How to buy a SPECIAL Opher Goodwin BOOK!

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I know. Christmas is coming. You are looking for something unique, out of the ordinary, SPECIAL. Something that nobody else has! Something that you know they won’t be expecting but will love!!

It hits you!

You want an Opher Goodwin book!!

There are lots to choose from:

You could go to Burning Shed (The publisher’s own site) and purchase a book on a fabulous Rock Musician or band. Perhaps Roy Harper, Captain Beefheart, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Neil Young or Phil Ochs?

https://burningshed.com/index.php?route=product/search&filter_name=opher%20goodwin&filter_sub_category=true

You could go to Amazon for an Opher Goodwin book on Rock Music, weird alternative novels, anecdotes, the environment, poetry, art, antireligion, travel or antinovels. (something for everyone)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Opher+Goodwin&crid=2SLVYT8G1DN0X&sprefix=opher+goodwin%2Caps%2C212&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

You could look at my take on education! Unique and informative, readable and insightful! A must for anyone in education or ‘owning’ a child.

Perhaps a Nick Harper?

Or you could try for one of my mind-teasing Sci-Fi classics written under my Ron Forsythe penname:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Ron+Forsythe&i=stripbooks&crid=2HRCNUOCNTTRD&sprefix=ron+forsythe%2Cstripbooks%2C109&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

If you live outside the UK try your local Amazon!

If you really want to give someone something very special you can email the author directly and purchase one direct complete with the Author’s signature!!

opher.goodwin@gmail.com – all questions answered!

Opher Goodwin the Author – Some words!

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Words are what I play with.

Stories are what I imagine.

Interludes from life are what I illuminate.

I started writing 1n 1971. My first book was a strange sixties conglomeration of narrative, philosophy, poetry, spirituality, photography and cartoons. I thought it was brilliant. Unfortunately nobody else did. That’s probably because it was unreadable. I still feel a nostalgic love of it though.

I then set about writing Sci-fi. I wrote four or five novels without a glimmer of success.

In 1980 I had a re-evaluation. I went and talked to my friend Roy Harper about producing a biography. He was keen. It morphed into a book based around his lyrics. I spent 20 years on that project. It was in 4 parts but never saw the light of day.

In the meantime I was still writing Sci-fi and delivering a course on The History Of Rock Music. So I made that into a 4-part book. A publisher was interested but wanted it cut down from 1200 pages to 200. I wrote him a different book. It was pulled on the day of publication.

Undaunted I continued writing.

I had a job as a teacher and four kids. Every night, after they were in bed I’d write. Whatever took my fancy – Sci-fi novels, weird underground novels, antinovels, environment, antireligion, travel, education, art, poetry and rock music.

Then I discovered self-publishing.

Then sonicbond publishers contracted me for eight books on my rock heroes.

I write my Sci-fi under the name of Ron Forsythe.

115 books later I’m still writing.

Love it as much as reading!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=opher+goodwin&crid=5GW7OMXNSUPO&sprefix=Opher+%2Caps%2C150&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_6

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Ron+Forsythe&crid=4DGE1O6LEDK0&sprefix=ron+forsythe%2Caps%2C153&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Please leave a like, a review on Amazon and buy a dozen or so books!!

Where do you get your Information from?

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Disinformation, propaganda, lies.

Cindy-Lou in Texas has the answers!!

My evening with Philip K Dick.

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In 1979 I was on a teaching exchange to the USA. I wonderfully ended up in Los Angeles for the year. My family swapped jobs and houses with an American family. Teaching in Los Angeles was a challenge at first but I soon was in the swing of it and the students were wonderful.

By 1979 I had been writing Sci-fi for a while and had a few novels to my name.

The family we exchanged with had an older daughter and she noticed that not only did I have hundreds of Sci-fi books on the shelves but one complete row was Philip K Dick, one of my favourite authors.

So it was that in October I received a phone call from the daughter. She told me that she’d seen the Philip K Dick books and that Phil, as she called him, was a personal friend, would I like to go and meet him?

Would I?? Would I indeed?? YES I WOULD!

She explained that she would be returning to Los Angeles in November and she would sort something out.

I was ecstatic. I had the chance to actually meet one of my heroes. What could be better. I only hoped that she would be able to arrange it and that ‘Phil’ would be happy to meet me.

My mind was racing. There were so many questions I could ask, advice I could glean, but above all – just the chance to meet the famous Sci-fi writer.

It all worked. Cheryl came round and collected me and a highly nervous young writer (myself) found himself in a car heading for Philip K Dick’s apartment.

It was, I’m afraid, all a bit of a blur. We sat in his living room. I perched on the sofa and ‘Phil’ talked and tried, unsuccessfully to put me at ease. I did manage to ask some stilted questions and received warm replies.

He told me that he’d just been on the film set for an adaptation of one of his novels that was tentatively going to be called ‘The Claw’. He showed me a poster for it with this huge metal claw reaching for a planet. He had been at a screening of the early rushes and explained to me that it was like looking into his own head.

I have subsequently looked for that film but never found it. Perhaps they renamed it? Perhaps it was never completed or released.

I asked ‘Phil’ what he considered to be his best piece of writing. He told me that he was very proud of a scene he had imagined; a duel between a gunslinger and a teleporter. The gunslinger had drawn his pistol to find that he was holding his own pancreas. Philip considered that the best piece of imagination he had ever come up with.

By the end of the evening I had been totally mesmerised and completely failed at asking any advice. He probably would have told me not to bother and I would have ignored him.

I left full of a warm glow, afloat on the honour of meeting the great man but annoyed that I had been so overcome with nerves that I hadn’t managed to relax. I hadn’t even taken a book for him to sign. I cursed myself!

But I had spent a few hours with Philip K Dick!!

Stranded

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Stranded

Stranded

                On the shore.

Marooned

                With psychotic apes;

Demented

                Paranoid beings;

Intent

                On destruction;

Overwhelmed

                With greed,

Lusting

                For power;

Adrift

                From reality;

Wondering

                What to do?

Opher – 20.11.2024

Every now and then I stand back to take in the whole of human history and the present state of play.

I have to assume that as a species we are completely insane.

All I see is cruelty, torture, war, lust, greed and power. It’s completely psychotic.

The world is a wonderful place. There is more than enough for everyone to live happily and well. Yet we don’t.

A small number have more than they could ever possibly need; a majority live in poverty.

We are surrounded with beauty and wonder and do our best to destroy it.

We create religions, political systems and use them to divide, breeding hate, war and fear.

We invent weapons of mass destruction and tools to elicit maximum pain.

We misuse resources and practice cruelty as entertainment.

We are still fighting wars and acting like barbarous monsters.

Those who have want more. They never have enough.

Those who hold power want greater power and to crush all opposition.

We elect sociopathic, narcissistic psychopaths and expect them to care for us.

Is there a way out of this mess? I used to be optimistic. Can we not control our worst impulses? Don’t humans also possess a kind, caring, altruistic side? Couldn’t we elect nice people for a change? Do we have to withdraw into our own little cocoons, protected from the insane masses, in order to live our lives?

Is nowhere safe?

Excerpt -Roy Harper: Every Album, Every Song (On Track) – Paperback

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Circle

‘Circle’ is the first of Roy’s epic songs and certainly not one that Shel could turn into a commercial success. It lasts over ten minutes and has five sections to it, including a spoken part – absolutely unique for its time. The song is the central point of the whole album.

   Each of the sections involves different tempos and instrumentation.

   The piece starts with Roy strumming on acoustic guitar to a subdued drumbeat. Then follows  a spoken word section of a strained conversation between Roy and his dad over the sound of traffic. This leads to a faster sequence featuring drums and bass, and then subsides into a slower but more intense part augmented by strings with drums in the background. The mood builds in intensity with fast plucking of guitar, drums and strings coming in strongly, followed by a return to a softer section in which Roy’s voice rises at the end of each line to a falsetto. The strings appear again as the finale is reached.

   A very ambitious and exacting piece of work that must have tested both Shel and Roy in the creating of the final successful recording, I can only imagine the conversations.

   The lyrics deal with the constant pressure in Roy’s childhood to succeed, and success being measured in wealth. Roy’s father is addressing Roy about his accomplishments and Roy is responding. The topics move through Roy’s rejection of religion to his adolescent striving for importance and acceptance towards his realisation that the only thing he can be is himself. The song covers betrayal of relationships along with the inability to find answers. Roy’s final assertion is that all we can do is to live our lives.

   The last spoken word is his Dad’s, who ironically, not understanding a word of the long introspection, says ‘Aye Lad – but I always knew you had it in you.’

Extract – Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song – Paperback 

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   Just before they were due to perform at their first professional gig they split up. Jim left for New York with his mind set on becoming a professional folk singer. Phil stayed on and continued playing and writing songs. In 1961, just three months before graduating, in a fit of pique at being passed over as the editor of the college magazine (not really surprising given the radical nature of his writing), Phil left the course. He returned to stay with his parents in Columbus, Cleveland but continued singing solo in the folk clubs. He’d basically sing anywhere that would have him. Pam Raver, a performer in Columbus has an amusing anecdote from this period: it centers on one of Phil’s early solo shows.

   ‘One of his first public performances as a solo artist was at the First Unitarian Universalist Church on Weisheimer Road, where he performed for a ladies luncheon,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I found that astounding because you think of him doing more radical, anti-establishment songs. God only knows the songs he performed there.’

   While singing in Farragher’s Backroom folk club in Ohio as an opener for established acts he met the folk singer Bob Gibson. Bob had an impact on his songwriting.

   The gestation period was over. In 1962 Phil followed his mentor Jim Glover to New York City and, like Bob Dylan the year before, inserted himself into the burgeoning Greenwich Village folk scene.

   A more unusual radical left-wing, anti-war folk singer would be hard to imagine. Phil’s background as a middle-class, Jewish, country and western loving, rock ‘n’ roll loving, devotee of Elvis, Jonny Cash and the all-American hero John Wayne was hardly the stuff of rebellious, intellectual folk music. But then converts are often the biggest zealots.

   This new Phil Ochs had a thorough grounding in socialism and was now an evangelical radical. He had absorbed sufficient Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, honed his songwriting and would scour Newsweek for sources of content for what was shortly to become an impressive catalogue of hard-hitting topical songs. Ironically, given Dylan’s later put-down jibe, he called himself ‘A singing journalist’.    The scene was set.

Grateful Dead in San Francisco!

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Furthur away!!

We headed into San Francisco at the end of December 2012. It was chilly with quite a breeze blowing off the bay. We clung on to the streetcars and hit the Coit Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge & Park and City Lights bookshop. There was ice cream to be eaten at Ghirardelli’s and a stroll round Haight Ashbury. It was all a bit of nostalgia for the old folks.

Furthur – San Francisco 2013

We’d rented this cosy little room in a rundown but friendly hotel. I was sorting out a cup of coffee and talking to the nice lady who was packing up Christmas things and putting them away. It seemed a bit early to be putting the Christmas things away and I asked why the rush.

‘I have to pack them away,’ she explained. ‘Because all the weirdoes are gonna come out of the woodwork for that concert tomorrow.’

‘Oh,’ I replied, all innocently. ‘And who is playing?’

‘It’s that band Furthur,’ she replied peevishly. She obviously did not approve. ‘They’re the Grateful Dead. They play every New Year. Every Pot-head in the universe descends on us!’ The lady thought that the owner should deny access to all those damn Pot-head Dead-Heads.

Without more ado we headed off to the Bill Graham Auditorium to investigate. Sure enough Furthur were on and they had tickets. It was only two minutes’ walk from the hotel!

As soon as we walked in to the huge auditorium the heady aroma of pot hit you. You didn’t need to smoke any you just had to breathe. That lady had been right! Every Pot-head in the country had congregated here. All around there were pipes and spliffs. It was like being back in 1967 all over again.

The band was awesome. They did a three hour set with incredible lightshow and it was all vintage Grateful Dead. Wow!!!

Hey Guys – I really could do with some help here!

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Some good honest reviews for my books on Amazon would really help!!

Cheers!

Roy Harper excerpt – Freak Street

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Freak Street

The opening track, ‘Freak Street’, sets the tone for Come Out Fighting Ghengis Smith. The production is different from Roy’s first album. The addition of strings, unusual for that time, has a muted effect on the guitars, pushing them back in the mix. Laid-back snare drums create a jazzy feel that carries the track along. Although it makes for a muddy backing sound (much clearer on the remastered rerelease) I like the effect. The vocal is clear and melds well with the backing; Roy gives vent to the full range of his voice.

   The poem/lyric is complex with much use of alliteration. It dictates the pace of the track which speeds up and slows down in keeping with the words. At times the words come thick and fast (making them difficult to decipher) and at others more slowly and thus easily understood.

   The result is a beautiful song, teeming with poetic descriptions and expressively delivered.

   Greek Street is in the centre of Soho, where the freaks and buskers hung out and Roy renamed it Freak Street. An area that was once grand had now become a place of dives, sex shows and cosmopolitan bohemia. A place where it all happens – dope, sex, cakey make-up, Newcastle brown, music, in a ‘neon desert storm of tin can shabbiness’.

   A powerful start to the album.

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=youtube+Roy+Harper+Freak+Street&mid=53B0496FE5768024D40153B0496FE5768024D401&FORM=VIRE