted that the last few times I was on and the DJs had me read for them and only them. Ha. The call-in lines are 314-241-9797 or 314-969-9797. Or check out their Facebook page, where they often post a bit of video and have a comment thread going. Tell them if you like me!

The post Happenings! Now and Soon… appeared first on Julia Gordon-Bramer.

This year I reconnected with two former, extremely talented, graduate writing students of mine, C & T,  who, with all of us out of the university setting, have become friends and peers. Over lots of email conversation, I ended up sharing my manuscript Night Times with them, the memoir of the years I ran the alternative rock zine as a single mom. I know I have talked about this book before: it’s gone through many iterations and had three different contracts on it that fell through. I wanted to polish it up again because I may have another opportunity with it ahead.

An old cover I made for the Night Times book proposal years ago

C & T blazed through the manuscript and offered some fantastic comments which I am ashamed to say that I sat on for about six months, due to being involved with other writing projects, lots of tarot work, and, well, being beaten up by the publishing system in general. But about a week and a half ago I dove into it again and was delighted by their insightful remarks. I got right back to this book with real excitement and feel it is just about ready to return to face the world. Again.

What about the signs? That’s the funny part. Almost right away, I presume because my mind was on these people working on them in the day, I began dreaming about the Night Times characters–all of my beloved staff members who lived and worked with me as surrogate family and friends with a shared dream in this communal house during the 1990s. And then J contacted me, my old NT office manager who I hadn’t heard from in about 20 years. And then M called me, one of my old right-hand men, who I saw briefly a few years ago at a Christmas party, but hadn’t hung out with in forever. He said, “Hey, I have an extra ticket to see the St. Louis Symphony do Prince’s music. Do you wanna go?” We had a great time. And that same weekend, I laughed to Tom, walking away from the mailbox with a random piece of junk mail addressed to Night Times Magazine. In it was one of those promotional pens–nearly thirty years after we closed our doors! How funny is that? We will see if something happens with that book yet.

In other news, yet another victim of Australian healer Simon Hay and his sexual misconduct contacted me last night through this blog. It never stops. I realize that I cannot prevent others from being hurt by him if they don’t find my posts here. At least I am told by these other women how helpful it is to be heard and to let go of their individual shame. In every case, the woman thought she had misinterpreted or that she just didn’t understand spirituality. Because none of these women were actually raped, they were unsure if this was what “healing” was supposed to encompass. They just knew they were very uncomfortable,  and that there was no damn healing happening. We must heed those first warnings we feel: doubt, mistrust, wondering, ‘why is he saying that?’ ‘that comment feels creepy and suggestive,’ ‘why is he touching me there, like that, for so long?’ and ‘when is he going to get to my real issues?’… these are signs we must pay attention to, and act upon with outrage and refusal to allow it in the future.

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