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It's a lot of sweat. Unless you have HubSpot's AI-powered marketing tools to help you do all that and more. Get started at HubSpot.com/marketers. 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 Ginny Page. Big shout out to this season's incredible team, social media intern Keedling Clats, and our three production interns, Major Lagulin, Tyler Elcock, and The Air 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 @Christy Halberg, and @RockIsLit podcast on Instagram. For more info, head to ChristyAlexandorHalberg.com, got a rock novel you'd like to see featured? Drop me a line at ChristyAlexandorHalberg@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. Wyatt, the Rock Is Lit mascot, and I thank you for your support. We've got a special treat for you in this episode of Rock Is Lit. I'm passing the mic to teacher, podcaster and DJ Andrew Smith, who sits down with his friend Peter Warby to discuss Peter's debut novel Summer on Fire. This fictionalized, memoir-style work delves into the heart of the 1967 Detroit Rebellion and the anti-war psychedelic rock culture that emerged from it. It's a story set in the scene that gave rise to the MC5 and the Stooges, where Peter rubbed shoulders with iconic figures like Wayne Kramer, Johnson Claire, and Gary Grimshaw. Don't miss this fascinating conversation between Peter and Andrew? Followed by an exclusive excerpt from Summer on Fire, read by the author himself. And right now, right now, it's time to sing out the dance, Mollin' Bunka! Hello, I'm Andrew Smith, also known as teacher on the radio, and you can see all of my work here in Cookville, Tennessee over at www.teacherontheradio.com. And I'm here with my lifelong friend from Detroit, Michigan, Peter Warby, and you can visit his website at www.peeterwarby.com, that's Warby W-E-R-B-E. Peter published in 2021 the novel Summer on Fire, which takes place in Detroit in the summer of 1967, the summer of the rebellion, and it was also a summer of great social and cultural upheaval all over these United States. Peter is going to be reading some excerpts from his book, and he will be talking to me just a little bit about the counterculture, and especially the rock and roll counterculture of Detroit, Michigan in the late 1960s, and we're so honored to be guests today on The Rock Is Lit podcast. Thank you, Christy, for having us, and welcome again to my dear friend, Peter Warby. Thank you, Andrew, and yes, thank you, Christy, and we should tell people that we talk about the rebellion of 1967, we're talking about essentially a massive black uprising that took place in that year, sort of one of the biggest, well, in fact, I say in the novel, quoting Malcolm X about the chickens coming home to roost Detroit was the biggest chicken of all in terms of people that died, 42 people, billions of dollars of damage to property, really now, what, 57 years later, really just recovering? So Peter, when I first read your book, one of my absolute favorite parts of the novel was the section when you and your friends go on a motorcycle ride to the Grandi Ballroom, the Grandi Ballroom being kind of the epicenter of the rock and roll side of the Detroit counterculture. There was also an enclave of head shops called Plum Street. There were the different apartments and communes and offices, such as the Office of the Fifth State Newspaper, which appears in the novel, which is a real publication of which you were one of the early major players and you're now one of the members of its editorial collective some almost 60 years later. So Peter, why don't you go ahead and get into the reading today from that section of Summer on Fire? Yeah, I will, and I'll just preface it by saying the Grandi Ballroom began in the manner of the Great Ballrooms in San Francisco and New York and featured not only local rock and rollers, but turned out to be famous, like the MC5 and Iggy Pop and then Iggy and the Stooges. But then also we would take it for granted that the who or Led Zeppelin or Cream or some band like that was holding forth and I think probably was four or five bucks to get in, but that was 1967. And this excerpt takes place on June 16, 1967. The dates are all important in the book, but that would come clear upon reading. The two characters are Paul and Michelle, they're married, they're staff members of the Fifth State Newspaper, which came out every two weeks in that era. And they are training for a big anti-war demonstration that's going to be happening the next Saturday. They're worried about violence from the police and from right wingers, so they've been doing martial training. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, fellow Americans, De De Deo. He's been sick. I know it's hard to defend an unpopular policy every once in a while. It was 6 p.m. when Paul and Michelle arrived back at their flat, exhausted from the afternoon's rigorous martial training. Paul put Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Inventions' new LP absolutely free on the turntable of their Magnavox record player. Paul loved the first cut on the mother's vinyl album Plastic People was the name of it. He reminded him of the suburbanites living north of Detroit and the all-white ring suburbs. He fell asleep by the middle of the Duke of Prunes, the second song on the record. If he had planned on listening a long time, he would have used the record changer allowing you to stack up to 10 LPs that dropped the next album when one finished. Suddenly, Michelle shouted, "Dinner's ready." When she walked into the living room, she realized the LP had ended and there was only "Kachut coming from the run-out" groove at the end of the record. "Hey, Paul, what?" As he jumped away, "Dinner's ready." They ate at an old round oak table whose legs had been long ago removed, sitting around heated on cushions, eating with chopsticks. The table was a gift from a girlfriend of the bass player with the MC5, the band that practiced in the basement of the fifth estate newspaper office. Michelle said, "You know, Paul, it's Friday, the big anti-war marches tomorrow. And who knows what's going to happen? Can't we do something that's just fun tonight?" Paul said, "Sure. It's the weekend. Let's go to the grandi." He walked into the kitchen to look at the poster on the refrigerator that announced the weekend acts. "Who's playing?" she shouted. "It's the Grateful Dead and Tim Buckley," he yelled with excitement. "What are you reading from?" she yelled back. "We saw them last Friday. You're looking at last week's poster. Man, were you that stone and you don't remember seeing them?" He was, and he didn't at first. "Oh, oh, yeah, yeah. I remember," he said quickly, conjuring up the images of the show that came flooding back to him. "It was a great show. I love Buckley's get-on-top," she yelled, "I don't know why we left last week's poster on the fridge." She tossed the poster designed by their artist friend, Gary Grimshaw, into the trash. No recycling, then. And as a side note, they should have saved it since Grimshaw's rock-and-roll psychedelic poster art came to be worth a considerable amount as the decades rolled on. The poster that Michelle discarded sold a half-century later for over $5,000. Reflecting on their cavalier treatment of what turned out to be valuable art, what informed of its contemporary worth, Paul cited supply and demand, saying, "If everyone would have kept Gary's posters, they'd be worth $5 today. The fact that we reduced the supply is why they're so valuable." "So, who's there tonight?" Michelle said. There's a postcard on the front table. "Wow," she said. "Cream, big brother in the holding company with Janice Joplin and our pals in the MC5. Going to the grandi had its rituals, including getting very high. This meant weed, as alcoholic drinks were derided by hippies and radicals alike as the drug of despair, the intoxicant of choice of their parents' generation, the high of Zappa's plastic people. Michelle informed Paul, "But we're all out of grass. Why don't you go score a lid from Sonny? Here's five bucks, and don't hang around getting high with him or we'll miss the show." Michelle referred to a measurement that was a full lid from a large Hellman's mayonnaise jar. Paul walked a few blocks to the local weed dealer who supplied the whole neighborhood with marijuana. He was always fair and had the best stuff. Sonny greeted Paul, "Hey, dude, you're here to cop? I just scored an incredible shipment of Acapulco gold that will send you into the stratosphere." Paul smiled, "Excellent, excellent, anticipating that beyond the atmospheric heights," but Sonny said, "But hey, man, I also got a shipment of orange sunshyed acid, purest shit available by the Brotherhood in California." Paul thought, "That might be a cool hive for the show tonight. All I got is five bucks for the weed, or I would. Hey, I trust you, man. How many hits do you want? Just one. I'll split it with Michelle or my pal. I'll set you straight tomorrow with what I owe you. Cool." The psychedelic ethos permeated much of the burgeoning counterculture of the era, particularly in the arts, design, and rock and roll. Jim Morrison's band The Doors, for instance, took its name from the title of a book by all this hoxelate, The Doors of Perception, about the author's experiences with the hallucinogen Mescalin, the fifth estate staff box listed Sheel Selaznik, and as travel editor, whose editorial duties didn't include information on vacations to Mexico. But trips, as LSD experience were called, it was an exploration of the inner space. When Paul returned, Michelle said she wanted a stick with just marijuana. "I get a little weird in big crowds when I dropped acid," she said. Remember how we both freaked out when we took a dose and went to the state fair? Paul nodded remembering how the stimulus of crowds of people, carnival rides, freak shows, and endless food and trinket booths led them to make a strategic exit from the cognition overload. She said softening her voice while I'm not taking it. Anyway, I thought we could ride to the grandi with Jeff and Linda in going on our motorcycles. We haven't done any riding in a while. I'm going to give them a call. Paul and his friend Jeff Vandenberg, both in Honda Superhawks, 305-CC Sport motorcycles, featuring a fairly small but fast engine. The four of them loved riding at night, zipping around corners and into straightaways. The women always rode on the back, their arms wrapped tightly around the rider, although both of them knew how to operate the motorcycles. Jeff looked much like a rider from the depression era. His usual garb, even in the warmest weather, was Levi's with term.cups, a white t-shirt, and a sport jacket. A garment almost unknown to most of his contemporaries except for occasions at which they did not want to attend. He'd ever wear shorts, for instance. One reason for his jacket was that it hid a 38-special snub-nose revolver he usually carried tucked in his waistband. Once while in New York City, where he was doing a poetry reading at the invitation of a surrealist group, he learned that a prominent poet and academic was reading a Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village. He organized a bunch of anarchists and surrealists who walked over from Avenue A to the church. Jeff, having secured blank bullets, came running down the aisle, firing his gun while shouting "deaf to bourgeois poets!" His confederates threw copies of his publication, The Final Warning, with his headline "Poetry is Revolution" and threw it into the rows of seated, versatile lovers who ducked for cover. Jeff and his girlfriend Linda pulled up to the flat on their motorcycle, parcated on the asphalt pad just below the bedroom window where there once was a lawn. They were dressed in the same writing outfits as Paul and Michelle. Jeff tall and biker-bad, Linda thinned with long blonde hair streaming out from under her helmet. Watching them dismount, Paul thought how cool they looked, realizing that safety wasn't their only reason for dressing in leathers. The four of them, and all black and helmets on motorcycles, always drew admiring stares. Hey Jeff and Michelle left, Paul needs a guinea pig for a new acid he just caught. Want to be the experiment? Expecting this would talk them out of it for the evening, particularly since the marijuana high was already taking a hold of them. Jeff said, I think I'll pass. None for me added, Linda, I am totally high already. Paul shrugged and gulped on the capsule without any water. Okay, more for me, let's go rock and roll. The two couples donned their gear, jumped on the super hawks heading down West Grand Boulevard towards Grand River Avenue where the Grandie Ballroom was located. As they rode at 45 miles an hour, 20 miles over the speed limit, Paul thought he didn't remember the road having so many curves, but he easily followed its arc when it went one way and then the other. Michelle pounded him on the back, Paul, Paul, what the hell are you doing? Stop swerving all over the place, swerving, Paul thought, I'm just following the road. He had driven down the street a hundred times having spent part of a wayward youth shooting pool at a local YMCA. However, it now seemed very strange, almost fantasy-like, with familiar cars like Chevy Malibu's and Nash Ramblers coming almost alive resembling cartoon characters. Holy crap, he thought I'm getting really fucking high from the shit I took. He'd been high enough times to invoke enough willpower to hold it together until they arrived at the Grandie a mile ahead, but time stretched out so it was if they had been on the bike for hours. The road continued to snake back and forth, even up and down, creating hills that were never there before with the cartoon cars parked in front of stores whose eerie commodities in the display window beckoned to him demonically. Finally, they arrived at the Grandie Ballroom entrance, the place where he would find refuge and his brain could call. Instead, there was a crowd in front of the box office screaming slogans and carrying picket signs. Wasn't this what we were going to spend the night away from, he thought? They parked their bikes and walked up to the demonstration. Paul was incapable of talking. Paisley Mann, who was leading the demonstration, told them in strident tones that Capitalist Pig, Uncle Russ, has raised the admission price to $7.50. The community is letting him know we are pissed and won't stand for it. The usual price, $5, is a lot of money for most of us. But raising it by 50% just won't stand, he said. The protest signs read, "Uncle Russ is a capitalist pig and Russ is a rip-off and they were chanted as slogans echoing down the side street where the ticket office was by about 15 unhappy patrons." The sign referring to a school teacher and local DJ Russ Giv, who was inspired to bring a psychedelic ballroom venue to Detroit after visiting San Francisco's Fillmore Theatre that featured the rock and roll performers who were defining the new counter-cultural scene. He had struck a deal, a quick one, with the owner of the grandi that had stood vacant for years following the demise of the big band era. Built in 1928, the ballroom quickly became a favorite place to dance to swing bands and was then a popular hangout for members of Detroit's infamous purple gang. Giv originally booked local rock acts such as the MC5 but quickly hooked on to the touring scene of the major label rockers such as The Who, The Grateful Dead, The Chambers Brothers, but also blues greats like VB King, Buddy Guy, and John Lee Hooker. The increased entrance fee was a result of the vicissitudes of the market that elevated the mission price as rock and roll began to edge into big business, but it also meant more profit for Giv as well as the bands that became international celebrities adored by fans willing to face substantially more to see them perform. Paisley Mann, whose head now took on the design in Paul's cosmetally expanding brain told them, "But we're going in. We don't want to miss the show." As he entered the dance floor, the MC5 was already rocking out one of the signature tunes, kick out the jams. Paul looked at the other three who were melting a bit, "I'm so fucking high." That was okay with Paul since he was inside this sanctuary of music and don't, surrounded by people like him. No threats, no danger. The five had just finished its set and was followed by Big Brother with Janice Joplin fronting the band at the height of her performance powers. They were doing songs from their just released debut LP, and were leaving right after the show for the Monterey Pop Festival to join Jefferson Airplane, The Who, Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, and dozens of other performers who were redesigning popular music. The band was in the midst of the final song of the first set down on me when Paul's totally immersion in the music to the point of feeling part of the notes was interrupted with a jolt. The band is in the music to the point of feeling part in the music to the point of feeling part of the song. The band is in the music to the point of feeling part of the song, and the band is in the music to the point of feeling part of the song. 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The song needs a bit of work, but anyway, to get those reactions, make sure everyone on your list feels heard with handmade handpicked and designed gifts from small shops on Etsy. Gifts like personalized jewelry, custom artwork, cozy style items, vintage pieces, and home decor to celebrate all of your favorite people and their specific kind of special. For original gifts that say, I get you, Etsy has it. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big row as man, then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laughing me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com/campaign to claim your credit, that's linkedin.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply, linkedin, the place to be, to be. I'm Andrew Smith, teacher on the radio and I'm with Peter Werby, author of Summer on Fire. We're guests today on The Rock Is Lit podcast and we've just heard an excerpt from Summer on Fire by Peter Werby. Peter, could you have ever imagined, even when he wrote this book three or four years ago, could you have imagined certainly more than 50 going on 60 years ago when these events transpire that the MC5 would have had such a legacy that we would now finally have seen the passing of your dear brother Wayne Kramer, that we would no longer have the MC5 with us, that they're great manager, Johnson-Claire, the poet and activist and former incarcerated person that gave him 10 for two, that all these great friends of yours would have passed on and that the MC5 down the road from you in Cleveland, Ohio, the mistake on the lake, they sometimes call that, that the MC5 would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I mean, could you imagine the legacy and the lineage and really even the success of this book? I think when you first printed it, you made a run of just a few hundred, maybe a thousand, you're in like your fourth or fifth DIY printing of this amazing novel. So Peter, reflect on that on how popular the late 1960s seems to be with so many people of my generation, Gen X and even our younger friends in the millennials and Generation Z. Peter, where are we? Well, I shouldn't tell you that for those that are interested, today there's just a big article on the BBC news channel on the MC5 and we're always living history, today will be history tomorrow and some areas are more intense, people that lived through like world wars or great social upheavals, there's more going on. But if you think even of the 1950s, which we always think is a dead generation, there were all the beats that wrote at that time, well, it's curious. I mean, there were, it seems to be two audiences for my novel somewhere on fire and it is that for the older generation, myself, now I'm just learning this phrase, the OGs, right? And that it's an affirmation of a period that we were part of, that what is particularly dramatic with war, with culture, with changes in all of our lives, of many that we're still acting out today and for a younger generation, just like I think people were interested in the 1930s and the 1920s or other important historic areas, like the American Civil War, still are curious as to what animated people of those generations. So I think on one hand, for older people, it's an affirmation of a generation, for younger people, you know, that Andrew from your students, I mean, it said in 1967, my novel for your students, it might as well be said in 1867, right? But they have an interest in that. What happened before that? People often think that their life, their generation, their era, isn't exciting and all if I was back in the 90s or the 80s or the 70s or the 60s, that my life would be so much more exciting. But the history you live only becomes evident in the rearview mirror, right? So much of what I've read about that era in terms of articles and essays and nonfiction seems to try to paint the political movement against the Vietnam War as in many ways very, very serious and also filled with militancy that did not renounce violence at all, but only renounced the particular shenanigans of the US Empire and also sort of seemed to be very dismissive of the naivete and the religious interests in meditation and Eastern philosophy and pacifism of the hippie movement. When I first learned about this time period as a young person who's through the music of John Lennon, who's through the Broadway musical and then movie called Hair, and I always in my mind synthesized the counterculture and the political movement as one thing, but then as I would read memoir and autobiography and biography, it seemed like a lot of people wanted to put the activists over in one camp and the hippies over in another camp. And certainly the MC5 and the Stooges were not soft folk music. It wasn't Joan Baez, it certainly wasn't even the Grateful Dead. But there was a hardness to it that I think reflects our hometown, but at the same time, I think your chapter here, that your excerpt anyway, really captures, it was impossible for those two countercultures not to mingle. And how do you think you deal with this in the novel and do you think it's accurate to show the music and drug and art culture mingling with the group that was going to go in the very next day in your book and go and fight against the Vietnam War and protests in March in the streets? I think your story must be the more accurate one. Is that right, Peter? Well, yes, naturally, I would think. So people can go, by the way, to 5thofstate.org. And there is an archive there of the issues going all the way back to 1965 when the newspaper was founded. Well, if you can imagine extremes on both sides, there were people that were just total hippies and just actually into the drugs and the music and, well, man, I don't want to be involved in politics. And on the other side, there were hard-line militants. There was a group. In fact, I cite them in the book. When you said to them, "Hello," they would say the U.S. is bombing Vietnam. I mean, they thought that that should be front and center. But no, if you look at the 5th of state, you might have a cover with someone from the Black Panther Party holding a shotgun, then you turn two pages in. You mentioned meditation. There'd be an article on meditation and Tai Chi, and then there'd be an article on the MC5, and then there'd be an article about G.I.'s rebelling in Vietnam itself, refusing to go out on patrols. So yeah, I mean, it was too much to miss. I think the people that were just in it for the cultural end, I mean, this is maybe a little judgmental, but I think have given the privilege that we had as pretty much white and working class and white Americans to have taken that war of annihilation that the United States Empire was carrying out against Vietnam a lot more serious. Although a lot of them, they'd wind up at the demonstrations because the MC5, there might be, I don't know, 10,000 people down in the town square, Kennedy Square, and the MC5 would be one of the bands playing. So they would at least be counted in that, and I suppose counted as a protest. And a lot of the real hard-line revolutionaries missed a lot of the fun. Some of them would not smoke marijuana because they'd said it was counter-revolutionary, whatever the hell that means. And I don't know what they listened to when they weren't going to the Grandie Ballroom. My wife and I went every weekend. My name's Andrew Smith, I'm a writer and a poet and teacher and DJ here in Cookville, Tennessee, and I'm speaking today with Peter Warby. Peter Warby is the author of the book Summer on Fire. Summer on Fire was published by Black and Red Books in 2021, and it is available wherever you buy books, but it is a completely independent press, and Peter's collaborated with many people in Michigan, for whom he's been the longtime collaborators. When I read your book, Peter, the first time through, it was still in advance reader proofs that you sent to me. I was taken aback by how many references there were to music, and it wasn't just the rock bands that were talked about in this section, but you also referenced Motown music. You also mentioned jazz. There's definitely that lineage between the '50s hipster and the '60s hippie is definitely charted in your book. You talk a lot about sexual repression and religious repression as well, and the way in which the young people of what you were then in your '20s already during the time of this book, we're asking really difficult questions about the narrative in which you all have been raised. But when I went to you about this list of artists, I said, "Peter, I think I sound like a list of like about 50 names of specific real live musical artists in your book. Why isn't there a playlist?" And you immediately said, "That's a really dumb idea." You said, "Andrew, what a great idea. Let's make a playlist together." So I've now discovered that a lot of novelists are being asked to make a playlist for our new books when they come out and put it out on Apple Music or Spotify as we did. Tell us just a little bit about how much fun we had making that playlist. Well, we did. In fact, thank you for bringing that to my attention. Actually at one, if you're was only 50 at one interview I did, I said there was 80 songs mentioned in there. And you know, I didn't do it with intent. In fact, someone wrote a review, an Amazon review, and its title was, "Peter Warby is not a novelist." And you know, there is expository writing in there. For instance, you know, we didn't read every single word of that chapter. There was sort of a little aside about LSD and its development and what have you. And a so-called proper novel wouldn't necessarily have all that in there. I didn't want to quote proper novel. I wanted to talk about the era of what animated it. And of course, a great part of it was music. So you brought it to my attention that all these tunes were there and why not get them on Spotify. So if you go to my website, Peter Warby, W-E-R-V-E.com, there it is. And I mostly have you, Andrew, to thank for it. I don't even know if I would have had the technical skills to put it all together. Well, it was an honor to collaborate with you. I'm starting to work on my 1990s novel, the match with your 1960s novel. Paul is going to be a character, a minor character in my book, link it to the Summer on Fire universe. I hope you write a sequel. I know you've published a recent book of nonfiction essays called "Eat the Rich." And if you go to his website, you can learn more about the fifth estate. You can learn more about the movements in Detroit, Michigan. But I can't tell you how excited I am that Rock Is Lit is interested in Summer on Fire by Peter Warby because it is a historical novel, it's a political novel, but it is also a novel of the counterculture and a novel of the power of rock and roll to change minds and to change the world. Peter, what would you like to leave the listeners of Rock Is Lit with as we wrap up this conversation, which we're so grateful will be included on the current season and 2024 of the Rock Is Lit podcast? Well, I almost said it earlier that every minute is history and there's some decisions of what they call in historical terms. You can either be the subject in history, in other words, you can be part of making history by participating or you can be an object and just let it flow. And I think finding that point where your life has meaning, where you can influence and absorb the currents of the day, is both more exciting and also in, what is it, 57 years from now, someone could be reading your story. Well, thank you, Christy, again, for letting us be a part of your podcast. Thank you, Peter Warby, for taking some time out of your day. Please visit his website, www.peterwarby.com. I'm Andrew Smith. I'm over at teacher-on-the-radio.com. Summer on Fire came out in 2021, it's been in multiple printings, it's a phenomenal book. I'm so honored to be pitching it for my friend today to all the listeners of the Great, Great Rock as Lit podcast. I've found so many great books to read from this podcast, I encourage all of the listeners to go through her entire archive, listen to all the episodes and get all the books. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Christy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now, I want to be your dog, now, I want to be your dog, now, I want to be your dog, I want to be your dog, I want to be your dog, I want to be your dog, I want to be your dog. Thank you. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]
In this special episode of Rock is Lit, host Christy Alexander Hallberg hands the mic to teacher, podcaster, and DJ Andrew Smith, who interviews his friend Peter Werbe about Peter’s debut novel, ‘Summer On Fire’. Peter also reads an excerpt from the book.
Peter Werbe is a veteran of Detroit’s alternative and commercial media scene, as well as a political activist. A member of the editorial collective of ‘Fifth Estate’ magazine, his work appears in its online archive. His radio career spanned Detroit's major rock stations—WABX, WWWW, WRIF, and WCSX—where he hosted Nightcall, WRIF’s phone-in talk show and the longest-running program of its kind in U.S. radio history (1970–2016).
Peter’s novel, written during the pandemic near his 80th birthday, is a fictionalized memoir about the 1967 Detroit Rebellion and its surrounding antiwar, psychedelic rock counterculture. Set in a transformative seven weeks, ‘Summer On Fire’ explores the radical Detroit scene, featuring characters navigating protests, anarchism, fascist opposition, and rock and roll at the Grande Ballroom. Themes of ethical dilemmas echo today’s societal crises. The book also captures the spirit of cultural icons like MC5, The Stooges, Wayne Kramer, and John Sinclair.
Andrew Smith, host of Teacher On The Radio, is also a professor of English and religious studies at Tennessee Tech.
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”
Late 60s Style Psychedelic Rock Track “Summer of Love”/License Music for Videos
MC5 “Kick Out the Jams”
Frank Zappa “Plastic People”
Big Brother and the Holding Company “Down On Me”
Bar-Kays “Soul Finger”
John Lee Hooker “The Motor City is Burning”
The Stooges “I Wanna Be Your Dog”
[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
Peter Werbe’s website: https://www.peterwerbe.org/
Peter Werbe on Facebook: @PeterWerbe
Andrew Smith’s website: http://www.teacherontheradio.com/
Andrew Smith on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@teacherontheradio
Andrew Smith on Facebook: @AndrewWilliamSmith
Andrew Smith on Twitter: @teacheronradio
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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