In this installment of the Rock is Lit Season 4 Reading Series, Michael T. Fournier shares an excerpt from his debut novel, ‘Hidden Wheel’ (2011), and explores the musical influences behind the book, along with his experiences as a musician with the bands Dead Trend and Plaza.
About ‘Hidden Wheel’: When an art scene takes root in a pop-up colony called Freedom Springs, micro-visionary Ben Wilfork promotes the giant, autobiographical 600 square foot canvases of former chess prodigy and high end dominatrix Rhonda Barrett using his Hidden Wheel as a bridge to the future before pre-Datastrophe history completes itself. It's a book about the scams of the modern age—artistic self-promotion, corporate infiltration of hipsterdom—and it's hilarious. At the same time this is a philosophical literary work that dissects hipsterdom to get at the core of what it's all about. A must-read for art fans, punk fans, anyone who wants to know how the truly original ideas can get subsumed by the corporate machine—and how to save them. Told in an intriguing intersecting point of view style, this is a powerful short novel by an emerging talent.
Bonus Content: Michael also offers an exclusive glimpse into his forthcoming novel, ‘The Impasse’, sharing an excerpt that promises more of his signature mix of insight and edge.
Don’t miss this exciting episode as we dive into the intersection of art, music, and literature with one of the most original writers on the scene.
Bio: Michael T. Fournier is the author of the forthcoming novel ‘The Impasse’ (St. Rooster Books 2024). Previously, he wrote ‘Double Nickels on the Dime’ (Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2007), ‘Hidden Wheel’ (Three Rooms Press, 2011) and ‘Swing State’ (Three Rooms Press, 2014). He graduated from the University of Maine's MA program, where he won the Steven Grady Award for fiction. Fournier has toured the United States extensively—twice through successful crowdfunded prerelease campaigns.
His writing has appeared in ‘Razorcake’—America's only non-profit punk magazine—as well as ‘Pitchfork’, ‘McSweeney's Internet Tendency’, ‘Vice’, ‘Electric Literature’, ‘Oxford American’, ‘Boston Globe’, and more.
Mike is the co-editor of ‘Zisk’, the baseball zine for people who hate baseball zines. He's the drummer and main songwriter for Dead Trend, and plays bass in Plaza, Cape Cod’s #1 band.
MUSIC IN THE EPISODE IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:
- Rock is Lit theme music
- [Guitar Instrumental Beat] Sad Rock [Free Use Music] Punch Deck—“I Can’t Stop”
- Rites of Spring “Hidden Wheel”
- Dead Trend “Age of Consent”
- Super Team—No Copyright music/NCS/copyright free music/music for YouTube
- Plaza “Fat Half”
- Echo & The Bunnymen “The Killing Moon”
- The Cure “Pictures of You”
- Black Flag “Rise Above”
- [Guitar Instrumental Beat] Sad Rock [Free Use Music] Punch Deck—“I Can’t Stop”
- Rock is Lit theme music
LINKS:
Leave a rating and comment for Rock is Lit on Goodpods: https://goodpods.com/podcasts/rock-is-lit-212451
Leave a rating and comment for Rock is Lit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rock-is-lit/id1642987350
Michael T. Fournier’s website: https://www.michaeltfournier.org/
Michael T. Fournier on Instagram: @xfournierx
Michael T. Fournier on Facebook: @MichaelT.Fournier
St. Rooster Books website: https://stroosterbooks.bigcartel.com/
Three Rooms Press website: https://threeroomspress.com/
Bloomsbury Books website: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/
Dead Trend on Bandcamp: https://deadtrend.bandcamp.com/
Plaza on Bandcamp: https://plazacapecod.bandcamp.com/album/adult-panic
Christy Alexander Hallberg’s website: https://www.christyalexanderhallberg.com/rockislit
Christy Alexander Hallberg on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube: @ChristyHallberg
Rock is Lit on Instagram: @rockislitpodcast
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We're back on the Narayara Island Confessions Show. Benny is about to tell us how he found two loves. Go ahead. Yeah, thanks to Metro. I found iPhone 12 and Apple Watch SE. At Metro, get the perfect match of both iPhone 12 with 5G and Apple Watch SE for only $99.99. You heard that right. Both for just $99.99. Holidays with Narayara, only at Metro by T-Mobile. Bring your number 90 sign up for Metro Flex Plus and at a watch line. Not available if you're with T-Mobile. Stay with Metro in the past 180 days, limit to per-count. This is the energy of electrification, available type desk high performance variant with nearly 500 horsepower and 278 mile EPA range range. Choose from our complimentary charging packages so you can charge how you want the all-electric Acura ZDX. This is the energy of innovation, accurate, precision crafted performance. Get your local accurate dealer to lease the all-electric ZDX for $389.00 a month. At McDonald's, our customers' well-being is at the heart of what we do, from how we source our food to how we deliver quality in our restaurants. And it's made possible by thousands of hard-working crew, suppliers, and the small business owners who own and operate our restaurants. Every day we help to meet the highest standards for our customers. Our commitment will never change. We will always do the right thing. Rock is lit. Rock is lit. Rock is lit. Rock is lit. You're listening to Rock is Lit with Christy Halberg. Rock on, Christy. Rock is lit. Hey there, Lit listeners. Welcome to Season 4 of Rock is Lit, the first podcast devoted to rock novels, and also the 2024 American Writing Awards Podcast of the Year in the categories of music and arts. Rock is Lit is a proud member of the Pantheon Podcast Network. Hey, I'm John Stewart, and you're listening to the Pantheon Network. Rock is Lit is hosted, executive produced, and edited by me, Christy Alexander Halberg, author of my own rock novel, Searching for Jimmy Page. Big shout-out to this season's incredible team, social media intern keeling clats, and our three production interns, Major Lagulin, Tyler Elcock, and Thayer Lower. This season we're shaking things up with a fresh new format. Instead of our usual author interviews, we'll be rolling out a weekly reading series, giving you a deeper dive into the world of rock novels through curated readings and literary explorations. To keep up with all things Rock is Lit, follow me on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube at Christy Halberg, and @RockisLitpodcast on Instagram. For more info, head to ChristyAlexanderHahlberg.com. Got a rock novel you'd like to see featured? Drop me a line at ChristyAlexanderHahlberg@gmail.com, I'd love to hear from you. If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe, leave a comment, and give us a 5-star rating on your favorite podcast platform. Quiet, the Rock is Lit mascot and I thank you for your support. This is Michael T. Fornier and you are listening to Rock is Lit. What's going on, Mike Fornier here. I'm the author of Double Knuckles on the Dime, the 45th installment of Bloomsbury Press's 33 and a 3rd series. Two of my novels have been published by Three Rooms Press. Today, I'm going to be reading a passage from my first novel Hidden Wheel, which Three Rooms Press put out in 2011. In my second novel, Swing State also came out on Three Rooms Press in 2014. My third novel is called The Impass that's going to come out in December on St. Rooster Books. The first and third and the fourth coming fourth book are all rock books. I wrote Hidden Wheel from 2008 to 2010, following the publication of my 33 and a third on the minimum double knuckles on the Dime album, my then girlfriend now wife, Rebecca Griffin, said, "You should apply to grad school because you've already done college level research." I applied for University of Maine's Creative Writing program and I got in and I had already been working on what turned into Hidden Wheel, my first novel, which is definitely named after a rights of spring song. The rock influences are all there already. Since Hidden Wheel was my first novel, it's got all of the ideas in it. I was sparing no dumb idea when I wrote this book. There's multiple narrative tax. The book begins with an academic dispatch from the year 23-12 from a professor of early millennial history at Freedom Springs University. Books taking place in Freedom Springs, which is my fictional town. There's all this oral history. There's a character who speaks and doesn't have any punctuation. I only did that once in one book because I started doing readings for this book and I realized what a jackass I was for enough punctuating my own prose because I was edgy and in grad school and had all these ideas. There's multiple found pieces throughout. There's fictional flyers for a band called Dead Trend, who later turned into an actual band that I was in. There's snippets of conversation. There's snippets of articles from fictional and actual papers. There's all sorts of stuff in here. There's photographs. So I was just throwing the kitchen sink at readers. Basically what the plot is, it's a bunch of artists living in this fictional town and it's being told through the lens of the "datastrophe," which is something that happens in the 23rd century or solar flares erase all traces of digital storage and historians then have to reconstruct what happened in our time based only on physical evidence, on paper and on recordings that are on CD or something like this. So they hone in on this art scene that happens in Freedom Springs. One of the characters is Bernie Reese. I think Bernie Reese is the eye guy. You know, there's always like the character in the first novel who is loosely based on whoever the author is. In this case, the eye guy is me. Bernie Reese plays in a duo, a noisy bass drum duo called Stone Cipher. The bassist Amy Chadecki was in an iteration of a fictional hardcore band called Dead Trend who go through all these lineup changes the same way that Black Flag went through all these lineup changes. That's who I was thinking of at the time. Part of my promotion scheme for Hidden Wheel was to start a band called Dead Trend with my friends because I had all these sort of like nursery rhymes sounding hardcore songs in my head as I was writing the book. I had enough guitar so I could bang out all of these songs on power chords and teach them to my friends. So Dead Trend became an actual band. You can find her stuff on Bandcamp. We have like a, what is it, like a 17 song, 21 minute LP that's up on Bandcamp. I put out CDs. We played like 20 shows. We actually played for my 50th birthday this summer. Prior to that, we played with the Urgs in Boston in 2019, been our last show prior to this summer. We played with Mike Watt in New York City, which was a dream come true for me. I'm going to read you the introduction and then I'll read you some tour diary stuff. The artist in this book is named Rhonda Barrett. She's the foil to Bernie Reese who plays in Stone Cipher. So here we go. At McDonald's, our customers well-being is at the heart of what we do, from how we source our food to how we deliver quality in our restaurants. And it's made possible by thousands of hard-working crew, suppliers, and the small business owners who own and operate our restaurants. Every day we help to meet the highest standards for our customers. Our commitment will never change. We will always do the right thing. I've got a lot of grand babies, like a lot, a lot. And when it comes to finding a gift for each other, you know, it could add up. But this year, while I was making my way through Walmart, I realized I don't have to spend a lot to get the gifts they'll love. And OPI mini-mani sets. I'm going to do so much nail art. Oh, yeah, a LEGO set. My own a wall of water bottle. Ooh, and that's just half of them. Shop great gifts they're sure to love for $25 and under at Walmart. This is the sound of your ride home with Dad after he caught you vaping. Awkward, isn't it? Most vapes contain seriously addictive levels of nicotine and disappointment. Know the real cost of vapes, brought to you by the FDA. [MUSIC] Noyo. Introduction. Rhonda Barrett was an obscure, but critically acclaimed 21st century artist. Her life was her work. She painted her biography 60 words a day over six giant canvases before passing away in 2044. These paintings, including the partially completed largely illegible work from her brief cohabitation with percussionist Bernard Reese, each measuring at least 600 square feet provide us with much of her biographical information. The Barrett trusts aversion to providing passages for scholarly analysis gratis quote in an effort to raise funds for the betterment of young women everywhere and quote, non withstanding. Barrett scholars agree on certain key points alluded to on her canvases. Her early immersion in chess, her work in the sex service industry, her philanthropy, her subsequent rise to cult status, but the minutia regarding her life was feared, lost forever as was so much of our digital archive following the great flair five years ago. The recent discovery of several boxes of paper artifacts belonging to Bernard Reese, experimental composer and Barrett's one time lover sheds new light on the life of the fascinating artist and her peer group. Among the effects found in a one time bank vault in Chicago is what appears to be the beginning of a biography of Reese's former romantic interest, including extensive writing from his journals. I believe that Reese, who kept regular writing hours began to edit these journal entries into a memoir. In addition, sound recordings and transcriptions of interviews with Barrett's peers from the Millennial Freedom Springs art and music scenes expose both the era and the relationships within it. Dr. Rex Vainale, my esteemed colleague here at FSU, speculates that the vault's lead construction served as a protective barrier, saving audio media from destruction. That said, five micro cassettes, fragile magnetic sound capture archives from the 20th century did not survive the flair. Dr. Vainale was, however, particularly impressed that several compact discs, another 20th/21st century storage medium, read by a laser beam, did survive. Typically, compact discs began to slowly deteriorate once played. Those found in the box from which I have transcribed many of the documents here in, remained pristine until recently, when Dr. Vainale and I were able not only to play them with the aid of the FSU Heritage Museum's stock of early Millennial sound equipment, but to save them to new digital format. I have attempted to reconstruct the world of Rhonda Barrett using the recently unearthed documents in conjunction with both her paintings and those precious documents which survived the great flair. I am particularly indebted to Art Scene, whose steadfast release of paper periodicals, even when the non-electronic publishing industry was left for dead in the 21st century, has proven to be predictive and visionary. Historians and scholars who have worked on and around Barrett and her Freedom Springs peer group have traditionally done so in a linear format. The destruction of so much primary source material now renders attempts to do so virtually impossible. With no disrespect towards my colleagues though, I must take this opportunity to say that the forum never suited discussion of early Millennial history. It is well known that the advent and subsequent proliferation of hand-held internet devices bombarded early Millennials with a constant and then unprecedented stream of information and advertising. In reading the recently discovered transcripts, presumably assembled by Reese, of discussions with Rhonda Barrett's chess mentors, we see a reflection of this glut of early Millennial information. Rather than including full interviews from each chess player at La Petite-Chapot, where Barrett honed her skills, Reese told Barrett's story as a "oral history," a collage of distinct voices working together allowing the player's viewpoints to combine and reveal details of Barrett's early life. Similarly, we see the early Millennial time period reflected in the voice of Max Coggin and his urban Mosaicist paintings. Because Coggin's work no longer exists, his contributions to Freedom Springs art scene have been largely overlooked. Through Reese's interview transcriptions, we gain a new epithe for Coggin, whose innovative work with and on digital and analog media unwittingly became a tragic performance art piece of the highest order. To appreciate the early Millennial era most, we must immerse ourselves in it. For this reason, I have chosen to tell the story of Barrett and her peers in a fashion that most reflects the era, unconnected yet cohesive and early Millennial Mosaic. The symphony of voices about and around Barrett provides critical context for her life, her work, and her love, in ways which her paintings in all of their beauty cannot. Her details were not available. I have taken small reconstructive liberties based on the scholarship, both extant and destroyed, of the best and brightest of my peers. I hope I have done justice to Rhonda Barrett, Maxwell Coggin, and the rest. L. William Molly New, Professor Emeritus, Early Millennial History, Freedom Springs University, 29 January 23 12. So when I was introducing that, I mentioned the character who had no punctuation in his narration. That's the character Max Coggin, who drinks so much coffee that he's always like, when he talks. His whole art thing is that he takes photographs and he paints the photographs on CD cases. But it turns out that he uses Satine Duralux paint, which is the same paint that Robo Caribokian uses in Kurt Vonnegut's book, Bluebeard, and all the paintings disintegrate. So that's kind of a little in-joke for you right there that Max is using that same paint that's used in the Vonnegut book. So I mentioned that Bernie Reese and Amy Chadecki are in a band called Stone Cipher. They go on one tour before they break up, before they realize that they can't do it. So I'm just going to read you a couple entries from Bernie's journals. 1 7 2008 Nashville, Tennessee. Three paid tonight. The only person in the room during our set was the sound man. Our only contact in Greensboro is the record store we're playing, so we're in another hotel. We played great tonight. When I was doing the fill for Buenos Noche's Minty Hands, I double-stroke the Tom Hits by accident. Sounded awesome. Amy picked up on it and doubled all of her strumming for the rest of the song. First it was chicken-shaped Patty Miele the other night now this. We're getting a lot better. When Amy is pissed, when I try and tell her it's our first tour, she says that people should know who we are. She was in Deadtrend and I was in a viral video. She started talking about money. How was she supposed to quit waiting tables if we were playing to three people in the middle of nowhere? Amy said it's going to take years of doing this before there's any money to be made. We're a strange band. This is our first tour. We need to put down groundwork for the next time we come through. I told her to think about how many people will come see us the next time we're in Louisville based on the show we had there the other night. 1/8/2008 Greensboro, North Carolina. Another free record store show tonight at a store called Gate City Noise. Nice people there. They took us to a hot dog place for, quote, "the best veggie dogs in the state," end quote. Sour crowd and onions on mine. Another great set. We went into this break on Gorilla Statue of Liberty and came back into the chorus at the same time without talking about it, without really looking at each other. Honestly, we both just knew. They passed a hat around for us and we got $32. We sold three records. Some guy there told Amy he'd been listening to our MP3s and she freaked out on him. She yelled that he should be buying records, not stealing them online. How was the band supposed to make a living if people weren't supporting them? The guy, big with red hair, had a record under his arm. He probably put money in the hat too. We'll never play that place again. We're staying in a house with a guy who used to run a fanzine called Sleeve. He told us about being in a misfits cover band on Halloween. I say us, but I mostly mean me. Amy's been in a horrible mood all day since she yelled at that kid. The guy we're staying with was at the show and his friends with the guy she yelled at. I saw them talking, so I'm not sure why he even let us stay here. One 17 2008 New York City, we're across the river in Williamsburg right now, staying with Joe, one of the guys from Godfires Man. He came to the show tonight and told us he was going to be playing Freedom Springs with us in March. He has a nice place. I'm on his couch. Amy's across the street at this bar, Charleston, that serves free pizza. I had never been to ABC no Rio before, but I knew it was an important place that started off as a squat. Born against used to play their Rorschach 1.6 band. I don't know what Amy was expecting exactly, but it wasn't a smelly basement. It looked full because it's so small, but that didn't improve her mood any. There were even some kids there wearing dead trend shirts, which didn't change things either. When we loaded in, she started calling me an asshole for booking a New York City show in a slum. She said she played a packed, ballroom ball last time. But the set was great. Again, we tripled the beat on chicken shaped patty meal. I thought I'd lose the beat, but I stopped thinking and I let my limbs take over. I want to record all the songs again to document the changes. We sold four records and got paid $90, but she was still in a terrible mood. After the matinee, Joe managed to squeeze into the passenger seat with Amy and he gave us directions to his place. We unloaded the gear into his entryway. Amy went straight to the bar and has been there since. Joe took me on a walk around the neighborhood. He had to work at the wine shop downstairs from his house, so he gave me his keys and told me to make myself at home. I've been watching DVDs for a while. I called Rhonda. She asked if I thought we'd finished the tour. I told her I hadn't thought about it. So there's a bunch of name drops in this passage. I did some roading for this Boston band called Garrison. My buddy Joe did move down to Williamsburg, lived in that apartment across the street from Charleston, the bar. ABC No Rio, as most of who knows, hopefully is a real place. All those bands were real. Gate City Noise was a record store. In Greensboro, I stayed at the slave house one night. My buddy Zach is in that scene holding a record. I think part of the reason why I'm always writing about bands is because when I was coming up as a writer, when I was starting off my writing career, such as it is, I didn't meet anybody else who took writing seriously, honestly, and the people who were making art that were the most serious about their art were all musicians. So I fell in with a bunch of punk rockers, you know, because I was interested in punk rock. I started listening to the sax pistols and dead Kennedy's when I was 15, the way that a lot of people who were in their 50s did. And the whole punk ethos of doing it yourself is still really important to me. I put on shows on Cape Cod with my wife and one of my friends. We book readers here as well. So that whole ethos has always informed my writing. So it seems like writing about the punk scene, whether it's real or whether it's fictional, is where I always wind up, where I always go. Partially because the dynamics of people in the band are so volatile, right? It's like all these people are squashed into a tiny van and have to deal with each other for weeks, sometimes month at a time. There's a lot of room for drama there and it's really fun to make up fictional bands and whatnot, which is where we get into my next book, which is called The Impass. My main character in the impasse is named Jeff Thignon. He's in his teens, he's living in suburban Boston, sees this made for television movie called The Day After on the Sunday before Thanksgiving in 1983 in which the United States and the Soviet Union engage in global thermonuclear war. Everyone has these massive radiation burns. All these people get vaporized on national television. It scared the shit out of everybody, especially people who were 10 years old like I was. Just a terrifying film to watch and the producers intentionally toned it down so that it wouldn't be as bad as it would be if there was an actual war. The broadcast of The Day After, which you can find I think on YouTube, it's not a particularly good movie, but it was a really scary, really effective movie. The broadcast of it actually convinced Ronald Reagan to tone down his rhetoric a little bit, but thanks to the producers of The Day After. So Jeff, the character in my book, sees this movie and he's traumatized and he and his friend Alice are already playing role-playing games. So Alice decides she's going to create a role-playing game to undo what she saw when she watched The Day After. She comes up with all these tables and graphs and writes all of these characters and tries to imagine a world in which bombs fall and people are able to survive it. And she keeps juking the numbers and she keeps putting her thumb on the proverbial scale and she can't figure out how to undo what she saw on television. As Jeff and Alice are playing these games, we see these games narratively unfold throughout the book. They're also starting to get into music because Alice's favorite band is a British band who are modeled on the Cure or Echo and the Bunnyman or a band like that called The Yellow Wall Paper. They start listening to College Radio. The clerk at the local record store is named D- and she gives Jeff a flyer for a VFW show for her band called The Impass, which is where the novel gets its name from. So I'm going to read you the passage where Jeff and Alice go to the VFW show. This is the first show that they go to. I read this passage once before during the pandemic. I'm a writer for Razorcake, which is America's only nonprofit punk rock magazine. During the pandemic, we had a couple of virtual readings and I read this at a reading with my friends Kevin Dunn, Chris L. Terry, Kayla Greet and Donna Ramon. So here's Jeff and Alice going to the VFW show. The VFW's cinder block walls were painted the same dull green as a classroom, but there was no mistaking the dimly lit space for a school. A moose head with antlers big like television antenna adorned a wall facing a curiously empty space across the way. Wall hangings bedecked the room, wooden plaques bearing individual bronze plates engraved with names of past officers, tournament winners, photos of shirtless men grinning and hoisting beers towards the camera, posed headshots of men who hadn't come back from their wars. Jeff wondered if his dad had ever been there, whether he pulled his truck over on lonely Pennsylvania roads and stopped at such places, falling into easy conversation with men who understood some of the things he had been through. Wordless music that sounded like trees groaning in a strong wind played over unseen speakers. He must have lost track of Alice as he wandered the building's perimeter, trying to take in all the names, the grins, the camping trips and trophies. A tug on his sleeve. "You have to see this," Alice said. Jeff turned and followed her from the back of the room into the mass of people. She was at least a head shorter than him on a normal day, but the enormity of her hair made her easy to see as she sidestepped and nudged and pushed through the surprisingly dense crowd, leading him to the opposite side of the room. "Check it out," Alice said when they stopped. "Check what out." "Look how low it is," she said, gesturing past a few people in their way. Jeff looked down to where Alice pointed and realized the moose's gaze fixed on the stage. The setup wasn't what he expected. He thought the musicians would be feet above them. Maybe yards. Instead, they'd be elevated to the height of a single stair tread. Speaker sat elevated on either side of the stage. Stacks of black equipment crowded the back wall, with a drum set in the center. "We're so close," Alice said. A normal-looking guy a few years older than he and Alice pushed up and passed. He began placing symbols on empty stands. "I think they're starting soon," Alice said. Which band is this? I don't know. Another guy, older and more sinister looking than the first, stepped onto the opposite side and plugged a huge guitar into one of the black cabinets in the back. He pulled the amplifier closer to the lip of the crowd and slung the guitar strap over one shoulder. He hit a note which sounded like thunder. Jeff felt it in his stomach like a punch. "Base," Alice said. My favorite. A tap on his shoulder. He turned to see Dee the clerk from Tape World. She looked different than when she worked. She wore makeup like Alice, had her hair done huge. "Excuse me," she said. "D," he said, "I'm Jeff from the record store." She smiled, but you could tell she didn't remember him. "You said I was sophisticated." "Of course you are," she half yelled, smiling. "And this is my friend Alice," Jeff said. "Alice," she said, "I'm Dee." Alice opened her mouth but no words came out. "We're about to play," Dee said. "I need to get on stage." "Okay," Jeff said, stepping to the side. "Good luck." "Nice to meet you, Alice," Dee said, stepping past onto the stage. "Alice, turn to Jeff." "That's her," Jeff nodded. She talked to us. "To me," Jeff couldn't help but grin. The impasse is playing first. Jeff nodded again as Dee set up the keyboard on a folding stand. The drummer began thumping out beats on his kit. The sinister bass player played a line on top. They repeated the figure once. Twice, Jeff couldn't look away. The bass and drums were so loud, he wouldn't have known Dee was playing if he hadn't seen her thrust her fingers against the keys. She retreated to an amp, her back to the audience, and returned a moment later with a louder keyboard sound. She placed a microphone on a stand in front of her keyboard. The sinister bassist did the same. "Check, check," she said. "Check, hey, hey." From somewhere in the crowd, "Keyboards aren't punk." Dee smiled and said into the mic, "Keyboards aren't punk." Tell that to Tamado Duplenty, asshole. Cheers from the crowd. Jeff looked at Alice, who shrugged. "Good evening," Dee said, "worthy impasse." Thanks for coming early to see us, we have shirts in the back. The bass player thudded out a line that approximated the sound of the helicopter lifting off while the drummer behind echoed the sound on his kit. Dee's keyboard cut through the din. She began to entone words into the microphone. Jeff tried to focus on what Dee was saying but found himself instinctively covering his head as something blurred past. He looked around and saw everyone turned from the stage facing backwards. A blow struck his shoulder. He covered his head as everyone reached upwards. The blur he saw had been a person, who somehow launched atop the crowd from the tiny stage. Everyone held the person up, passed them around as they triumphantly flailed. After a few seconds of astonishment, Jeff turned to Alice to ask her about it and noticed that she was no longer next to him. Because the person surfing atop the audience was her. The blur had been Alice, who gestured and emoted along with the music held aloft by a sea of hands. She beamed. So that book, The Impass, is going to be coming out in December on St. Rooster Books. You can find them on Facebook and at stroosterbooks.bigcartel.com. Three Rooms Press has Hidden Wheel and my other novel Swing State. That's a threeroomspress.com. Bloomsbury has my 33 and a third book on The Minute Men, double nickels on the Dine. That's Bloomsbury.com. My band Dead Trend has a bandcamp page, deadtrend.bandcamp.com. I'm currently in Plaza Cape Cod's number one band, that's Plaza Cape Cod.bandcamp.com. Razorcake is America's only nonprofit music magazine, razorcake.org and I'm at MichaelT40er.org if you want to find previous podcasts that I did, music, articles, all that stuff. Every second and fourth, Tuesday from three to four AM in the morning I host the Policymaker Radio Hour on 92.1 FMW Omar, Province Town, Massachusetts, 91.3 FM, WFMR or Leens, Massachusetts. My most recent 10 shows are at mixcloud.com/policymaker. I co-edit the baseball fanzine zisk with my good friend Mike Faloon, find issues of that as well as other fanzines that I write and distribute at policymaker.bandcamp.com. Thank you to Christie for having me on The Rock Is Lit podcast. Thank you for listening. Stay safe. Stay weird. Peace. [Music] Thanks for tuning in Lit listeners. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and comment on good pods and Apple podcasts, links in the show notes. Wyatt, The Rock Is Lit mascot and I really appreciate your support. Until next time, keep rockin' and readin' and gettin' lit. Rock Is Lit. [Music]
In this installment of the Rock is Lit Season 4 Reading Series, Michael T. Fournier shares an excerpt from his debut novel, ‘Hidden Wheel’ (2011), and explores the musical influences behind the book, along with his experiences as a musician with the bands Dead Trend and Plaza.
About ‘Hidden Wheel’: When an art scene takes root in a pop-up colony called Freedom Springs, micro-visionary Ben Wilfork promotes the giant, autobiographical 600 square foot canvases of former chess prodigy and high end dominatrix Rhonda Barrett using his Hidden Wheel as a bridge to the future before pre-Datastrophe history completes itself. It's a book about the scams of the modern age—artistic self-promotion, corporate infiltration of hipsterdom—and it's hilarious. At the same time this is a philosophical literary work that dissects hipsterdom to get at the core of what it's all about. A must-read for art fans, punk fans, anyone who wants to know how the truly original ideas can get subsumed by the corporate machine—and how to save them. Told in an intriguing intersecting point of view style, this is a powerful short novel by an emerging talent.
Bonus Content: Michael also offers an exclusive glimpse into his forthcoming novel, ‘The Impasse’, sharing an excerpt that promises more of his signature mix of insight and edge.
Don’t miss this exciting episode as we dive into the intersection of art, music, and literature with one of the most original writers on the scene.
Bio: Michael T. Fournier is the author of the forthcoming novel ‘The Impasse’ (St. Rooster Books 2024). Previously, he wrote ‘Double Nickels on the Dime’ (Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2007), ‘Hidden Wheel’ (Three Rooms Press, 2011) and ‘Swing State’ (Three Rooms Press, 2014). He graduated from the University of Maine's MA program, where he won the Steven Grady Award for fiction. Fournier has toured the United States extensively—twice through successful crowdfunded prerelease campaigns.
His writing has appeared in ‘Razorcake’—America's only non-profit punk magazine—as well as ‘Pitchfork’, ‘McSweeney's Internet Tendency’, ‘Vice’, ‘Electric Literature’, ‘Oxford American’, ‘Boston Globe’, and more.
Mike is the co-editor of ‘Zisk’, the baseball zine for people who hate baseball zines. He's the drummer and main songwriter for Dead Trend, and plays bass in Plaza, Cape Cod’s #1 band.
MUSIC IN THE EPISODE IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:
Rock is Lit theme music
[Guitar Instrumental Beat] Sad Rock [Free Use Music] Punch Deck—“I Can’t Stop”
Rites of Spring “Hidden Wheel”
Dead Trend “Age of Consent”
Super Team—No Copyright music/NCS/copyright free music/music for YouTube
Plaza “Fat Half”
Echo & The Bunnymen “The Killing Moon”
The Cure “Pictures of You”
Black Flag “Rise Above”
[Guitar Instrumental Beat] Sad Rock [Free Use Music] Punch Deck—“I Can’t Stop”
Rock is Lit theme music
LINKS:
Leave a rating and comment for Rock is Lit on Goodpods: https://goodpods.com/podcasts/rock-is-lit-212451
Leave a rating and comment for Rock is Lit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rock-is-lit/id1642987350
Michael T. Fournier’s website: https://www.michaeltfournier.org/
Michael T. Fournier on Instagram: @xfournierx
Michael T. Fournier on Facebook: @MichaelT.Fournier
St. Rooster Books website: https://stroosterbooks.bigcartel.com/
Three Rooms Press website: https://threeroomspress.com/
Bloomsbury Books website: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/
Dead Trend on Bandcamp: https://deadtrend.bandcamp.com/
Plaza on Bandcamp: https://plazacapecod.bandcamp.com/album/adult-panic
Christy Alexander Hallberg’s website: https://www.christyalexanderhallberg.com/rockislit
Christy Alexander Hallberg on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube: @ChristyHallberg
Rock is Lit on Instagram: @rockislitpodcast
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